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Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Check Point Harmony Email &...
Ranking in Email Security
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (5th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (9th)
Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2024, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is 5.5%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 16.2%, down from 20.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Kamble. - PeerSpot reviewer
May 3, 2024
Offers complete detection and simple management and is a user-friendly solution
It's very effective as a solution to prevent mobile app threats. It has a mobile MDX, mobile detection, and response session. As a comprehensive solution, Check Point offers a very granular and best-in-class experience. Compared to competitors like Fortinet, Trend Micro, Palo Alto, and Cisco, Check Point provides a superior solution according to both the MITRE and Gartner frameworks. For example, in a recent attack simulation, Check Point only allowed ten malicious emails through, while Fortinet allowed 1500 and Cisco allowed 1800. Check Point's email attack ratio is nearly 0.10%, while others range from 1% to 3%. This demonstrates Check Point's superior email filtering capabilities. Check Point's email cleaning ratio is 99.9%, significantly higher than the 98%, 95%, or 93% of its competitors. Moreover, Check Point Harmony Email incorporates AI technology within its security features. Harmony Email & Collaboration (HEC) provides full protection and addresses zero-day files. It's the best solution available, as others don't offer protection against zero-day attacks and rely on signature-based solutions. HEC is truly the best option.
Luis-Brown - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 8, 2023
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

"The product's environment is easy to work and comprehensive."
"Encryption of emails enhances safe communication that ransomware attacks cannot compromise."
"The setup is very easy. I haven't faced any complexity with the setup of the solution."
"The solution's most valuable features are threat prevention, DLP, and some search engines."
"Data loss and data leakage prevention are well deployed which helps businesses to scale and expand effortlessly without any trouble."
"The option to set a copy is beneficial."
"It is fast and quite effective in terms of preventing any security incidents."
"The product is reliable and sturdy."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"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."
"Our customers are satisfied with Defender for 365 because Microsoft products are easy to use and customize to meet the client's needs. Everything is in one place, so we can adjust policies as needed for phishing, DLP, ATP, or any other security features that our clients want to apply."
"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 helps people to work remotely. It is a secure solution. We don't need to use our company's computers or get VPN connections to the networks. I can control how they share screens and what they send to the devices. It keeps our organizations confidential and sensitive information safe."
"One of the best features of the tool is its capability to aggregate insights from different workloads, basically from the Office 365 and endpoints part."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"The technical support is good and quick to resolve issues."
 

Cons

"Since the portal to the management and administration entry sometimes has performance problems and takes a long time to respond to what has arrived, the handling of the tool is difficult."
"The cost is a little bit expensive."
"Check Point could improve its marketing strategy."
"The solution fails to support hybrid deployments."
"Check Point Infinity Portal sometimes feels a bit slow, and there are performance issues that should be easy to fix."
"Initial Learning Mode takes a while."
"The left-hand feature can be made more granular for the implementation of the policy."
"I have learned enough to make the product stable. However, the stability has some challenges."
"It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers."
"Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"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 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."
"The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Due to its pricing, I would say that Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration is more suitable for medium to enterprise organizations."
"I'm in this business as a system integrator, so I need to suggest Check Point to some customers who are comparing products. I sell Check Point, Fortinet, and Palo Alto solutions. In terms of licensing, this solution is quite competitive but very costly. For someone looking at security as a primary concern, they should only invest in Check Point. For a customer who is looking at security combined with pricing, Check Point might not be the core solution for them. In today's market, customers are looking for effective security with efficient pricing, and Check Point is not suitable for these types of customers."
"The pricing and licensing are always negotiable."
"You can get CloudGuard as part of Infinity. When you do the solution through Infinity, it's a per user type of license cost."
"This is a very good product if you are on the cloud, but the price is a little more expensive."
"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."
"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."
"Being able to keep the phishing campaigns out of my company has been ROI for me."
"The pricing has become expensive."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"The product is very expensive."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license."
"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
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 is your primary use case for Check Point Harmony Email & Office?
The use cases include anti-spam and anti-phishing. We have Email Collaboration for the anti-spam solution and anti-phishing solution. It’s a very good platform because every day, we block about 1,0...
What do you like most about Check Point Harmony Email & Office?
The product offers good and easy integration capabilities with other products.
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

Check Point CloudGuard, Check Point CloudGuard SaaS , Check Point Harmony Email & Office
MS Defender for Office 365
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Helvetia, Denham Capital, Daymark Solutions, Neopharm Group
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,325 professionals have used our research since 2012.