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Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs Retarus Email Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Retarus Email Security
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
WAKKAS AHMAD - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 22, 2023
Provides valuable reports that make it easy to take action
Our primary use case for this solution is protecting emails This solution has helped our organization by protecting our emails from various threats. It helped us get customized reports on all of the emails we received on the user side and other data. The feature I found most valuable was getting…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 individuals within our organization who are affected."
"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"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."
"It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself."
"It gives us visibility into threats and, for endpoints, it helps us to prioritize threats. We used to have a lack of visibility, but now our time to detect and respond has decreased."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple."
"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 feature I found most valuable was getting details on the emails, being alerted once those emails got a bad reputation, and then being able to take action on those emails."
 

Cons

"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not."
"There is room for improvement in terms of reporting."
"Configuration requires going to a lot of places rather than just accessing one tab."
"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."
"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 XDR dashboard has room for improvement."
"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."
"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."
"This solution needs to improve the area of GUI as well as dashboards because they are very poor in terms of the current email security solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license."
"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."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender is expensive. I typically recommend it only if clients have the budget. Otherwise, I would suggest an alternative."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 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...
What do you like most about Retarus Email Security?
The feature I found most valuable was getting details on the emails, being alerted once those emails got a bad reputation, and then being able to take action on those emails.
What needs improvement with Retarus Email Security?
This solution needs to improve the area of GUI as well as dashboards because they are very poor in terms of the current email security solution. In the next release, I'd like to see the dashboard a...
What is your primary use case for Retarus Email Security?
Our primary use case for this solution is protecting emails.
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
No data available
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Cisco, Fortinet and others in Email Security. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.