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Cisco Secure Email vs Trend Micro Email Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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
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 (11th)
Cisco Secure Email
Ranking in Email Security
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (8th)
Trend Micro Email Security
Ranking in Email Security
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 13.7%, down from 20.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 7.1%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Trend Micro Email Security is 2.8%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

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.
Bruno Obata - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides effective filtering for spam, phishing, and suspicious emails
In terms of improvement, reducing false positives would improve the system. If there were fewer false positives, it would be nearly perfect. In the next release, I would like to see improved detection for emails containing only text, especially if they seem suspicious but lack links or attachments. Currently, Trend Micro Email Security is effective with emails containing links or attachments, but those with only text can slip through unnoticed.

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 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."
"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 product's scalability is good."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is data backups that we can provide through ticket requests."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is its spam filter."
"We rely heavily on antivirus protection, email content filtering, and authentication mechanisms to ensure compliance with email security. Regarding phishing attempts, while phishing protection features are crucial, we also emphasize user education as a critical defence. The intelligence services Cisco provides, such as the Cisco Intelligence Center, play a significant role in analyzing and validating threats, including phishing attempts, in our email security practices."
"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."
"It is a user-friendly product."
"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."
"Spam controls are excellent because they are a powerful feature that operates almost effortlessly."
"Cisco Secure Email's most valuable is email certification."
"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."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"Trend Micro Email Security has a feature for secure protection of OneDrive, Google Drive, and CloudApp security."
"The technical support is good."
"The most valuable features of the solution are spam protection and email continuity."
"It is mostly stable."
"Since implementing it, we've seen a significant improvement in security. We no longer receive spam emails, and we're protected from various cyberattacks, including ransomware and social engineering."
"Trend Micro has inter-domain security features that solutions from other vendors like Forcepoint lack."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the antivirus, antispam, and integration with cloud services. This is a multifunctional solution."
"Trend Micro Email Security is a robust solution with quick performance. It works autonomously without the need for an administrator."
 

Cons

"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."
"They have moved features from one console to another. Things have been moved around in the interface and it takes me time to find where certain features are."
"We are always looking for others tools to increase automation on tasks. There can be better integration with other solutions, such as PowerPoint and email."
"I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost."
"The XDR dashboard has room for improvement."
"Several simulation options are available within 365, and the phishing simulation could be better."
"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."
"We noticed that from time to time, Microsoft's stability does have problems. Sometimes the service goes up and down. Sometimes they change without prior notice."
"One of the things that Cisco could improve on with IronPort is the support. Cisco doesn't really have enough engineers who have full, hands-on knowledge of IronPort. Knowledge of it is not something you can find easily compared to other security appliances."
"While Cisco offers excellent solutions and innovations, the pricing may not be suitable for everyone. The cost of the software is relatively high. In the current market, there are numerous competitive alternatives that focus on security, enterprise networks, and various other aspects. Cisco, being a comprehensive provider, extends its expertise across data, servers, storage, and security, making them a preferred choice for many enterprises. However, when it comes specifically to security solutions, there are other vendors that specialize solely in this domain, offering competitive options."
"The initial setup was complex because I have two sites with physical clusters."
"Cisco is already providing a very good environment with the IronPort solution, but there could be some more integration with other products. For instance, an integration with the EDR solution could be there to raise an alert."
"We didn't get any malware, but a few phishing emails, maybe one or two, slipped in."
"Better dashboards and more interactive overviews would be nice, but the current functionality is sufficient."
"Typically, in a phishing email, they try to use a name everybody's going to recognize, like the CEO's name or the CFO's name... With this appliance, the way it's designed at the moment, for us to really stop that with any level of confidence, we have to build a dictionary of all the names of the people we want it to check, and all the ways they could be spelled. My name would be in there as Phillip Collins, Phillip D. Collins, Phillip Dean Collins, Phil Collins, Phil D. Collins. There could be eight or 10 variations of my name that we'd have to put in the dictionary. There's no artificial intelligence to say "Phil Collins" could be all these other things, and to stop phishing from coming through in that way."
"We would like to see more options for the customization of content filters."
"Trend Micro Email Security should introduce new features, improvements, and updates which are cost-effective and easy to deploy."
"The tool's dashboard is old."
"There is a limitation when customers are using their email from a third-party solution that isn't from Trend Micro."
"They need to adjust the spam filtering and make it stronger."
"The product must provide better customization features."
"There is room for improvement in threat detection, especially for advanced attacks and business email compromise."
"The initial setup was straightforward. This is a virtual appliance, it takes a short time to deploy the solution. However, it is not difficult if you understand the technology. You must have good knowledge of the email security area to set up the product correctly. There are many features in this solution and a high risk of having mistakes with the configuration."
"Sometimes malicious email gets past the email gateway."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"I know that the product is incredibly expensive."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"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."
"While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 necessitates pricier E3 or E5 subscriptions, the extensive functionality offered by these licenses across various Microsoft products justifies the investment."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"It's adapted to the market. It's similar to other vendors. We at least don't have many problems regarding that because Cisco is adaptable on that side. When we present the solutions to the customers, we tend to achieve the goals that the customer has in terms of the budget for such implementations."
"Cisco Secure Email and the support are priced well. It's not cheap, but there are other solutions that offer less and cost so much. For example, Microsoft is more expensive than Cisco."
"The product's price falls on the higher side when compared to the other products on the market."
"You're going to get what you pay for. If you're not willing to pay the price of Cisco, you're not going to get a product that's as good as Cisco. I don't think Cisco is overpriced, because for the last two years I've been comparing it to Microsoft and Cisco has been cheaper and given us more features."
"I don't have the insights into it, but compared to different products, it seems to have a medium level of pricing."
"The pricing is good."
"Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
"It is not that costly. We pay for the solution through a contractor and pay an annual fee."
"The cost is about $6,000 for 300 users for one year."
"The price of Trend Micro Email Security is more than Sophos' similar solution."
"The solution is inexpensive so we recommend it to small to mid-sized businesses."
"The price is more accessible compared to some other solutions, like FortiMail. It offers excellent value for the price."
"Trend Micro Email Security's pricing is reasonable."
"It's a VPN solution. Trend Micro is reasonably priced."
"The price of Trend Micro Email Security is annual. There are no additional fees."
"The tool must improve its pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
30%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
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,...
What do you like most about Trend Micro Email Security?
The tool provides a strong defense against attacks. It is also easy to use. Trend Micro Email Security's integration ...
What needs improvement with Trend Micro Email Security?
Trend Micro Email Security can improve on scam detection. It could use AI in this area. For example, there is a norma...
What advice do you have for others considering Trend Micro Email Security?
The features of such security software are all very similar, and very close to each other. But if you would like to s...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
No data 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
MedImpact Healthcare Systems, Air21, Azra Solutions, CBOSS, De Montfort University, Depaeuw, DHR Health, Fukui University Hospital
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. Trend Micro Email Security and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.