Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs Cisco Secure Email comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 6, 2023

We compared Check Point Harmony Email and Collaboration and Cisco Secure Email across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:

  • Features: Check Point Harmony Email and Collaboration offers exceptional integration through APIs, advanced protection against data leaks, and the ability to detect complex social engineering attacks. Cisco Secure Email offers advanced protection against phishing attacks, reputation-based filtering, and robust tracking functionalities.

  • Room for Improvement: Check Point Harmony Email and Collaboration could improve integration with Exchange and other SaaS clouds while enhancing its threat clouds and AI engines. Cisco Secure Email should improve global malicious email defense, data loss prevention, and integration with third-party solutions.

  • Service and Support: Check Point has earned mixed reviews for its customer service. Some customers appreciate the technical support provided, while others are dissatisfied with response times. Cisco support is generally considered knowledgeable and helpful, but a few users reported slow response times and difficulty navigating the support process.

  • Ease of Deployment: Check Point Harmony Email is considered relatively easy to implement. Cisco Secure Email is generally straightforward and seamless to set up. It provides a modular and adaptable environment, but new users may need training.

  • Pricing: Check Point Harmony Email and Collaboration is a cost-effective option. It offers competitive prices and is suitable for small to medium-sized organizations. Opinions on the pricing of Cisco Secure Email are mixed. Some find it expensive but worth the investment, while others find it reasonably priced and competitive with other vendors.

  • ROI: Check Point Harmony Email and Collaboration delivers superior return on investment compared to other options. Cisco Secure Email's return on investment is influenced by factors such as use case, organization size, and industry.

Comparison Results: Check Point Harmony Email and Collaboration is an effective solution for blocking malicious attachments and detecting social engineering attacks. However, there is room for improvement in terms of integration and support, reducing false positives, and enhancing response times. Cisco Secure Email is highly regarded for its intelligence threat detection, reputation filtering, and robust tracking abilities. The solution’s areas for improvement include data loss prevention and third-party integration.

To learn more, read our detailed Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs. Cisco Secure Email Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender.""Defender for 365 is a comprehensive cloud-based solution. The value of the cloud is that you aren't alone. Threat intelligence and analytics are shared in the cloud. We don't have to find the solution alone. If you face an unknown threat with traditional solutions like Trend Micro and Symantec, you need to open a case and send your information to them to analyze forensically and identify the source of the attack.""Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features.""Defender for Office 365 has helped eliminate having to look at multiple dashboards and that is the aspect I like most about it. It is simpler, effective, and convenient. The users like the process efficiency.""At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us.""Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various email campaigns, pinpointing where they emanate from, and identifying the individuals within our organization who are affected.""Microsoft Defender has a feature to protect each and every attachment. Even if it's an encrypted attachment, it will check for any potential threats.""The product is not resource-intensive."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pros →

"For Threat Prevention, I was impressed with this feature and the solution's effectiveness. It has been very good.""In my opinion, it's one of the best products. It does protect other things like Slack and Salesforce, which are more about communication.""This DLP is very useful, as it gives our users additional protection.""Check Point adds value with east-west protection in the data center.""As with most of the other Check Point products, the CloudGuard SaaS has the advanced visibility of the events and alerts.""It is fast and quite effective in terms of preventing any security incidents.""I appreciate the ease of deployment and the intuitive dashboard. Even someone with basic IT knowledge can easily understand the dashboard and identify potential threats.""We need the phishing detection and email quarantine. Once an email is considered malicious, it stays in the quarantine where we can interrogate it. We can check out why it was quarantined and see if it should be delivered to the individual."

More Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration Pros →

"At one point, there was a zero-day attack. The Cisco appliance detected it and stopped it, helping us out. We avoided the attack and potential damage.""The added value of it is that every migration to a new version is initiated by the Cisco version itself, so that is a bunch of work that you don't have to do on the Cisco ESA system on-premise. As it becomes a safe platform, you don't need to invest anything in your own data center or in your upgrade path.""Initially, the most valuable feature for us was the SenderBase Reputation, because that reduced the number of emails that were even considered by the system by a huge number...""Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution.""What I find the most valuable about Cisco Secure Email is that the logs are not that difficult to see even if you're not used to them. The logs are reasonably readable and diagnosing the problem is not too hard with them.""Users were able to do a check by themselves on quarantined emails. They could check if a valid email had been stopped, if it matched up with the SPF certification.""The tool comes with AI features. It is good for clients who already use Cisco products due to integration.""The system enables end users to manage their own whitelists/blacklists."

More Cisco Secure Email Pros →

Cons
"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not.""In some situations, it has not been able to pick impersonated emails having no attachments. Technical support definitely has a scope for improvement.""The UI needs to be more user-friendly.""Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites.""This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products.""One area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration.""Microsoft security solutions work as expected. They are constantly updating the solutions to make them better. At the same time, the changes can impact a customer's environment, and we need to adjust settings. Sometimes we aren't aware of the changes, and nothing is pushed from the backend automatically.""I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Cons →

"Stability has been a pain point. I was going back and forth with my product engineer and project manager for a couple of months. I had the product in a demonstration mode and wasn't satisfied with the results initially. After a few alterations and a few revisions later, it is fine.""It would be nice to see them expand their collaboration capabilities to include other suites and integrate with lesser-known products.""There could be more automation features included for it.""There are sometimes leakages of viruses when the system is experiencing network failures.""The left-hand feature can be made more granular for the implementation of the policy.""They must provide security to more email service providers.""Check Point Infinity Portal sometimes feels a bit slow, and there are performance issues that should be easy to fix.""At this time, the two-factor authentication does not work for Active Directory."

More Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration Cons →

"The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear.""The solution does not have a strong outbound service. It should also integrate DLP.""Cisco Email Secure's pricing needs to be less. We have vendors who provide cheaper solutions with the same features.""The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky.""Scalability has certain shortcomings and needs to be improved because there are service providers who provide better scalability.v""They could improve the filters. In my time at the company, there were several times we had to contact support to update the filters.""We would like to see more options for the customization of content filters.""My opinion on the licensing of this solution is that it is a mess that needs sorting out. I am not particularly bothered by pricing as I administer it and make recommendations for people to buy or not to buy."

More Cisco Secure Email Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's a user-base subscription."
  • "From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
  • "Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
  • "For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
  • "Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
  • "Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
  • "The solution saves money so we have seen a return on investment."
  • "Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Having information stolen by a hacker would be more expensive than purchasing a license."
  • "Being able to keep the phishing campaigns out of my company has been ROI for me."
  • "Do a full feature evaluation (interactive) with a support person. That is what I did."
  • "The price is very good, based on what they deliver."
  • "One of the nice features is that the licensing model is elastic, so if you go over your license count, you can add users during your billing cycle and true-up later."
  • "There are absolutely no additional costs to the standard licensing fees. One of the wonderful pieces is that CloudGuard SaaS is all-inclusive in its licensing. There's no a-la-carte functionality. You're getting 100 percent of the product for the licensing that you're paying."
  • "The difference between [Check Point and its competitors] boiled down to money. Price-wise, Check Point was very good, it was very competitive."
  • "The pricing and licensing are always negotiable."
  • More Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We do annual licensing for Cisco Secure Email Gatewayand SMA together, and possibly SmartNet support. Packaged together, the cost is just under $38,000."
  • "In addition to the standard licensing, there is a cost for SMARTnet as well."
  • "Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
  • "Licensing costs depend on how many users there are. It could range between $5 and $7 per month, per user."
  • "The license was not per user, the license model was per feature. You could choose anti-virus, anti-spam, etc. It was feature-based and charged yearly."
  • "There were no other costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
  • "We were using Proofpoint and then we switched to Cisco... reportability was one of the main reasons we switched, but the biggest one was cost. If you can get an equivalent functionality for a better price it's wise to do so. That's what our primary decision came down to: We could get equivalent functionality at a lower price point."
  • "It is not that costly. We pay for the solution through a contractor and pay an annual fee."
  • More Cisco Secure Email Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various… more »
    Top Answer:The product must provide better malware detection. The detection algorithms don't perform the way I hope they would.
    Top Answer:I don't even have details of the product's single license purchased by my company.
    Top Answer:I use the solution in my company to secure the users' environment so that there are no phishing attacks. The tool… more »
    Top Answer:The product offers good and easy integration capabilities with other products.
    Top Answer:Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution.
    Top Answer:The product's price falls on the higher side when compared to the other products on the market. Whether the product… more »
    Top Answer:I am not satisfied with the solution's reporting and logging.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    MS Defender for Office 365
    Check Point CloudGuard, Check Point CloudGuard SaaS , Check Point Harmony Email & Office
    Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect organizations against advanced threats in their email, collaboration, and productivity environments. It combines the power of Microsoft's threat intelligence, machine learning, and behavioral analytics to provide real-time protection against phishing, malware, ransomware, and other malicious attacks.

