Cisco Secure Email Reviews

Our customers use the solution as an email security tool.

The product blocks spam emails.

The scalability must be improved. The product is a bit traditional. There are many vendors in the market. A customer might not always choose Cisco.

I have been reselling the solution since 2010.

I rate the tool’s stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a seven out of ten. Our customers are medium and enterprise-level businesses.

I rate the ease of setup a seven or eight out of ten. The deployments takes one to two weeks.

I rate the product a seven out of ten on a scale where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

Sometimes, customers choose Forcepoint or Barracuda. Usually, if the customers have a Cisco setup, they choose Cisco Secure Email.

Cisco is an integrated solution. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for Cisco Secure Email is placing it at the edge and then passing it off to another service, like, for example, Postfix. We have security policies that allow certain clients to email.

The user interface massively improved our organization. The device itself works perfectly fine and it's not too complicated to write 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.

Cisco Secure Email could rename features in the menus. They could also show a flow of how things go and where the policies sit in conjunction with the actual application.

I have been using Cisco Secure Email for about seven years.

I would say that we hardly had any issues with the stability of this solution.

Tech support can be a bit of a hit-and-miss. Depends on what type of engineer you get when you contact them. Whenever we had an issue, we would either go to the account manager or another engineer.

Positive

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.

We would use multiple vendors to secure our infrastructure from end to end so that we can detect and remediate threats. We would take everything through email. Email Security Appliance has antivirus and IDS and IPS on anyway. We've got policies in place that only we can receive from certain domains and certain emails within those domains from the customers that they were a part of. We would then pass that on to another service like Postfix. They would then sort out anything that needs to do attachment-wise or anything similar. Eventually, it would go through the Palo Alto firewall as well for the traffic, so anything malicious is picked up across all sets of vendors in that solution.

This solution did not save time for our IT staff, not particularly. It was something we had to deal with and as a network engineer, I had to deal with that aspect of it.

This solution did not save our organization's time because it was a new product that we were selling, so we had more work.

This tool did not help us consolidate our tools because it was a new solution.

We chose Cisco Secure Email because, as the phrase goes, you can't get fired for buying Cisco. We are used to the Cisco product stack as we used the Cisco suite in previous companies.

It is our email gateway. We have the Exchange Servers, but the Exchange Servers don't relay directly with the internet. We have ESA in-between, and every incoming and outgoing email must pass through ESA before it gets to the internet.

We are using Email Security Appliance C690, and we have three of them in a cluster. They are on-premise. We have decided not to go to the cloud. It is primarily because most of our clients are government agencies and the government, and they have this suspicion about the cloud. So, right now, we are still on-premise. 

Currently, we are on version 13.8. There is a newer version, but we are yet to migrate to that version.

We use ESA with Security Management Appliance (SMA). We have SMA M690. The integration of ESA and SMA makes the whole work easier. SMA is the central content appliance, and we have three ESAs. The SMA is able to collaborate with the clustered ESAs for log management and other things. It gives some stability in terms of what is happening. ESA keeps a lot of logs, so SMA is able to move through ESA and get those logs out. This integration has really helped us to drive our operation in the email platform.

It does a lot in terms of preventing phishing and business email compromise with DP and Advanced Phishing Protection. DMARC gives visibility for preventing spoofing and social engineering attacks. ESA has been able to help and protect us from those attacks. It is doing a lot of work. Gartner has always rated Cisco's ESA appliance as one of the major players.

It is doing a lot to prevent spam, malware, and ransomware. Everything is also tied to how you have configured it. Some of the spam emails don't get to the customers. We can quarantine a spam email, which gives us the visibility to look at it and see if it is actually spam or not. It is doing its work. It is. There are no false positives. It is working perfectly.

Email service is one of the services that we offer at Galaxy. ESA has improved our business. Our customers want to maintain their business with us for email security. We have over 500 domains on our email platform. It has improved our profitability in everything.

They have a lot of features such as Advanced Malware Protection, Email Protection, Advanced Phishing Protection, Antispam, Antivirus, and Outbreak Filters. They are very important.

