Microsoft expands its Defender for Cloud tool to Google Cloud, three months after adding AWS support
Microsoft Corp. is expanding its product for finding and monitoring security weak spots in cloud-computing to include rival Alphabet Inc.'s Google Cloud Platform.
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft had already been extending its security tooling beyond its native environment, including third-party security information across non-Windows platforms. Google Cloud, meanwhile, had expanded Chronicle's threat detection and alerting tools, giving its cloud customers a security-analysis option of its own.
Adding Google Cloud after AWS support makes Defender for Cloud a tool for customers operating across the three largest cloud platforms, rather than a security product limited to Microsoft-hosted workloads.
First-order effects
- Google Cloud customers can use Defender for Cloud to find and monitor security weak spots alongside workloads on AWS and Microsoft’s cloud.
- Microsoft gains a direct route to sell its cloud-security tooling into Google Cloud accounts, while Google Cloud must accommodate a rival’s security layer on its platform.
Second-order effects
- Google’s Chronicle tooling faces a more direct comparison with Defender for Cloud among customers seeking centralized threat detection and monitoring across multiple clouds.
- Organizations running AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft cloud services can reduce the need to standardize on a separate security workflow for each provider, increasing pressure on cloud-native security products to interoperate.
Third-order effects
- Cloud security is moving toward cross-provider control planes, where vendors compete on visibility across heterogeneous infrastructure rather than exclusive ownership of the underlying cloud.
- If Microsoft continues extending Defender across rival environments, security integration becomes a way to retain customer relevance even when workloads are distributed among competing clouds.
The trend: Multi-cloud customers are pushing security vendors to make monitoring and threat-management tools portable across competing cloud platforms.