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Cisco Secure Email vs Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] 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
47
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
Cisco Secure Email
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (3rd), Cisco Security Portfolio (8th)
Forcepoint Email Security [...
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
Kostas Karidas - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps prevent security breaches but fails to improve in the area of AI
I have not noticed any impressive advanced threat protection mechanisms in the tool. I don't know if there are any AI features in the product. I don't know if there is any other technology embedded in the solution. Cisco Secure Email successfully mitigated potential email threats. My company has seen plenty of scenarios where Cisco Secure Email successfully mitigated potential email threats, spam emails, and fraudulent domains. The product is good for dealing with spam emails, and it can take care of more than 100 spam emails per day. A huge number of spam emails are monitored with the help of Cisco Secure Email. I would not recommend the product to other businesses because you need to have some kind of expertise in configuring and knowing a bit about the tool's GUI. The tool also lacks in the area of AI mechanics. If I would like to have an overview and review another solution, I would go for another product other than Cisco Secure Email. I can definitely suggest others to look at the product and review it, but I would also recommend that they compare it with the other solutions in the market. I wouldn't prioritize Cisco Secure Email over other tools. Either the support partner of the product or I take care of the tool's maintenance phase by looking into the configurations and doing some fine-tuning. I rate the tool a seven to eight out of ten.
Kunjal Haria - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable, easy to scale, and has anti-spam and anti-spyware features, but support needs to be faster and more knowledgeable
I've contacted Forcepoint Email Security support, but I'm not satisfied with the answer speed. It could be a lot faster. I also get more answers on the internet than from the technical support team, so Forcepoint Email Security needs more knowledgeable support. On a scale of one to five, my rating for the technical support of Forcepoint Email Security is three.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has improved my organization's security. It makes it easier to manage the infrastructure without the help of third-party applications."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features."
"The deployment capability is a great feature."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple."
"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 user interface was quite friendly, it was quite easy to use, unlike some other Cisco products. Anybody could use it. You don't have to be familiar with IT to be able to handle navigating it."
"Cisco's Secure Email integrates with Cisco Firewalls, utilizing the AMP as their anti-malware engine, which allows for information sharing between devices."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"It provided a platform to sell a service to customers."
"Anti-Spam and Advanced Malware Protection are the most valuable features... and we also have the option to block Zero-day attacks."
"ATP has been the most valuable in improving our email security posture."
"We like the in-built features, like the email filtering based on the IP and domain. Cisco has its own blacklisted domains and IPs, which is very good. This filters around 70 percent of emails from spam, and we are seeing fewer false positives with this."
"The solution works well."
"The Forcepoint Email Security roadmap easily integrates with the data loss prevention (DLP) suite of Forcepoint. Therefore, the customer doesn't have to buy another solution for DLP."
"The feature I find most valuable is the web, email and DLP integration."
"The most valuable features of Forcepoint Email Security are the integration with other solutions. It provides a more secure infrastructure and views for the customers from the DLP. You can work on URLs, files, and advanced inspections that will protect the customers."
"All of the filtering features are very nice."
"Using Forcepoint, we have created policies and rules for any suspicious mail. It is blocked and only released by an admin's approval."
"Unlike other competitors, it doesn't cause any performance issues."
"It's easier to deploy than other options."
"We have found the product to be stable."
 