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. 

The area of license renewal should be improved. We normally renew our license every year. There is a feature called smart licensing, and I switched from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode because of what I thought smart licensing does. I thought it would make licensing renewal seamless and very swift, but ever since I've switched to smart licensing, each time I want to renew my license, it is a whole lot of headache. The process is not smooth, and I had to keep calling Cisco TAC to see how the issue can be resolved. At one point, I wanted to revert back to the legacy mode, but I can't revert. Once you switch from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode, you can't revert. They should improve on the visibility of the smart licensing mode so that it can indeed be smart and easier to use for the license renewal every year. That is one challenge.

Another challenge is that there is no way for me to know my level of utilization. For example, if I have a subscription of 2,000, there should be a way for me to know my level of utilization. Currently, I don't know my level of utilization. So, if my license is renewed on 20,000 subscribers and I'm using less than 20,000, I wouldn't know. It doesn't improve my ROI. If I'm using less than the subscription I've applied for, there should be a way the system should tell me, rather than me going to find out manually. When I go to the smart licensing profile, I should be able to see my utilization. I should be able to see that I've subscribed for 20,000 but I'm only using 12,000. This means that if I'm going to renew, I should reduce my licensing mode from 20,000 to maybe 15,000. This kind of information should be given to the customers, but right now, we don't have that.

I've been using this solution since 2017. My organization has been using it before that. It has always been in use as our email security gateway.

It is very stable. They have AsyncOS, which is the OS that runs on the appliance. They've released different versions. There is a general version, a limited version, etc. They keep coming with more services just to improve the platform. 

We never experienced downtime. We have ESAs, and they are in a cluster. If one ESA fails, there is no downtime. The remaining two can handles email communication and relay. We have high availability and redundancy. So, we don't experience any downtime.

We do ESA health checks with OEM during which they connect with us virtually. They connect to the device and then check if all security features are still well configured and if there is any other way to improve. Doing this quarterly has really helped to make sure that the appliances are up to date.

It is scalable.

They are very good. I would rate them a nine out of 10. If possible, I would rate them a 10, but I just want to be a little bit reserved. 

They've really been very knowledgeable and very patient, and they've always ensured that for any issue, any ticket, or any case that is opened with them, they are prompt. They are quick to ensure that they resolve an issue as soon as possible.

It has always been ESA from the onset.

I wasn't part of the team from the beginning to the end. I came when they were almost done. It was complex but also very interesting. It took two weeks or so if I'm not mistaken.

For the setup, you need to look at the low-level design and the architecture, and then you look at the network interfaces, listeners, routes, default routes, etc. If there is a way they can come up with step-by-step information about configuring it, that would really be nice. The guide right now is too cumbersome and bulky. If there is more straight-to-the-point and procedural information, it would be better. 

Cisco service engineers were the ones in charge. 

We have seen an ROI.

At times, we feel the pricing is a bit too high, but then, there is also room for discounts. We enjoy a lot of discounts, and that is why we are still with them. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

We have evaluated other solutions, such as FortiMail from Fortinet, but we stuck with Cisco ESA. ESA's pricing and licensing were what led to us trying to see how we can bring it all together.

It is stable and credible. I would always tell someone else to try it out. Of course, before you try it out, you can look at what Gartner is saying. Gartner has always placed the Cisco Email Security Appliance up there along with Mimecast and other top players. 

It is well-secured. Security is everyone's concern, so I will always tell people to go for it. It is very secure. Its pricing has been a little bit high, but you can always ask for a discount from your account managers, country manager, or whoever is in charge in your region.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.

I use Cisco Secure Email mainly as a email security gateway, including internal email distribution.

We rely heavily on antivirus protection, email content filtering, and authentication mechanisms to ensure compliance with email security. Regarding phishing attempts, while phishing protection features are crucial, we also emphasize user education as a critical defence. The intelligence services Cisco provides, such as the Cisco Intelligence Center, play a significant role in analyzing and validating threats, including phishing attempts, in our email security practices.

