Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Formerly Microsoft Cloud App Security

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Excellent cloud discovery capabilities that can help you better understand what apps your users are using and the relative risks of each. Data protection and DLP use cases work as advertised and are exactly what our company needs to replicate DLP implementations already in the SaaS problem space. MCAS does a good job of identifying content that meets a number of pre-built types and templates for PCI and other related governance frameworks. It's a good CASB and can solve a lot of problems - it might be right for your organization and you should certainly evaluate the tool in you need CASB.