Avanan is praised for its advanced threat protection, ease of integration, competitive pricing, and valuable customer support. Users appreciate the machine learning capabilities and real-time alerts Avanan provides. On the other hand, Abnormal Security stands out for its behavioral AI engine, advanced threat protection and easy integration with email platforms.
The summary above is based on 30 interviews we conducted recently with Avanan and Abnormal Security users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"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 benefit that stands out to me is the ability for multiple individuals to collaborate simultaneously within the same document. Additionally, there is the option to save the document directly in the integrated OneDrive or SharePoint."
"Threat Explorer is one of the features that I very much like because it is a real-time report that allows you to identify, analyze, and trace security attacks."
"The most valuable feature is protection against malicious links, fishing, and impersonation. You can train people to be aware of these threats, but they're not always careful. When they're using their phones between meetings, they click on a link, and it's game over."
"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 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."
"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."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"One of the things that I love about them is that the setup and installation are super easy. All you do is give them access to your Microsoft 365 tenant, and through APIs, they are able to do their work. They are doing all this through APIs, so you do not have to install the software and take a month to get it all set up to even see the value of the solution. You could be up and running in less than an hour."
"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"What I like about Abnormal Security is that it notifies me if any of my partners or suppliers are experiencing a security breach by analyzing their database and identifying potential cyber threats."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"It does some really cool stuff that other tools aren't doing. We found it to be really effective, and the AI/ML functionality is really what differentiates them."
"Avanan is a stable software. My company hasn't faced any issues, bugs, or problems with the performance of Avanan."
"Email encryption enhances end to end security of any data before it passes through the networking system."
"This technology is one of Check Point's acquisitions, and it is currently a powerful tool that provides all the protection that is not found in other tools."
"I highly recommend this solution to any prospective buyer."
"It can retract unsafe emails and remove them from the entire communication channel."
"The customizable rules allow you to change aspects."
"Email Attachment Protection detects any insecure files and quickly blocks them to prevent the spread of viruses to other secure documents."
"The ease of installation and the AI capacity of the product are valuable."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"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 visibility for the weaknesses in the system and unauthorized access can be improved."
"The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"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."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"In some situations, it has not been able to pick impersonated emails having no attachments. Technical support definitely has a scope for improvement."
"I, as such, do not have anything that I do not like or would like to add, but you could argue that because they are doing it API-based, there is a chance that something could slip through temporarily before they are able to pull it out. In theory, it could happen just because of the nature of the system. They are not in line with the delivery of the mail. They are kind of asynchronous, which is a pro as well as a con. If it is synchronous, then I know it would always stop them, but because it is asynchronous, things could get through temporarily or because of some system issues on the Microsoft side or their side. It is the nature of the beast, but it is a little bit of a con."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"When we're working on something as engineers, and we find an idea or a method of doing something that would be greatly improved by doing it another way, there should be an ability for me to click the ideas button, type in an idea that I have, and submit it to a product review team or developers to have them think through the process a little bit more."
"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"The overall user interface is not attractive. It needs some improvement."
"In Avanan, the email channel is one of the channels where data leakage happens, and they need to consider it from a DLP perspective."
"Being cloud first and because we are in the movie business, we use a lot of Macintoshes. So, there is absolutely no reason for us to have Active Directory whatsoever. However, if you are using Office 365, you must have Active Directory in order to reset passwords. Even though we have a single sign-on provider, we must have Azure Active Directory for Office 365, which is really stupid. As a cloud application, you would think that I don't need Active Directory, which I don't need for anything else except Office 365. We have one server inside that space to help us manage Active Directory just for Office 365. This is a very sore point, but it is what it is."
"Integration with various SaaS offerings, who are leading in the SaaS market."
"The user experience must be improved."
"When sending bulky emails, the system slows down and takes a long time before it responds effectively to our requests."
"Sometimes it seemed like the allow list wasn't working. I've created many allow list rules however, they still seem to be blocked; the same is true with the blocked list rules."
"The customer service team could come up with clear tutorials on how to use this platform to help new teams."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
Abnormal Security is ranked 10th in Email Security with 8 reviews while Avanan is ranked 6th in Email Security with 21 reviews. Abnormal Security is rated 9.6, while Avanan is rated 9.2. The top reviewer of Abnormal Security writes "Provides comprehensive email security management, effective in detecting a wide range of email threats". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Avanan writes "We've noticed a significant decline from people accidentally or intentionally clicking on things". Abnormal Security is most compared with Mimecast Email Security, Egress Intelligent Email Security, Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cisco Secure Email and Sublime Security, whereas Avanan is most compared with Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, IRONSCALES, Perception Point Advanced Email Security, Mimecast Email Security and Fortinet FortiMail. See our Abnormal Security vs. Avanan report.
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