Cons

"The product must provide better malware detection."
"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."
"Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites."
"The visibility for the weaknesses in the system and unauthorized access can be improved."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"Configuring the default strategies and policies in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps generates a lot of noise and false positives."
"Configuration requires going to a lot of places rather than just accessing one tab."
"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"In future releases, I would like to see two main improvements come to mind. First, the current solution requires maintaining two separate operating systems for FTD, which can be cumbersome. I'd love to see a single operating system for the FTD box."
"The reporting functionality needs to be improved."
"If you are not a technical guy, it is hard to maneuver, but as soon as you work on it, it gets better and better. If there was a better way to know how to do things or how to find things, it would be good."
"We have occasionally had hardware problems because we are using an appliance-based solution, but that might change. We may consider going to virtual systems."
"I use the search all the time. Sometimes, it is hard to search for things and things are hard to find. People come to me all the time, saying, "This email didn't get through." Then, I go searching and don't find it on the first search. You have to think about alternative searches. I don't know if there is an easier way that they could help to find things. I don't know how they could simplify it, because now everybody else is using the cloud and everything is coming from Office 365, or whatever. It is just not the same environment from years ago where everybody had their own server and you could search easier."
"We would like to see more options for the customization of content filters."
"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."
"The management features of the product are not up to date."
"It would be better if it were simpler to deploy on one or two machines instead of three or four machines."
"I would like to see some improvement like cloud application and integration capabilities and the classification part is missing from the DLP."
"I would like for deployment to be simplified."
"It's quite difficult to learn this solution, it's not an entry level product. If you are a skilled user you will think it's a very useful tool, but if you are not a skilled user, you'll think it is very difficult to learn."
"This solution could be improved by providing further functionality to reduce or to block ransom attacks, cross-site scripting and man-in-the-middle attacks."
"Customer support could be better."
"Forcepoint Email Security is stable, but it could be improved."
"The reporting functionality needs to be improved, as it is not customizable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing has become expensive."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"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."
"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."
"The product is expensive."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"The solution is expensive."
"The licensing is a mess and needs sorting out. I am not really concerned about the pricing because I only make recommendations, not buying decisions."
"It is expensive. I would rate it 2 out of 10, where 1 is the most expensive and 10 is the cheapest."
"There are additional fees for adding features."
"In my previous organization, avoiding four instances of CryptoLocker within an estimated six month period is approximately $600,000 in lost time and effort. Our five year cost was about a million dollars, and the four outages that we had equated to 65 percent of that five year cost."
"There were no other costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"I don't have the insights into it, but compared to different products, it seems to have a medium level of pricing."
"The licensing is user base (per user). The product is purchased mostly by medium to large companies. For smaller companies, we have other solutions because the pricing is not cheap."
"When compared to other email security solutions, the price is not cheap."
"Its licensing is quite easy and straightforward. They have two or three suites, and the price is negotiable. It depends upon the size of the deal. They have multiple licenses. The standard is one, and then there are additional licenses that you can go for. There are three or four licensing models. You have the network suite, endpoint suite, email security, and the standard one."
"My company pays for Forcepoint Email Security licensing annually."
"There are three types of support licenses."
"Licensing is a yearly subscription that is based on the number of users."
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Answers from the Community

KK
Dec 12, 2022
Dec 12, 2022
Hi Kamal, Firstly, you would have to recognize that there is/are no fast and hard rules to choosing a final preferred product, what works well for company A may not work extensively well for company B. Reason being that: the efficiency of the Security capabilities provided by one tool can be amplified by another tool, particularly for secure email gateway. Hence, if you have an XDR that you in...
2 out of 7 answers
SimonClark - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 20, 2022
Top brands don't mean best or most cost-effective. My advice is to look a bit further before you make a decision. Evidence suggests that most top brands are pretty good at detecting and blocking malicious attachments, best case letting through 1%, but can be worse than 50% when it comes to detecting malicious links in the text of the email.  There are numerous less well-known vendors with lower-cost AI-based solutions that have a far better success rate, also providing employees the ability to report on suspect emails which auto-removes them from other staff members' inboxes until they have been properly assessed. Some will provide a visual risk score to the recipient to give them advance warning to be more cautious. Combining this kind of capability with staff awareness products keeps your vendor list lower and further improves efficiency. For around £2 GBP per user per month (less than $3) we provide different vendors depending upon the customer's environment but provided as a managed service. This allows our customers to outsource some of the monitoring and day-to-day management, spread the cost on a monthly basis, and flex how many licences they need on a monthly basis too i.e. if you drop 20 users don't pay for them but if you increase by 20 you don't need complex co-termination and pro rata discussions.
DM
Jun 21, 2022
I only can recommend Cisco because it´s the only one with which I'd worked enough. I think it is powerful enough and has a lot of possibilities. In addition, to a great support team. 
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

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?
I don't have detailed specifics on pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost.
What do you like most about Cisco Secure Email?
Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Email?
The licensing is a mess and needs sorting out. I am not really concerned about the pricing because I only make recomm...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Email?
The user interface needs massive improvement. While the device works fine and it's not complicated to write policies,...
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Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
Websense Email Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Alphawest, Amadori, AudioNova, Betsson, Confartigianato Vicenza, Davies Turner, iGATE, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Landa Digital Printing, Northern California Bank, Scavolini, Toyota
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Proofpoint, Cisco and others in Email Security. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.