Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco Secure Email vs Sophos Email comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Cisco Secure Email
Ranking in Email Security
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (8th)
Sophos Email
Ranking in Email Security
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Office 365 Protection (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 15.8%, down from 20.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 9.4%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sophos Email is 3.1%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Jamie LeClair - PeerSpot reviewer
File-sharing options and ease of collaboration or meetings allow for quick collaborations and chats
I work in my company's IT department, so I use all of the products under Office 365 daily, including Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Teams, and all the other components in the product. My company can't make it through a day or go by without using the products offered under Office 365. Some of our manufacturing workers may use Office 365 a lot less, but it is still necessary for things like Microsoft Outlook and Exchange. I found Microsoft Teams to be the most valuable feature of the solution, along with all of the products and features offered under Office 365. My organization has remote workers, and we can't run the company without meetings organized with the help of Microsoft Teams.
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.
NaveedAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good identity proxy features, but sandboxing and spam control features could be improved
Sophos gives you a feature set to manage your on-premises firewall on the cloud. I just integrated my on-premises firewall into the cloud, and I can manage the tool through the cloud as well if needed. I recommend using Sophos Email as a proxy. For email gateways, I advise choosing mature products with rich feature sets, like Trend Micro or CrowdStrike. The solution's integration with other tools is very simple. I easily integrated Sophos Email with my Active Directory. My organization needs a WAF with a limited feature set, which we use through Sophos. Purchasing additional WAF will be costly, but I get sandboxing and WAF features free of cost with Sophos, which is included in the license. Overall, I rate the solution a seven 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

"The product's scalability is good."
"Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features."
"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."
"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."
"The technical support is good and quick to resolve issues."
"It also gives the vulnerability status according to the versions you have selected. Let's say you have Google Chrome. It mentions the versions it has, and it updates. Within two hours of an update, it is reflected in the dashboard. That's really nice to have."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"Cisco Secure Email is part of Cisco's extensive efforts and investments in technology, especially in the realm of cyber security. The product is one among many security solutions offered by Cisco."
"The filtering is definitely better at catching both spam and malicious messages, and there's a lot of extremely granular ability for setting up rules. You can do it the way you want to. The Microsoft solution tends to be pretty limited in how it allows some of that to be done."
"It has the ability to tell us, after an email has been delivered, where else it went, once it got inside. Maybe it's something we wanted it to stop and it didn't stop it, but it notified us later that it was something that it should have stopped. It can give us a trajectory of all the other places that it went internally and it can tell us what files were transferred as well."
"It blocks bulk marketing messages, graymail, spam, and provides advanced malware protection."
"The system provides our service desk with the means to troubleshoot email delivery issues with ease."
"The tool has a DLP solution which we can implement. Its database is updated regularly."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Gateway has allowed our users to be able to concentrate on the emails that they do receive. Previously, our users had to deal with nine million additional emails across the organization, which is nearly 1,000 emails per user to have to deal with a month. That's a massive amount for our staff to deal with and probably several hours of their time. We have a lot of clinical staff, being a hospital. We want to make our staff as productive as possible. By removing a lot of that spam and phishing type emails, this allows them to do their job."
"Administration of the email domains and custom filters are easily done via the web interface."
"When you say email security, it's about everything, incoming email, outgoing email, spam, phishing emails, unwanted marketing emails. You can set rules, but the main feature of Sophos Email is to make sure you don't get hacked. 95% of people who are hacked do not get hacked by typing the router password. They are hacked from the inside out, which means they send you a document that is a zero-day attack, you open it, nothing happens, but technically the attack is running in the background of your computer. This is how they gain access to your PC."
"The best thing about it is the logs."
"The solution protects users from phishing links and spam."
"The filtering capabilities are precious and far superior to others I've used. It's intuitive in what it pushes to quarantine, and users can quickly review, free, or delete items without needing an administrator, making it ideal for a multi-user environment."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos Email is the sandbox. We're able to scan the file, isolate it, and look at it before it is delivered. It is highly effective."
"Good VIP protection, time of click protection and the Sandstorm feature."
"I cannot guarantee any email by its name. It can be spam. Sophos Email helps to double-check whether an email is spam or not. It has a dashboard which gives an overview of the alerts."
"Our client recently received many emails, and their employees didn't realize these emails were phishing attempts. Consequently, they clicked on them and fell victim to the attack. Therefore, it is important to secure their system with Sophos Email Security."
 

