Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) for Azure, on-premises, and multicloud (Amazon AWS and Google GCP) resources.
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Zabbix
Score 8.5 out of 10
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Zabbix is an open-source network performance monitoring software. It includes prebuilt official and community-developed templates for integrating with networks, applications, and endpoints, and can automate some monitoring processes.
Microsoft is well-suited with its definitive cloud, and I also like its Microsoft Intune ID. The conditional policies are great with that, and they're really good and well situated, so you can't beat them at that conditional policy level. Less appropriate, as I said, some of these low-hanging fruit features, like being good in phishing campaigns, and then I feel like maybe doing better at their seam products. So we'll see how that goes.
Zabbix is great for monitoring your servers and seeing alerts when the system uses too much CPU or memory. This allowed the system Engineer to be proactive and add resources to these systems to avoid interrupting the services. Especially servers running operations applications and services. This is one of the best usages for Zabbix.
Collecting hardware data - CPU, Memory, Network, and Disk Metrics are collected and reported on.
Flexible design - It is very easy to build out even very large environments via the templating system. You can also start where you are - network monitoring, server monitoring, etc. and then build it out from there as time and resources permit.
Provides a "plugin architecture" (via XML templates) to allow end users to extend it to monitor all kinds of equipment, software, or other metrics that are not already added into the software already.
Very complete documentation. Almost every aspect of Zabbix has been documented and reported on.
Cost - Zabbix is FOSS software and always free. Support is reasonably priced and readily available.
Granular permissions and role-based access management could improve security. This would enable organizations to control who has access to and can set specific features.
While it offers integration with various Microsoft services, expanding support for third-party cloud platforms and applications would enhance its versatility. Many organizations use multiple cloud providers, and broader compatibility would be advantageous.
The cost structure could be more transparent, especially for larger organizations with extensive cloud resources. Clearer cost breakdowns and predictions would help organizations budget more effectively.
It is a great product that integrates nicely when running an Azure platform and even multi-cloud environment. Not looking for point-solutions but a suite that answers most requirements. It is very comfortable being able to use KQL, workbooks and automation that is native to the azure platform
It is free. It didn't cost anything to implement (other than my time and the cost incurred for it) and it is filling a badly needed gap in our IT infrastructure. Support is available if we have issues and can be done annually or paid for on a per incident basis as needed. Expansion, updates, and all other future lifecycle activities are likewise free of cost, so as long as someone is able to implement/maintain the software (and the OSS project is maintained) then I imagine the company will never leave it.
My visibility is limited because I'm only doing very small pieces of what the overall org does. And also, we have limitations on what we're allowed to use. It's not like we get a new product as users or leadership level users, and everything is on, and we can just do whatever we want. We're very restricted in what we can use any tooling within the org because of the different levels of regulatory constraints we have, because of just the nature of who we are inherently. So that's why. I don't think it's necessarily the product. I think it's more or less of what we're able to do with the product.
I think every organization, especially the IT department, needs a tool like this. I know of another product like Zabbix that gives a similar or the same solution, but its range makes it very useful. You can see almost all the device info in one place: disk usage, disk space, network usage, etc.
The setup is the most time-consuming portion of using zabbix. It takes a lot of effort to shape it into a usable format and even then it can get very messy. It's not exactly intuitive and as mentioned the UI seems a bit antiquated. If I was to roll out a monitoring solution from scratch, I'd probably look for alternatives which are easier to use and maintain.
We are a mainly Windows environment, so it would be useful if we could have used Active Directory to deploy agents. As of version 4.2, Zabbix has announced a new agent MSI file to allow exactly that. Unfortunately, we didn't have that option. Also, for Linux and MAC deployments, there is no simple way to deploy that. Using remote scripts you may be able to create something, but most places will opt for either SNMP (agentless) or manual installation of agents to add to Zabbix. A way of deploying agents via discovery would go a long way to helping in the adoption of the tool.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is definitely the choice with the latest market trend and attacks that are currently happening. Microsoft has been able to safe guard a lot after the recent serious attacks happening globally in the digital world. There is a trust in this software and with the latest updates and machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud should be the choice.
We're using the Solarwinds suite as our global monitoring standard, but it is very complex and its licensing model makes it difficult to monitor a wide range of technologies. So, we're using Zabbix as a complement on our monitoring process. Zabbix is a way more flexible and has free integrations to a wide range of technologies. It is also more 'user friendly' and easy to manage.
It simplifies security management and saves time. I'm not sure, but I'm very confident it saved me a couple of paychecks by centralizing the data I need to secure the cloud environment.
I also utilize the inventory overview to monitor my team's activities and verify they are following internal regulations, as well as cost overruns.
The recommendations can be utilized as a valuable instructional tool. I have the team explain why they are receiving them, why they are not following them, and what they are doing differently.
