Cloudflare Zero Trust Services vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

I wanted to securely connect to my servers without getting tracked by malicious attackers, even though I was on public Wi-Fi. Security was my top priority, and I also wanted a setup that was easy and quick to start and provided great network performance. Cloudflare's Zero trust matches my criteria for becoming my first choice.

Incentivized

It is well suited if your team is working with Microsoft tools and Azure services. but if you are using other cloud service providers and don't want to spend efforts in learning integration with third-party software then this is not a great fit for you. overall we are very satisfied with the product. If your corporation with Microsoft tools then I would recommend it.

Incentivized

• Granular Restrictions
• Bot Management
• DNS protection

Incentivized

• Detect threats based on user activity logs.
• Set manual and automatic alert remediation.
• Implement activity policies.
• Detect threats based on user activity logs.

Incentivized

• Good to see content re-categorization with different list for organizations.
• URL and headers rewrite.
• Events forwarding to on-premise SIEM.

Incentivized

• Cloud discovery throws away found services not found in the MCAS database of SaaS apps.
• Many panes of glass required for a fully enabled implementation to administer, configure and utilize 100% of the product.
• Room for improvement in the reporting realm - not enough records are visible and exportable for high record count policy reports.

Incentivized

Overall, Cloudflare Zero Trust Services is very usable. We just need to do a one-time setup on Cloudflare Zero Trust Service's website, download their app on the device, and connect it with secure authentication. That's it. The apps are available for almost all kinds of devices that we use, and hence, we can secure all of our required devices. The app interface is very user-friendly and has logging capability to debug in case something goes wrong.

Incentivized

The interface is pretty simple and easy to use; however, you will need to do a lot of investigative research on your own to get comfortable with it. Originally, many of the Microsoft security tools had their own seperate consoles. Overtime, they have blended into one interface which is the ideal state. In some cases it is clear Microsoft had to pick which console a certain feature or setting was going to reside in and this leads to some confusion. For example, DLP is managed through Defender for Cloud Apps but you will also need to jump into Purview. For things like reverse proxy on your M365 tenant, you will need to go into Azure and setup conditional access rules. Not a big problem and I can understand why the settings are located where they are but for someone just starting out with Defender for Cloud Apps, it will take some time to figure out.

Incentivized

Good chat support from the portal for basic questions and minor issues. The enterprise support line is provided as well.

I have not utilized actual support but the Sales and Product teams have been super helpful in moving our implementation forward and showing us the best practices.

Incentivized

Cloudflare was both the most feature-rich and cost-effective of comparisons. Presales engagement understood our challenges and was keen to solve them.

Incentivized

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps was chosen primarily due to its ability to work perfectly within our mostly M365 environment. Given that this was an added feature of our E5 license, we chose to dive into it and use it due to it's good visibility into user actions and the ability to tie all M365 actions together into one place. We did not see similar visibility with other tools that we vetted

Incentivized

• Cloudflare as a multipurpose vendor and solution helped us to replace many overlapped imperfect solutions.
• Cloudflare gives the company administrator a single pane of glass view which makes his work more effective.
• Cloudflare makes cloud transformation easier and more effective.

Incentivized

• Cloud App Security saves us thousands of dollars finding and rectifying apps security issues
• Identity Security Posture helps the organization identity stay in shape, saving thousands of dollars on security consultations
• The cost of suffering a breach cannot be quantified, CAS helps minimize the chances of the attackers succeeding, with excellent historical logging for most operations

Incentivized