Cisco Secure Email vs Fortinet FortiMail comparison

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12,736 views|10,031 comparisons
97% willing to recommend
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9,331 views|6,017 comparisons
94% willing to recommend
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6,551 views|4,300 comparisons
93% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 6, 2023

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

  • Features: Cisco Secure Email offers advanced protection against phishing attacks, reputation-based filtering, and robust tracking functionalities. Fortinet FortiMail is highly praised for its simplicity, intuitive interface, and smooth compatibility with other Fortinet products.

  • Room for Improvement: Cisco Secure Email should improve global malicious email defense, data loss prevention, and integration with third-party solutions. Fortinet FortiMail requires enhancements in integration, user management, and documentation.

  • Service and Support: Cisco support is generally considered knowledgeable and helpful, but a few users reported slow response times and difficulty navigating the support process. Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable.

  • Ease of Deployment: Cisco Secure Email is generally straightforward and seamless to set up. It provides a modular and adaptable environment, but new users may need training. The setup process for Fortinet FortiMail is described as relatively easy and can be completed within a few hours or up to 14 working days. It is flexible and can be tailored to specific needs, although it may require help from technical professionals.

  • Pricing: 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. Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable.

  • ROI: Cisco Secure Email's return on investment is influenced by factors such as use case, organization size, and industry. Fortinet FortiMail provides enhanced email communication, decreased spam, stabilized collections, and altered expenses.

Comparison Results: 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. Fortinet FortiMail and Cisco Secure Email have distinct features and functionalities. Fortinet FortiMail is known for its simple setup, user-friendly interface, and effective email filtering. It can be customized and seamlessly integrated with other Fortinet products.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Email vs. Fortinet FortiMail 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
"Defender helps us prioritize threats across our organization.""The risk level notifications are most valuable. We get to know what kind of intrusion or attack is there, and we can fix a problem on time.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance.""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.""It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself.""The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links.""The product's scalability is good."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pros →

"Cisco Secure Email has strong inbound services.""I can customize the configuration and policies.""The most significant enhancement we've gained is in terms of security through the upgrade we received.""The user interface was quite friendly, it was quite easy to use, unlike some other Cisco products. Anybody could use it. You don't have to be familiar with IT to be able to handle navigating it.""It has an intuitive, clear graphical interface where you can deploy your policies and understand the overall flow. There are a lot of things that you cannot handle on the graphic interface, like message filters. For this, you need to go to a lower level where you have more power, like command line interface. So, this solution has the best of both worlds. There are not a lot of bells and whistles. It is more practical with access to most features that you can configure.""It is doing its work. It is doing what it was actually designed to do. It has ensured we don't have business email compromises, and it has also ensured that our brand Galaxy is unique all year round.""It does a great job of preventing spam, malware, and ransomware. I can only go by what people have told me and what I've seen, but I have not seen spam in a year and a half to two years in my own company mailbox. And there are not a lot of catches where it's catching something that should have gotten through, either.""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."

More Cisco Secure Email Pros →

"FortiMail possesses notable strengths, and one key feature is its store-and-forward concept.""Its performance is very good and it is stable.""FortiMail is a stable product.""A full-featured email gateway solution that contains security threats reliably.""After implementing FortiMail, the spam, and malicious emails we receive have significantly reduced, making it much simpler to manage.""One major benefit of the Fortinet FortiMail product is its ease of management.""The most valuable feature of the solution is the tool's ability to prevent phishing attacks.""Fortinet FortiMail's most valuable features are its performance and security."

More Fortinet FortiMail Pros →

Cons
"Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data.""We noticed that from time to time, Microsoft's stability does have problems. Sometimes the service goes up and down. Sometimes they change without prior notice.""The product must provide better malware detection.""We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend.""We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required.""The only thing they should improve is the licensing model. They should stop changing it. A year ago, the five features I mentioned were included in one product. Now, three of them are bundled into one product, and you have to pay extra for the other two. I don't mind paying extra, but I don't want them to change it every year or every six months. I need to know what I'm looking at and not worry about it next year.""The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Cons →

"Many smaller businesses opt for more cost-effective solutions, such as Gmail or Hotmail accounts, instead of investing in Cisco Secure Email, given its higher cost.""The hardware is not up to the mark. Two to three times a year we have complete downtime.""In future releases, I would like to see two main improvements come to mind. First, the current solution requires maintaining two separate operating systems for FTD, which can be cumbersome. I'd love to see a single operating system for the FTD box.""It is not user-friendly, and it is quite complicated. So, it should be more user-friendly.""I would rate the stability a six out of ten. We had multiple issues with the stability.""I am not satisfied with the solution's reporting and logging.""The initial setup was complex because I have two sites with physical clusters.""The configuration UI should be made more intuitive. Currently, it takes a while to understand how to do the basic configurations."

More Cisco Secure Email Cons →

"The product could incorporate even more artificial intelligence to enhance the functionality, but it is a competetive and intelligent product as it.""They should add a lot of threat-intelligence feeds from different sources - not only from one source (FortiGuard).""Sometimes, authentic emails get blocked by the solution's firewall.""The solution is user-friendly to a degree but the dashboard needs improvement.""Sometimes, the tool flags legitimate incoming traffic as spam.""I believe there is room for enhancement in content and web security features.""I don't know if it is possible, but I would like to see Artificial Intelligence and machine learning introduced.""The tool needs to improve its pricing policy. Also, it needs to be more user-friendly. I would want it to improve email security as well."