The discontinuation of physical hardware solutions is a significant area for improvement in the Cisco Email Security Appliance. This decision has posed challenges as virtual appliances are now the only option, which may not be suitable for all industries. The uncertainty regarding the future of the hardware aspect of the solution is a notable concern.

I have been using Cisco Secure Email for the past twenty years.

In terms of stability, there have been minimal issues, mainly typical hardware-related ones like hard disk failures. However, overall, it's a competent solution.

My experience with the scalability of Cisco Email Security Appliance has been positive, as it can handle our processes efficiently. We do have plans to increase usage based on business needs.

The technical support is satisfactory.

Positive

The setup process for Cisco Email Security Appliance is straightforward in my experience. Integration with our existing ecosystem of Cisco tools was seamless for networking features.Maintenance primarily involves tuning and understanding SMTP and email infrastructure and general email operations.We deployed it on our private cloud, and the physical enablement on the network was relatively fast, usually within a day.

Regarding return on investment, I find it highly valuable and worth its cost in the email security market. I recommend this solution to others, as it stands out as one of the best options .

The pricing for Cisco Email Security Appliance involves recurring costs for licenses based on the contracted time frame, such as one year, three years, or five years. Renewals are required after the license expires.

Cisco Secure Email may incorporate AI capabilities, but I'm not directly familiar with its implementation in threat detection. I would rate it as a nine out of ten due to its effectiveness, reliability, and value for investment.

We are using it as our email firewall. It's our first line of email defense.

Overall, the ease of migration to Cisco's cloud email security from the on-prem solution was a positive experience. We are very happy with the change. It makes security easy. The cloud solution is doing a great job. We are stopping more emails, and in a better way, than we did in the past. It's also not stopping as many good emails, but I think this is because Talos has gotten better, rather than something to do with the cloud technology. But the numbers over the past year are significantly better compared to the past.

We like 

• AMP
• Threat Grid
• Sandboxing

The spam protection is also very good and the solution is very configurable. It has enabled us to configure some specific filters to stop emails that general configurations didn't stop. 

It's a powerful solution. It can analyze a lot of emails simultaneously, with no problems in terms of capacity or system load. It seems that machines on the cloud are more powerful than the ones that we had, in the legacy solution, on-premises.

They can do it better with web links, with the URLs. They have a technology called Outbreak but it doesn't work as well as we would like. It does have a new feature called Cloud URL Analysis, but we can see enough information about detection, information that helps us to properly configure the technology.

We have been using the cloud solution for one year, but before that we were using it on-premises for three years.

It's very stable. We haven't had any issues with the stability. It hasn't gone down, and it has managed the flow of our email volume really well.

The technical support is excellent. They are proactive. They are monitoring things and helping us every step of the way. The technical support is at an excellent level.

The migration to the cloud email security was complex because we have a lot of customization. We needed to reevaluate some of the policies that we were applying via the email security. But technically we had more difficulty previously because we didn't have the premium support. We had to read a lot of documentation and experiment. Now, with the premier support, it's easier.

We re-created everything in the cloud solution. We re-evaluated everything when we migrated. There were some things we didn't migrate, while some new things were created.

It took us nearly one year for all the integrations and the migration to be complete, from the initial evaluation of the new product to the end of the migration to CSE, when it assumed all the email traffic for our organization. We didn't have any particular problems with downtime during the migration. That time includes analyzing, configuring, and improving things in production.

Our team that works directly with Secure Email consists of five people who are configuring the tool.

We used consulting from Cisco the whole time during our migration. With the premium support we now have one person who knows our configuration, our needs, and who can help us more than in the past when we didn't have that level of support.

ROI is difficult to determine. We think we have seen ROI, but we need to have an incident to evaluate whether the investment has really paid off. But no incidents means it's a good investment.

We haven't saved money by moving from on-prem to the cloud email security because we acquired the premium support. But we are happy with it, as they help us not only with issues that have happened, but also with configuration and with learning the technology. This is a very important factor, which we value.