    With Microsoft Defender for Office 365, organizations can safeguard their email communication by detecting and blocking malicious links, attachments, and unsafe email content. It employs advanced anti-phishing capabilities to identify and prevent sophisticated phishing attacks that attempt to steal sensitive information or compromise user credentials.

    This solution also offers robust protection against malware and ransomware. It leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze email attachments and URLs in real-time, identifying and blocking malicious content before it reaches users' inboxes. Additionally, it provides advanced threat-hunting capabilities, allowing security teams to proactively investigate and respond to potential threats.

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 goes beyond email protection and extends its security features to other collaboration tools like SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. It scans files and documents stored in these platforms, ensuring that they are free from malware and other malicious content. It also provides visibility into user activities, helping organizations detect and mitigate insider threats.

    Furthermore, this solution offers rich reporting and analytics capabilities, providing organizations with insights into their security posture and threat landscape. It enables security administrators to monitor and manage security incidents, track trends, and take proactive measures to enhance their overall security posture.

    Check Point Harmony Email and Office is a cloud-based software offering complete protection to stop malware attacks through emails. The software is designed to provide protection for organizations using Office 365, G Suite, Google Workspace, and all other collaboration and file-sharing apps. Access permissions can be granted and custom policies can be defined for any user of choice.

    Check Point Harmony Email and Office identifies and blocks advanced malware, phishing, and ransomware attacks in real time before they reach the user’s inbox. In turn, this also helps protect sensitive business data from breaches. Harmony Email and Office was the first solution to implement machine learning, API, and AI for email security, and will ultimately prevent any attempts at account takeover via agentless multi-factor authentication.

    What is Complete Protection?

    Check Point Harmony Email and Office offers a superior catch rate for collaboration apps and cloud email with their API-based solution that detects attacks that other solutions miss, including account takeover, supply chain attacks, ransomware, and BEC. The complete protection offers:

    • Malware Protection - Recognized by NSS Labs as “most effective in breach prevention,” the solution leverages technologies to bring clean files to users within 1.5 seconds. In addition, enterprises can be safer as the solution prevents malicious messages and files from reaching the user’s inbox.
    • Data Leakage Protection - Any confidential or sensitive information will be marked and have a classified suffix added to the end of the message or file to help keep those materials safe. Those files are encrypted, and the user will be alerted to any attempted breach of those messages.
    • Phishing Protection - Before advanced phishing attacks reach the end user, Harmony Email and Office detects and blocks them, including outbound, inbound, and internal communications.
    • Account Takeover Protection - After a user connects their cloud app, the solution captures the user's history and creates a profile and a custom threat profile. In the event of a suspected account takeover, threat intelligence is leveraged through millions of Check Point-secured gateways and endpoints and is blocked.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Check Point Harmony Email and Office offers a revolutionary prevention solution to stop malware attacks through emails. Users particularly like its visibility and the ability to protect sensitive business data.

    David U., a CISO at IMC companies, notes, "It provides visibility of events, what's going on with the environment, what we're missing with our other solution, and the user behavior."