More Fortinet FortiMail 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 →

  • "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 →

  • "The licensing model for this solution is better because it is based on the box and not the number of users."
  • "It is an expensive product."
  • "The annual cost is $55,000."
  • "Pricing is straight-forward and renewable without complicated pricing structures."
  • "Pricing is based on initial license purchase and use volume."
  • "In the future I would like it if there's a possibility to lower the price of the bandwidth and UTM. It is quite expensive."
  • "This is a good solution and value for the money."
  • "If you don't need the full bundle that includes everything, you have options for the small or medium enterprise environments."
  • More Fortinet FortiMail 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: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.
    Top Answer:The price of Fortinet FortiMail steadily increases every year. There is a possible ten percent increase. It's concerning… more »
    Top Answer:The solution's pricing could be improved.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    MS Defender for Office 365
    Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
    FortiMail
    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.

    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.”

    As cyber attacks become more sophisticated, it is crucial for email security solutions to offer multi-layered protection. Fortinet's proven email security platform, FortiMail, is a comprehensive multi-layered threat protection solution designed to secure users from the full spectrum of email-based threats, which includes zero-day threats, credential impersonation, spam, phishing, malware, and business email compromise (BEC) attacks.

    Fortinet FortiMail offers a variety of deployment models to best fit your organization’s email security needs. On-premises, private or public cloud, or hybrid email environments can be deployed and managed in-house by your team or managed by Fortinet’s data centers. FortiMail also employs virtual machines that provide robust scalability options and flexible deployment of email security infrastructure.

    Fortinet FortiMail Benefits

    Fortinet FortiMail provides your organization with the following benefits:

    • Eliminate message-based threats by using FortiMail’s advanced inspection capabilities before they can harm your users.
    • Flexible licensing ensures that you don’t have to create a license for each user as you scale your network upwards.

    • Achieve regulatory compliance with sophisticated messaging content archiving, quarantining, and routing tools.
    • Stop spam before it takes over your messaging system and network resources, ensuring that your messaging performance remains optimized.

    Fortinet FortiMail Benefits

    Some of Fortinet FortiMail’s top features include:

    • Spam and malware prevention: FortiMail employs advanced techniques and technologies, such as outbreak protection, impersonation detection, content disarm and reconstruction, and sandbox analysis to provide users with high-performing antispam and antimalware tools designed to prevent unwanted bulk email, ransomware, and other targeted attacks.
    • Powerful data loss prevention: Identity-based email encryption and archiving help prevent the loss of sensitive and important information and ensure that your organization adheres to compliance with corporate and industry regulations.
    • Automatic updates: Receive dynamic updates from the FortiGuard subscription services that automatically upgrade your antispam and antivirus functionality using intelligence gathered by Fortinet's dedicated global threat research team.
    • Seamless integration: Integrations with other Fortinet products and external third-party components enable companies to enhance their security by sharing indicators of compromise (IoCs) across a unified security system.
    • Easy email management: Gain full visibility over real-time email traffic with Fortinet FortiMail’s intuitive dashboards, rich reporting features, centralized quarantine tools, and end-user controls. Control email traffic with the solution’s full mail transfer agent and mail-handling capabilities. The solution’s quick-start setup wizard greatly reduces the complexity of deployment and management.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Fortinet FortiMail stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful anti-virus tool and its robust spam protection capabilities.

    Flamur P., head of security management at Ipko Telecommunications, writes, "Fortinet FortiMail has a lot of valuable features. It works great. It also has an antivirus feature. Support for Fortinet FortiMail was also great when my team wanted to block some geographic IPs, but couldn't figure out how to do it. The support team provided clear communication on how to resolve that issue. Another valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is spam filtering which tells you how many spammy emails you've received. Based on my current use cases, I'm happy with Fortinet FortiMail."

    Sample Customers
    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
    SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
    Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Manufacturing Company17%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Energy/Utilities Company10%
    Retailer10%
    Government7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Educational Organization17%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider17%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Government14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization45%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Comms Service Provider5%
    Government5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business45%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise40%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise51%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise37%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise28%
    Large Enterprise48%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business46%
    Midsize Enterprise31%
    Large Enterprise24%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise55%
    Large Enterprise27%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco Secure Email vs. Fortinet FortiMail
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. Fortinet FortiMail and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 56 reviews while Fortinet FortiMail is ranked 5th in Email Security with 57 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while Fortinet FortiMail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Email writes "Has effortless spam control, improves security posture, and frees up our IT department's time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiMail writes "Good GUI and configuring security policies is easy but the pricing needs improvement". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Proofpoint Email Protection, Trend Micro Email Security and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, whereas Fortinet FortiMail is most compared with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Proofpoint Email Protection, Fortinet FortiMail Cloud and Trend Micro Email Security. See our Cisco Secure Email vs. Fortinet FortiMail 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.