Cisco Secure Email and the support are priced well. It's not cheap, but there are other solutions that offer less and cost so much. For example, Microsoft is more expensive than Cisco.

We know there are some solutions that have a higher level of protection for email, but we're very happy with the price of this one and with the way it is working.

We have Microsoft email security too, but not as the first line of defense. Microsoft's email security has its advantages but it is less secure, less configurable, and less powerful than Cisco's solution.

It's a great solution for big enterprises that need a higher level of security than is offered by Microsoft solutions. Other solutions are targeted at smaller enterprises, that are without a security administrator and without people monitoring and supervising the technology. But for a big enterprise, Cisco Secure Email is a great option.

We have integrated the solution with SecureX and Threat Grid, and we already had Talos, of course. The Sandboxing is needed, it's a basic functionality for us. As for the rest of the integrations, they are less important. We integrate with some external feeds, but Talos is good enough for the technology not to need additional feeds.

When migrating from on-prem to the cloud email security, the interfaces are basically the same. The new interface was developed only for the cloud solution, but the classic interface, when it comes to the configuration of the machine, is basically the same for both the on-premises and cloud solutions.

Overall, it's a very configurable technology. We think it has all the weapons we need to fight against threats.

It provides good IT assistance. 

It is not user-friendly, and it is quite complicated. So, it should be more user-friendly. The GUI is difficult to understand. 

We have been using this solution for four years. We don't use the latest version of the hardware. 

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, it is good.

It is not scalable. For scalability, Cisco products are not good. That is the problem. And for deployment, it's a three-tier architecture system.

We have around 200+ users.

Cisco's tech support is good. But they respond very late. The support in itself is good, so there is room for improvement. 

The setup is quite complicated. It took us one week to deploy. 

The deployment was done by the consultant company.

As per market availability, this solution is more expensive than other vendors.

My company is looking for a new email filtering server or system. So, I was just making the comparison with Cisco and FortiMail, and that's what we're actually looking for a new or updated system. So this is the reason I was doing this R&D.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

The product is used for email security. We have around forty boxes of Cisco and cater to around four million users.

The strong point of the solution is that we hardly get any spam emails because of Cisco Secure Email. It has been a long time since I saw a spam email in my inbox.

Scalability has certain shortcomings and needs to be improved because there are service providers who provide better scalability.

Our company constantly checks out what the solution needs to improve. We need to be updated with what is available in the market and which application performs better.

The solution's UI needs little tweaking because most customers find it to be a very detailed and technically designed UI. If a person does not know email security or how Cisco devices work, he cannot manage it.

Other solutions are user-friendly. Even if the admin has a basic knowledge of managing the services, he can use them.

Cisco Secure Email needs to work on the security part, but it also needs to work on UI since it makes part of the entire solution.

I have been using Cisco Secure Email since 2010. My company is an email security service provider. I am using the solution's latest version.

The product is stable.

I rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten.

We have four million users using the solution. In India, we are a premium service provider of Cisco Secure Email catering to many institutions.

I rate the solution's scalability a six out of ten.

Cisco's technical support is good. I rate the technical support an eight and a half out of ten.

Positive

We have used Sophos and Mimecast before in our company.

The initial setup is very straightforward, but a new person needs to be trained to use this solution.

The solution has very good pricing.

I rate the pricing a ten out of ten on a scale where one means it is less cost-effective, and ten means it is the most cost-effective solution.

I recommend Cisco Secure Email to those planning to use it.

Around 40 administrators are required for maintenance.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Cisco Secure Email's most valuable is email certification.

The product's GUI for the dashboard needs improvement.

We have been using Cisco Secure Email for one year.

I rate the product's stability a ten out of ten.

One administration executive in our organization uses Cisco Secure Email. I rate its scalability a ten out of ten.

The initial setup has medium complexity. I rate the process a five out of ten. We follow the Cisco guidelines for deployment. It requires two executives to conduct the process.

It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing an eight or nine.

I recommend Cisco Secure Email and rate it a ten out of ten.