Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (formerly Microsoft Cloud App Security) is a multimode cloud access security broker.
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Varonis Data Security Platform
Score 8.8 out of 10
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Varonis offers their Data Security Platform, a modular suite of data acess and data security products providing sensitive data discovery, data access governance, unusual behavior detection, GDPR compliance support, as well as incident playbooks and cybersecurity forensic reporting.
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.
The most highlighted feature of Varonis Data Security Platform is the data analyzing mechanism. It analyzes your data all the time with some special algorithms to detect any unusual activities so that it can identify any unusual behavior or users and take necessary action to save your sensitive data. They also offer a complete dashboard solution for their customers to control across different data stores, see their current state, and any security breaches to be addressed manually.
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.
Varonis logging is very robust and captures all audit events being sent from the file servers.
The ability to report and alert on Active Directory account events works very well with file activity monitoring. It can show the complete picture of what an account did while being used.
Have a customizable dashboard is great for being able to show upper management information that only pertains to them.
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
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.
Because the tool delivers on its promises and forces us to explore each functionality. Using the tool leads us to seek more knowledge and apply it to our environment, mitigating risks, reducing the attack surface, increasing the team's technical knowledge, and boosting team growth. It also demonstrates to senior management that the tool is extremely necessary for the environment.
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.
Support has always been very responsive and addressed any issues we may have had in the past. Some local engineers are willing to come onsite or work over a web session to discuss creating a new rule set or look at some issues. Getting issues address has never been a problem. There was one feature we had trouble getting to function correctly, but support and local engineers were willing to work with us as much as needed to get it working correctly for our organization.
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.
Actually, we didn't expend much time evaluating other file auditing platforms. We chose Varonis just after a serious incident and we had already heard about Varonis at a Netapp event. So it was an easy choice. We called Varonis and asked them for a PoC, that's it. The PoC became a production and it is running until this day.
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