    Mantu S., a senior technology architect at Incedo Inc., writes, "We are able to protect sensitive business data and maintain regulatory compliance with advanced data leak prevention (DLP)."

    Cisco Secure Email is an email security solution that provides advanced protection to safeguard inboxes. The solution includes comprehensive defense from the most damaging threats so your employees and organization can remain secure at all times. In addition, it includes advanced threat defense capabilities that detect, block, and remediate threats in incoming email faster. Simultaneously, it protects an organization’s brand, prevents data loss, and secures important information in transit with end-to-end encryption.

    Cisco Secure Email Features

    Cisco Secure Email has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Advanced threat analysis: Easily identify the malicious techniques used in attacks targeting your organization. Understand the specific business risks and categorize threats to gain insight into the parts of your organization that are most vulnerable to attack.
    • Robust, actionable threat data: The solution’s searchable threat analysis data provides critical contextual insight to the attack scope and breadth and expedites remediation.
    • Real-time URL analysis: With this feature, you can drop emails with risky links automatically or block access to newly infected sites with real-time URL analysis to protect against phishing.
    • Domain-based message authentication (DMARC): Users can prevent brand abuse from attackers using their organization’s domain to carry out phishing campaigns with automation of the domain-based message authentication (DMARC) process.
    • Data loss prevention (DLP): The solution enables users to protect sensitive content in outgoing emails.

    Cisco Secure Email Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Cisco Secure Email. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Optimize your defenses: The solution is designed to protect your organization from threats that can come from multiple sources, including phishing, malware, and ransomware. It can defend against all of them with industry-leading threat intelligence that empowers you to act quickly.
    • More efficient processes: You can use the solution’s orchestration feature to simplify workflows, reduce the burden on your team, and focus on more strategic initiatives.
    • Easy-to-manage tools: The solution is built with tools that are user-friendly and help you spend less time managing alerts. They allow users to quickly detect emerging threats and quarantine suspected threats to prevent their spread.
    • Flexible license options: Cisco Secure Email provides three different license choices: Secure Email Essentials, Secure Email Advantage, and Secure Email Premier.
    • Increase spam catch rates: Cisco Secure Email blocks unwanted emails using a multilayered scanning architecture.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Cisco Secure Email is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are that it has an intuitive interface, reputation filtering, few false positives, and great protection features.

    Enrique J., Owner at Jolly Security Inc., says, "It has an intuitive, clear graphical interface where you can deploy your policies and understand the overall flow. The most valuable feature is reputation filtering.”

    The solution has a “low rate of false positives, good support, and it integrates well with other Cisco security products,” explains Mark R., IT Admin / Manager at a retailer.

    PeerSpot user Charles N., Network Security Engineer at Galaxy Backbone Ltd., mentions, “It is doing its work. It is doing what it was actually designed to do. They have a lot of features such as Advanced Malware Protection, Email Protection, Advanced Phishing Protection, Antispam, Antivirus, and Outbreak Filters.”

    Sample Customers
    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
    Helvetia, Denham Capital, Daymark Solutions, Neopharm Group
    SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company17%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Government7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Energy/Utilities Company16%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Security Firm9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Real Estate/Law Firm5%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Energy/Utilities Company10%
    Retailer10%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Educational Organization17%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Government6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business45%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise40%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise51%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise31%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise46%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise37%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise28%
    Large Enterprise48%
    Buyer's Guide
    Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs. Cisco Secure Email
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs. Cisco Secure Email and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is ranked 7th in Email Security with 49 reviews while Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 56 reviews. Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is rated 8.6, while Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration writes "Has a user-friendly dashboard, a great anti-phishing algorithm, and sandboxing for testing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Email writes "Has effortless spam control, improves security posture, and frees up our IT department's time". Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is most compared with Avanan, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Mimecast Email Security, Barracuda Email Protection and Fortinet FortiMail Cloud, whereas Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Fortinet FortiMail, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Proofpoint Email Protection and Symantec Messaging Gateway. See our Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs. Cisco Secure Email report.

    See our list of best Email Security vendors.

    We monitor all Email Security reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.