Cloudflare One (SASE) 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

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is well suited when working with other Microsoft Applications. For example, if you are working with Microsoft Office 365 it works very well when implementing CASB features. It works when implementing monitoring or blocks on Sanctioned applications however customizing the message to users is not that great.

Incentivized

• Block access to known bad, risky, or unwanted destinations at the DNS or HTTP level.
• Excellent protection for remote users.
• Best in class browser isolation techniques.

Incentivized

• The integration to Microsoft Entra ID is seamless, which allows Conditional Access to redirect the session to Microsoft Defender for Cloud App for it to take actions (Block or Monitor).
• Tracker users' activity is very good when troubleshooting or running an investigate.
• Detecting risky users through tight integration with Microsoft Entra ID is a very good feature.
• Detecting mass downloads and blocking the download of files from non-manage company devices is a very good feature as well.

Incentivized

• Cloudflare still need to improve CASB direction to complete set of SASE tools.
• More integrations with the third-party agents to check device posture in the Zero Trust framework.
• More granularity in firewall rules for full replacement of on-premise solutions.

Incentivized

• It takes some time to scan and apply the policies when there is some sensitive information.
• After it applies the policies, it works, but there is a delay.
• It doesn't provide any way to scan Microsoft Teams when an external exchange of images is happening. You can always do the filtering on the documents during the chat, but if there is an image, then some kind of OCR capability is required to detect it. At present, there is no way [Microsoft Cloud App Security] can go and detect those kinds of images and alert us

Incentivized

Within a few hours, new engineers are trained in basic tasks and are quite happy they are able to resolve issues independently. After SSO is configured, onboarding is as simple as signing into m365 via a web browser popup.

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

More flexible and more features with easy integration with cloud services like Microsoft Azure and other cloud services. Overall both gives similar features but we prefer Microsoft cloud app security due to its high threat detection rate. mostly we have been able to stop the threat in very very less time.

Incentivized

• The cost of Cloudflare Zero trust is much lower, hence reducing spending on infrastructure security.
• The Network performance is improved thanks to Warp protocol.
• Requires less maintenance and hence saves time.

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