Abnormal Security and Proofpoint Email Protection are email security solutions with robust threat-detection capabilities. Abnormal Security focuses on behavioral analysis to identify novel and sophisticated attacks, while Proofpoint combines traditional methods like threat intelligence and sandboxing alongside some behavioral analysis. While they offer overlapping functionality, they could also be considered complementary solutions for a layered defense.
Proofpoint users have raised concerns about the software's limited customization options. Abnormal security users have expressed a need for better integration with email platforms and improved reporting features.
Also, it is essential to mention the integration with SIEM platforms, allowing you to centralize security logs and events. Abnormal Security's focus on behavioral analysis can potentially provide richer data points for SIEM integration, aiding in overall threat detection and response.
The summary above is based on 72 interviews we conducted recently with Proofpoint Email Protection and Abnormal Security users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"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."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"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."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"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."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's initial installation is straightforward. It took us less than a day to complete the implementation."
"As a cloud-based product, it can scale well."
"The stability is very good."
"It's detection of true positives are great, as it's cloud based it's very scalable and stable."
"The solution blocks malicious emails containing viruses and malware and reduces them out of spam."
"I like all the features with Proofpoint, such as how it filters the spam and marketing mail, lost reality mail, blocks phishing attacks, blocks malicious attachments, and stops phishing links. Also it can defend against the business email compromise impersonation technique. It is a complete solution for all email attacks. It filters for the bad, malicious attachments. If there is any executable file, it can be deleted. It is a good, complete solution."
"Its main defense is to stop malicious emails from coming through. There is a sandbox environment where you can open malicious or suspicious emails to make sure that they're not malicious, instead of taking the risk of having your employees do it. This is definitely something that everybody needs nowadays, especially with the rise in cyber attacks."
"They have customized security rules, mature rules, anti-virus protection, as well as email authentication similar to SPF, DKIM, and DMARC."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"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."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"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 is room for improvement in detecting and preventing phishing attacks. While the solution performs well in some aspects, it struggles with phishing threats."
"You only receive one model in Proofpoint Email Protection and the other ones you have to purchase at a high price. There should be more available with the solution and additional models should be less expensive."
"The false positives are an issue."
"Proofpoint has a lot of false alarms."
"We'd like to have the ability to create more customized reports."
"The solution could lower its price."
"The product's deployment is complex and requires technical knowledge."
"Proofpoint should have better integration with complex environments that need more than one instance of Proofpoint, as there are issues with nested instances."
Abnormal Security is ranked 4th in Secure Email Gateway (SEG) with 8 reviews while Proofpoint Email Protection is ranked 1st in Secure Email Gateway (SEG) with 46 reviews. Abnormal Security is rated 9.6, while Proofpoint Email Protection is rated 8.4. 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 Proofpoint Email Protection writes "A reasonably priced product that offers protection to emails, along with spam filters". Abnormal Security is most compared with Mimecast Email Security, Egress Intelligent Email Security, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security and Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), whereas Proofpoint Email Protection is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Cisco Secure Email and Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security. See our Abnormal Security vs. Proofpoint Email Protection report.
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