Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Reviews and Ratings

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We utilize Microsoft Defender for Cloud apps for several functions including web filtering, SaaS app management and control, and Data Loss Prevention. The cloud inventory works well and provides a simple interface with all of the discovered SaaS apps accessed by the organization. By utilizing the sanctioned and unsanctioned tags, we are able to control the SaaS apps by blocking outright or allowing with controls and monitoring. For DLP, we utilize the alerting to report on suspicious or unusual file transfers.

Likelihood to Recommend

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is part of the E5 license suite. For organizations that have the E5 license in place, I would recommend using Defender for Cloud Apps as it provides a good level of functionality and the cost is already covered in the E5 license.

If an organization does not have the E5 license, I would suggest looking at alternative solutions like Zscaler or Netskope.

Overall, Defender for Cloud Apps is a decent product but does not provide as many features as their competitors. The real advantage to using it is when an environment has the E5 license and is utilizing all of the other Microsoft security products that are part of the license. They integrate extremely well and provide a high level of security.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps to gain visibility over user actions inside of our environment, as well as assessing the connections they make with third party services. We also use Defender for Cloud Apps to gain limited DLP visibility, as well as understanding data exfiltration to third party applications.

Likelihood to Recommend

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps should be used and considered if you are within the Microsoft stack, especially using E3 or E5 licenses. While I would not wholly recommend this as a full cloud protection suite, this works perfectly within the stack and relevant SaaS apps. Provides much better visibility into users than most third party tools, given that this is a Microsoft built tool meant to bring in data from primarily Microsoft services.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The entire organization depends on Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps to protect all our Cloud Apps that we normally use and helps to identify those Apps our employees are using which are risky and does not comply to our organizational needs, in order to keep our organizations Cloud assets secure from external attacks and shield us from internal accidents with excellent reporting capabilities.

Likelihood to Recommend

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is best suited to organizations using multiple Cloud SaaS and in situations where risky Apps are being used by employees which are not compliant to organizations needs and [it] helps secure sensitive information from external attacks. [It] also shields them from internal accidents and helps organizations with a secure environment when moving information to the Cloud.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Microsoft Cloud App Security to protect against data breaches or data theft. Currently, we use it to protect data within Office 365. We have a lot of documents and files within OneDrive, Work, Sharepoint, and other O353 tools. The problem we were facing [was] team members [used] their personal machines to download data and remove it as part of their separation from the company. MCAS was able to help us detect and alert on such occurrences

Likelihood to Recommend

Currently, we have an Enterprise license with Microsoft so MCAS is included. For a tool that is "free" to us, it works well. This compares to a tool that we would have to purchase and then put in a lot of time to configure. For us, there is a cost savings component that makes this worthwhile use.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organization started to expand further with more people joining and diverse types of devices being used, as the world shifted due to the pandemic, and with employees need to use their own personal devices for work, we relied heavily on Microsoft Cloud App Security (Now Called Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps), we were concerned with app security, what type of apps are people using? are these apps secure? are these apps compromising the device security? should this app be trusted? are there any invalid attempts by this app? all these questions were answered with Cloud App Security. Not only that, the visibility provided by the Cloud App Security connector for internal network authentications and activity were invaluable to our secure operations, the out of the box recommendations for our overall security posture helped us optimize/fine-tune the configuration of our network devices and domain controllers, the product works really well!

Likelihood to Recommend

Overall, I think that every organization with Windows-based devices need Cloud App Security, especially in these times, CAS is very useful for such organizations, it would give you very detailed and comprehensive insights on your overall app security posture, types of apps, sensitivity, whether there are recent breaches for a specific app, etc... Cloud app security becomes less useful if most of your users are macOS based users, although it can detect apps regardless of the OS, some features are tailored around windows networks that cloud security does a great job at, nonetheless, in both scenarios, CAS still provides value and great insights that are truly invaluable.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The Microsoft Cloud App Security is used in my organization to store documentation and forward documentation between staff and clients. The App allows us to take documents off our servers and easily transfer and edit them between staff and clients. My team routinely stores documents on the cloud and can easily organize and access them.

Likelihood to Recommend

Microsoft Cloud App Security is well suited for companies that create and store documents to share between staff or other clients and which to keep them organized. I would say it would be good to store a medium amount of trafficked files. Large files may be better suited for another program.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We Use Microsoft Cloud App Security in our Microsoft Technology Department like Azure, Power apps, and .Net department. We use MCAS for threat detection vulnerable checkpoints in web applications, mobile apps, or servers. As it is mostly used in the Saas category. Mostly our clients want to switch to azure and apply MCAS for security purposes.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We utilize Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS) in conjunction with the Defender ATP and Office ATP suite to protect our environment. We utilize it globally for all users to provide insight into cloud activities and abnormalities or user activity as well as to provide insight around in-use cloud applications.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's great because it's included with other Microsoft tools like Defender, but it's not worth it on its own. It lacks the speed of alerting, and in the world of security 24 hours for an alert to trigger is simply not acceptable. There is some very nice built-in automation around cloud apps with low scores and the ability to outright block these that is really nice.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Provides visibility into the access of apps and data.

Monitors users’ activities.

Classifies and protects sensitive information.

Ensures compliance.

Likelihood to Recommend

The feature that helps us in detecting the sensitive information being shared has been very useful. In addition, the feature that allows [Microsoft Cloud App Security] to apply policies with SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive is being used predominantly. It is a kind of unified solution. As compared to other solutions such as Netskope, Symantec, or McAfee, it provides a more unified reporting structure. It also integrates with other technologies. We have Azure Information Protection, and it goes well with the solutions that we are already using.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Microsoft Cloud App Security has been integrated to provide users a comprehensive platform in the cloud, which has allowed us to leverage a whole bunch of integration options thereby increasing productivity and efficiency. We can now administrate policies and safeguard organization data.

Likelihood to Recommend

Setting policies on apps is easy with this software. You can get real-time alerts and logs as notifications. You can then use monitoring dashboards to view and take corrective actions.