Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Reviews and Ratings
Rating: 6.8 out of 10
Score
6.8 out of 10
Community insights
TrustRadius Insights for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Insightful User Actions Tracking: Users have appreciated the detailed insights provided into user actions and connections, aiding in managing shadow IT, identifying suspicious activities, and offering strong protection for sensitive cloud information.
Efficient Automation Features: Reviewers have praised the tool for its easy automation capabilities, helping with tasks like implementing policies and templates for app control, investigating threats, receiving alerts on suspicious behaviors, and assessing security posture of internal domain controllers seamlessly.
Strong Security Measures: Customers have highlighted the product's robust security features such as automatic checks for integrations, detailed threat severity distinctions, compatibility with Microsoft tools and Azure, as well as effective filters to enhance data protection.
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.
Pros
Insight into user actions
Insight into user connections
Cloud file scanning
Cons
Easier to understand UI
Further clarity into user search
Better third party cloud connections
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.
VU
Verified User
Director in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)
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.
Pros
Helps to discover and manage shadow IT.
Suspicious activity identification.
Perfect protections to sensitive Cloud information.
Cons
In the event of Cloud traffic it is not easy to monitor and identify attacks.
Difficult to protect unmatched Cloud devices.
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.
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
Pros
Integrates with Microsoft Products
Has a fair share of popular SasS connectors
Is constantly releasing new connectors for new SaaS platforms
Cons
They need more Saas integrations
Some of the integrations are lacking data or feeds that are needed
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.
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!
Pros
Application Usage Monitoring
Security Posture of Internal Domain Controllers
Policies and Templates to control apps
Threat investigation and remedy
Alerts and Notifications on suspectious app behaviors
Cons
Refining Search and Drill Down in the Management Portal
Better Filtering UI, Locating Right Events/Activities is Relatively Difficult
More Policy Templates to Cover Wider Scenarios
Better Guidelines on How to Rectify a Problem/Security Issue
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.
VU
Verified User
C-Level Executive in Information Technology (201-500 employees)
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.
Pros
Organization
Communication
Storage
Cons
Features
Details
Graphics
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.
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.
Pros
Security and Auto check for integrations
Detail distinguish according to severity of threats
Work well with Microsoft tools and Azure
filters are also good
Cons
Not smooth working with other cloud service provider like aws
sometimes not updated with latest threat or very late threat detection.
Can be more UI side attractive
Not a cheap price
slow with real time data
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.
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.
Pros
Easy automation
straight forward dashboard
integration with other Microsoft security tools
Cons
Massive delays between the time an activity occurs and when MCAS alerts, up to 24 hours sometimes
Many false negatives due to the way it tracks IP addresses and things like impossible travel
Some of the default alerts dont trigger emails or dont even support email
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.
Provides visibility into the access of apps and data.
Monitors users’ activities.
Classifies and protects sensitive information.
Ensures compliance.
Pros
Detect threats based on user activity logs.
Set manual and automatic alert remediation.
Implement activity policies.
Detect threats based on user activity logs.
Cons
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
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.
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.
Pros
Audit
Enterprise Security
Integration
Cons
Intermittent bugs related to policies turning off
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.
VU
Verified User
Project Manager in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
We use MCAS - Microsoft Cloud App Security for data protections, DLP and Threat Detections in our known and approved SaaS applications. It allows us to inspect the content of data at rest, as well as in use, and enforce security policies. MCAS brings a set of security capabilities that I cover a huge gap we had prior - Security visibility and enforcements in SaaS apps.
Pros
DLP content inspection of SaaS file stores.
Auto detection and classification of content in SaaS File stores.
Threat detection for data ex filtration and identity related threats.
Cloud SaaS discovery.
Cons
Cloud discovery throws away found services not found in the MCAS database of SaaS apps.
Many panes of glass required for a fully enabled implementation to administer, configure and utilize 100% of the product.
Room for improvement in the reporting realm - not enough records are visible and exportable for high record count policy reports.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
VU
Verified User
Program Manager in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
