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Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs Symantec Messaging Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
Check Point Harmony Email &...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (7th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (5th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (11th)
Symantec Messaging Gateway
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Email Security
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
 

Featured Reviews

Tolu Omolaja - PeerSpot reviewer
Great URL scanning and attachment scanning, but I would like more proactive threat analysis
The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning. URL scanning involves an automatic scan of links and emails. When a user clicks on a link within an email, the system promptly checks the link's safety. If the link is deemed safe, access is granted automatically. However, if it is flagged as unsafe, we receive feedback and notification to caution us about the potentially harmful link. At this point, we are presented with the option to proceed or return. I have personally witnessed the system identify a few unsafe links, making this the primary advantage of using the solution. The second crucial aspect is the scanning of attachments. When an email containing an attachment arrives, we receive a notification of the new email, along with information that the attachment is being scanned for threats. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind for our organization. While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers numerous features, these two stand out as particularly impressive and valuable to us.
Rahul Kamble. - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Girish Vijay - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable and reasonably priced solution that performs well and has a very good malware database
Since Symantec merged with Broadcom, they might have lost some good technical engineers. Maybe that’s the reason why the product is performing poorly. When we have a good marketing and sales team, even though our product cannot perform, we will sell it at a high price because of the buzzwords. However, at the end of the day, the product should perform. Most of the products might not perform. Symantec is a very good product, but the services are basic. I rate the technical features of the product a nine out of ten. However, I would rate the services provided by the solution a six out of ten. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"There are several features that I consider valuable."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is data backups that we can provide through ticket requests."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content."
"The solution is very easy to use. All you have to do is to assign the license to the end-user and it's done. The customer will only have the feature activated, and the solution will monitor the emails to determine if they are a threat or not."
"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."
"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."
"It helped us to bring security compliance and ensure system robustness throughout."
"The feature I find to be most valuable is very much the zero-touch provisioning. I was able to be up, operational, and 100 percent functional in less than a half an hour."
"It is fast and quite effective in terms of preventing any security incidents."
"Its total protection has been the greatest aspect since it completely protects all the mail from the cloud."
"It fully protects colleagues from visiting insecure sites and browsing in unhealthy environments."
"It is the collaboration between users inside the company. It is a big advantage with Check Point to be able to work together on the same document."
"It protects cloud email and collaboration suites from cyber-attacks that evade default and advanced security tools. Its invisible, multi-layer security enables full-suite protection for cloud collaboration solutions such as Office 365, G-Suite, Teams, and Slack."
"The main benefit is that hackers can't steal information."
"Messaging Gateway is stable."
"Symantec is a secure product."
"The solution is highly customizable. You can make rules for domains and configure policies for spam or malware. Messaging Gateway is an on-prem solution, so it's useful for companies without a cloud presence."
"I like that it's simple and easy to configure, deploy, and manage. The reporting function has all the features we're looking for, and we are fine with that."
"The solution is "set and forget". You pay for it and everything is done for you."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"The cloud-based interface is very user-friendly."
"What I like most about Symantec Messaging Gateway is its usability. I also find its interface very friendly. The solution has a very good interface."
 

Cons

"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 needs to broaden its global support presence by establishing teams of subject-matter experts in all regions."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 could improve by giving customers information on techniques to prevent threats. For example, information about best practices on how to protect their own devices against hackers and scammers, such as educational information or training. This would help others have a better understanding of cyber security. Additionally, there can be more security features added."
"The XDR dashboard has room for improvement."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should improve the troubleshooting tools. It's unclear whether the device is blocked at the firewall level or at the device itself. The granularity needed for troubleshooting is currently lacking. From my perspective, Microsoft should address this issue to benefit many users who likely share the same sentiment."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should be more proactive."
"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."
"It would be nice to see them expand their collaboration capabilities to include other suites and integrate with lesser-known products."
"There is always room for improvement and growth."
"if a phishing email were to get through and bypass the product — which very few do — it would be nice if, when a user clicked on that phishing email, they got a second-chance opportunity, a chance to double-check that they really wanted to proceed to that website."
"They could improve Check Point support response times. Sometimes it takes days to resolve or even days to get a first response."
"Some files are not scanned thoroughly due to occasional network failures."
"There is a need for improvement in handling business email compromise."
"The integration with Gsuite could be improved, especially when reporting the amount of emails it manages to filter."
"If Check Point finds something to be described as a clean email, it should have the option to automatically release it to the user. At the moment, we don't have that option."
"We've had issues in the past where the user finds spam, and Symantec does not recognize it as spam."
"The false positive submissions must be improved."
"It will provide Excel reports and PDF reports, but it would be great if they supported the concept of Crystal Reports."
"The solution takes up a lot of memory."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway can improve detection because most of them are false negatives or false positives that we are trying to troubleshoot. Additionally, we are having routing problems and they are somehow connected to DNS issues."
"What's lacking when you compare it with Proofpoint and other threat protection solutions is that it does the basic stuff, but we need more advanced threat handling."
"Messaging Gateway's advanced malware detection could be improved."
"The solution interface is from 2003 and is outdated. Symantec Messaging Gateway needs to update the interface."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"The solution could be better by simplifying the business model of their licensing. It was hard to figure out how to get the licensing done for the environment, initially."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"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 large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"The product is very expensive."
"It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license."
"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."
"The product’s price is very high."
"The pricing is in the middle. Check Point's pricing is not the highest in the competitive market."
"The pricing and licensing are always negotiable."
"Having information stolen by a hacker would be more expensive than purchasing a license."
"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."
"Reasonable cost, quick and easy implementation, and transparent."
"The product is expensive compared to some competitors, especially for the SME segment."
"The difference between [Check Point and its competitors] boiled down to money. Price-wise, Check Point was very good, it was very competitive."
"It's a bit expensive compared to its competitor Barracuda Email Security Gateway but cheaper than Sophos Email."
"The cost of Symantec Messaging Gateway is too expensive in general. However, the appliance also includes the price of the license in the same bundle."
"Symantec Messaging Gateway’s pricing is very cheap."
"For 150 users, we pay INR 1,60,000."
"They're a little costly compared to Microsoft."
"A subscription for technical support costs extra."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
21%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 variou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Money-wise, it is a part of the Office 365 ( /products/office-365-reviews ) suite, making it slightly more expensive ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
The main area for improvement is simplifying the implementation and rollout process. There are many conditions to be ...
What is your primary use case for Check Point Harmony Email & Office?
We are using Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration to protect our organization from phishing attacks. For exa...
What do you like most about Check Point Harmony Email & Office?
The product offers good and easy integration capabilities with other products.
What needs improvement with Symantec Messaging Gateway?
The solution takes up a lot of memory. The system becomes slow. The performance must be improved.
What is your primary use case for Symantec Messaging Gateway?
We use the solution to secure our data and emails.
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Check Point CloudGuard, Check Point CloudGuard SaaS , Check Point Harmony Email & Office
Symantec.cloud, Symantec Email Security.cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Helvetia, Denham Capital, Daymark Solutions, Neopharm Group
Doric, Joblink Plus, Our Lady of Mercy College, Parramatta, PPB Advisory, Slater & Gordon Lawyers, Sydney Adventist Hospital Ltd.
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration vs. Symantec Messaging Gateway and other solutions. Updated: January 2024.
849,335 professionals have used our research since 2012.