Abnormal Security focuses on uncommon attacks, particularly advanced phishing and social engineering attempts. Their AI analyzes email content, sender/recipient information, user behavior, and email patterns to identify anomalies suggesting malicious intent. Cisco SETD employs a multi-layered approach, commended for its strong spam filtering, customizable security policies, and detailed reporting features, with users noting a need for improved integration options. Both products offer reasonable pricing and positive results, but Abnormal Security excels in customer service while Secure Email Threat Defense stands out for its real-time threat detection and automatic updates.
The summary above is based on 20 interviews we conducted recently with Abnormal Security and Secure Email Threat Defense users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."
"Our customers are satisfied with Defender for 365 because Microsoft products are easy to use and customize to meet the client's needs. Everything is in one place, so we can adjust policies as needed for phishing, DLP, ATP, or any other security features that our clients want to apply."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"This solution is easy to use."
"The ability to see east-west traffic is its most valuable feature. Traditionally, email defense focuses on north-south, inbound-outbound, egress-ingress traffic. With Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox, it's able to quickly identify, track, tag, and categorize emails that are internal. That can typically give us visibility into if there's an internal compromised account (for example). Someone can then use that internal compromised account to email additional accounts with either malicious software or links, but internal within that Office tenant. Effectively, that email message never leaves the tenant. Any of the mail gateways really do not have any method or way of seeing this traffic since it's not leaving the environment."
"The features and functionalities are much better than Microsoft's in-built Defender plan."
"Cisco has a threat mechanism called cloud-based Talos, where all the threats are inbuilt."
"On ease of use, it rates very high. It's something that I was able to get into without really looking at any documentation. I wanted to see what it felt like before I started looking at any documentation on how to use it, and it was very easy to use. It works very smoothly. The user experience is very intuitive. They did an amazing job on that."
"It's very easy to deploy and configure."
"Secure Email Threat Defense's scalability is good."
"It has an efficient email filtering feature."
"This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"Microsoft sometimes has downtime, and we'll get several incidents coming in back to back. We have a huge backlog of notifications, many of which may be false positives. However, there might be serious alerts, so we can't risk dismissing all of them at once."
"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."
"The product must provide better malware detection."
"One area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"Customers will benefit greatly from monthly billing because the majority of customers today use the cloud, be it Office 365, or Google Cloud."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"From a technical point of view, Cisco is far behind in terms of cybersecurity, and it has to improve very much."
"The search area has room for improvement. When you go to the next page, it remains at the bottom of the current page that you're on. Also, under the reports section, it allows you to see any "convictions," but if you want to search for those convictions you have to remember when they all came in and go back and edit the search accordingly. You cannot click on the list of convictions to actually see if you had a spike at a certain time."
"The pricing could always be better."
"We encounter issues while searching for missing emails."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox can improve by adding advanced phishing, then the solution would become the best in the market. However, this could increase the price even more. Additionally, if CES with domain protection could be added it would be an even better solution."
"There is still room for improvement in terms of integrations with other Cisco tools and non-Cisco tools. There is also some room for improvement needed in terms of the reporting."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense Pricing and Cost Advice →
Abnormal Security is ranked 12th in Email Security with 8 reviews while Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is ranked 16th in Email Security with 11 reviews. Abnormal Security is rated 9.6, while Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is rated 8.2. 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 Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense writes "Easy to deploy and configure with excellent support". Abnormal Security is most compared with Mimecast Email Security, Egress Intelligent Email Security, Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Avanan and Tessian Enforcer, whereas Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is most compared with Cisco Secure Email, Kiteworks, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) and Armorblox. See our Abnormal Security vs. Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense report.
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