We compared Cisco Secure Email and Microsoft Exchange Online Protection 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. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection offers seamless integration with Windows, a central alert console, and real-time monitoring of suspicious URLs.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Secure Email should improve global malicious email defense, data loss prevention, and integration with third-party solutions. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection could offer more training and enhance its security features. Users also requested better encryption, gray email management, and integration with non-Microsoft platforms.
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. While some users found Microsoft support to be helpful and responsive, others experienced slower response times.
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. Users had varied experiences setting up Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, ranging from easy to difficult. It may necessitate dedicated personnel for maintenance.
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. Some users said Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is expensive, but others considered it reasonable.
ROI: Cisco Secure Email's return on investment is influenced by factors such as use case, organization size, and industry. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection has proven to be a profitable investment.
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. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is praised for its seamless integration with Windows and useful features like URL holding and threat management. At the same time, users say it could improve in areas such as pricing, documentation, and security features.
"Defender enables us to secure all 365-related activity from a single place. It gives us visibility into everything happening in Outlook, protecting us against phishing and other email-based threats. Defender helps us detect any suspicious behaviors."
"Defender is a SaaS platform, so it offers more flexibility. Managing the permissions is easier. The solution's automated detection and response features are scalable."
"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."
"The product's scalability is good."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"There are several features that I consider valuable."
"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."
"Cisco Secure Email's most valuable is email certification."
"It has the ability to tell us, after an email has been delivered, where else it went, once it got inside. Maybe it's something we wanted it to stop and it didn't stop it, but it notified us later that it was something that it should have stopped. It can give us a trajectory of all the other places that it went internally and it can tell us what files were transferred as well."
"The solution works well."
"This solution provides some benefits, like comfortable access to TAC support. You get prompt support when working directly with Cisco."
"The most valuable features are protection against ransomware and spam."
"I can customize the configuration and policies."
"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."
"It blocks bulk marketing messages, graymail, spam, and provides advanced malware protection."
"It is scalable."
"The product protects against malware."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection are the EOP, ATP, safe links, fishing, and antispam."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is the accidental release of information protection capabilities. Additionally, the solution is easy to use."
"I like the product's ZAP feature."
"We can migrate seamlessly without any disruptions to our operations."
"The scalability is pretty good; it does what it is supposed to do."
"We use the solution in all our environments. We use it for remedy tickets and give them updates. It was our main communication point."
"The XDR dashboard has room for improvement."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"They have moved features from one console to another. Things have been moved around in the interface and it takes me time to find where certain features are."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"There needs to be an improvement in integrating the product to work across multiple operating systems, and to have better support for non-Microsoft file types."
"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."
"Microsoft sometimes has downtime, and we'll get several incidents coming in back to back. We have a huge backlog of notifications, many of which may be false positives. However, there might be serious alerts, so we can't risk dismissing all of them at once."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"The user interface is a bit complex."
"I would like to see sandboxing for email, where suspicious emails received by the system are analyzed through online services."
"The configuration UI should be made more intuitive. Currently, it takes a while to understand how to do the basic configurations."
"The graphical user interface is not user-friendly like other vendors. I find it very difficult at times to find some options on the UI."
"One of the things that Cisco could improve on with IronPort is the support. Cisco doesn't really have enough engineers who have full, hands-on knowledge of IronPort. Knowledge of it is not something you can find easily compared to other security appliances."
"The initial setup was complex because I have two sites with physical clusters."
"The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear."
"The product's GUI for the dashboard needs improvement."
"They should specify the difference between Defender for Office 365 and Exchange Online Protection."
"We have experienced issues while migrating from on-prem to the cloud. The tool needs to improve its stability."
"The tool is not 100% stable."
"The price of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection could be reduced to make it more competitive."
"The solution needs to improve its backup."
"It doesn't protect against everything. We do need protection for, for example, endpoints."
"Microsoft 365 Defender and EOP policies are stable with the proper license. However, with the basic policy, it's hard to say it's stable due to configuration limitations."
"Microsoft has some training portals, but more could be developed."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
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Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 56 reviews while Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is ranked 3rd in Email Security with 34 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is rated 8.2. 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 Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) writes "An effective email security solution that provides DLP, Safe Attachment, and Safe Links". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Fortinet FortiMail, Proofpoint Email Protection, Trend Micro Email Security and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, whereas Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Fortinet FortiMail, Mimecast Email Security, Barracuda Email Security Gateway and Trend Micro Email Security. See our Cisco Secure Email vs. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) report.
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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.