Cons

"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"About eight months ago, we started to measure the quantity of phishing and spam that we have been receiving, and it has been increasing a lot. That means that protection for our email is not as good as we were expecting."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"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."
"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should be more proactive."
"Several simulation options are available within 365, and the phishing simulation could be better."
"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."
"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."
"The graphical user interface is not user-friendly like other vendors. I find it very difficult at times to find some options on the UI."
"We cannot manage multiple devices from a single UI."
"It is not user-friendly, and it is quite complicated. So, it should be more user-friendly."
"We would like to see more options for the customization of content filters."
"I would like to see features like AI since it is currently an area that the product lacks."
"The pricing needs to be reconsidered or enhanced."
"Cisco Email Secure's pricing needs to be less. We have vendors who provide cheaper solutions with the same features."
"The tool's pricing is expensive. In its future release, the tool should make reporting easier to view."
"The solution's sandboxing and spam control features could be improved."
"The product could include all the essential features and capabilities, similar to the on-premise, server-based version."
"The tool has some performance issues and bugs, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The solution should be able to support the cloud environment."
"It was sometimes hard to find the settings in the solution's interface."
"The solution has not found a way to block certain kinds of phishing emails."
"The solution's technical support is slow and unresponsive. You need to book time in order to get support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."
"I know that the product is incredibly expensive."
"The product is very expensive."
"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."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"The license was not per user, the license model was per feature. You could choose anti-virus, anti-spam, etc. It was feature-based and charged yearly."
"As per market availability, this solution is more expensive than other vendors."
"In addition to the standard licensing, there is a cost for SMARTnet as well."
"Licensing costs depend on how many users there are. It could range between $5 and $7 per month, per user."
"It is a relatively expensive option compared to other alternatives."
"It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing an eight or nine."
"I don't have the insights into it, but compared to different products, it seems to have a medium level of pricing."
"We were using Proofpoint and then we switched to Cisco... reportability was one of the main reasons we switched, but the biggest one was cost. If you can get an equivalent functionality for a better price it's wise to do so. That's what our primary decision came down to: We could get equivalent functionality at a lower price point."
"Sophos Email is priced lower than its competitors."
"There is an additional fee for their central managed console."
"The tool's pricing is medium."
"The product is cheaper compared to other solutions."
"The pricing could improve by having additional discounts. For example, when customers buy have more than 50 or more users, there should be additional discounts."
"Sophos Email is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"Most of our clients are on a perpetual license. If there is a budget issue, they can choose a subscription. However, most of the clients choose the perpetual license."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Email Security solutions are best for your needs.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

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?
The pricing is reasonable since it comes integrated with our Office 365 license.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Microsoft needs to broaden its global support presence by establishing teams of subject-matter experts in all regions.
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 expensive and a bit complex with the new approach Cisco has taken. It is considered more complicated...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Email?
The primary areas for improvement are the pricing and the complexity of deployment. The pricing is considered expensi...
What do you like most about Sophos Email?
The solution's identity proxy feature is very good and reliable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos Email?
The pricing is affordable, so I’d rate it around a four out of ten on the pricing scale. We pay about fifty pounds a ...
What needs improvement with Sophos Email?
However, the setup was tricky, particularly with the DNS routing between Microsoft Exchange Online and Sophos cloud s...
 

Also Known As

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

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Del Monte Foods, Terra Verde, spicerhaart, RIVERLITE, Dataprise, SureBridge, Reed's School, Sayfol International School
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. Sophos Email and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.