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Abnormal Security vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 2, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Abnormal Security
Ranking in Email Security
9th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (3rd)
Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Abnormal Security is 6.7%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 15.9%, down from 20.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

William Schellhaas - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides comprehensive email security management, effective in detecting a wide range of email threats
The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails. This means Abnormal Security would assess emails before they reach my inbox, even if it happens slightly after Microsoft's initial scan. Currently, the process isn't seamless. Microsoft analyzes emails and delivers legitimate ones to my inbox. Abnormal Security then scans these delivered emails, and if flagged as malicious, they disappear. This creates a problem for our ticketing system mailbox, which is a third-party service. Emails sent to the ticketing system address are automatically forwarded by Microsoft. However, if these emails are malicious, Abnormal Security only cleans them from my Outlook mailbox after they've been forwarded. Since we primarily rely on the ticketing system and not the Outlook mailbox, these malicious emails still reach the ticketing system.
Luis-Brown - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for easy reporting of problems, valuable anti-phishing, and anti-malware support
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 lacks proactivity in assisting us with preparing for potential threats before they occur. While they employ a substantial amount of threat intelligence to preemptively prevent incidents, their effectiveness diminishes when it comes to delivering proactive threat intelligence alerts from Microsoft. Their focus primarily revolves around managing the internal environment. On the other hand, my other vendor, Check Point, along with my membership in MS-ISAC, supplements me with this type of information. The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement. It is adequate, but it doesn't match the quality of Proofpoint or Mimecast. However, it comes close in effectiveness. Plus, if we're obtaining it for free, investing in the other products seems impractical.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"It does some really cool stuff that other tools aren't doing. We found it to be really effective, and the AI/ML functionality is really what differentiates them."
"One of the things that I love about them is that the setup and installation are super easy. All you do is give them access to your Microsoft 365 tenant, and through APIs, they are able to do their work. They are doing all this through APIs, so you do not have to install the software and take a month to get it all set up to even see the value of the solution. You could be up and running in less than an hour."
"I like Abnormal's threat protection with auto-remediation, but I also love its abuse mailbox feature, which automatically responds to the end user. That feature has a super-valuable security component and helps improve the user experience."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"The deployment capability is a great feature."
"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"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."
"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."
"Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content."
 

Cons

"I, as such, do not have anything that I do not like or would like to add, but you could argue that because they are doing it API-based, there is a chance that something could slip through temporarily before they are able to pull it out. In theory, it could happen just because of the nature of the system. They are not in line with the delivery of the mail. They are kind of asynchronous, which is a pro as well as a con. If it is synchronous, then I know it would always stop them, but because it is asynchronous, things could get through temporarily or because of some system issues on the Microsoft side or their side. It is the nature of the beast, but it is a little bit of a con."
"When we're working on something as engineers, and we find an idea or a method of doing something that would be greatly improved by doing it another way, there should be an ability for me to click the ideas button, type in an idea that I have, and submit it to a product review team or developers to have them think through the process a little bit more."
"Abnormal should add more automatic reports. I have an open request to our account team for more notification and report types that can be sent automatically. For example, they have an awesome report that gets sent weekly, and I also want them monthly, so I don't need to do so much adding up when my director wants numbers over time."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"The product must provide better malware detection."
"Configuration at the mid-level could be improved for the support team."
"The visibility for the weaknesses in the system and unauthorized access can be improved."
"The XDR dashboard has room for improvement."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"In one of the reports I can get the exact place where a vulnerable file resides. But for that, I need to explicitly go into the device and check. If they could include that file part in the report, without my having to go to the device itself, that would help."
"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."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Abnormal Security, on the other hand, provides the same level of functionality for just over $60,000 – that's half the price!"
"The pricing appears fair, and they demonstrate a genuine willingness to work with us on it."
"The license is based on the user count, so the number of users that have an email address in the organization."
"Overall, we'd certainly prefer lower pricing, but Abnormal Security doesn't seem unreasonable compared to similar offerings in the market."
"From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
"The product is very expensive."
"I know that the product is incredibly expensive."
"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"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."
"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."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Abnormal Security?
The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Abnormal Security?
Abnormal is cost-efficient for what it does, and it's getting better. They're now adding many new integration types, so we'll expand the scope of what it can do for account takeover. They've also g...
What needs improvement with Abnormal Security?
Abnormal should add more automatic reports. I have an open request to our account team for more notification and report types that can be sent automatically. For example, they have an awesome repor...
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
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 indi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
The pricing is reasonable since it comes integrated with our Office 365 license.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detection capabilities. We also need alerting features for abnormal actions like unus...
 

Also Known As

No data available
MS Defender for Office 365
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Foot Lcoker, Xerox, Liberty Mutual, Mattel, Boston Scientific
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Find out what your peers are saying about Abnormal Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.