We performed a comparison between Avanan and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Cisco, TitanHQ and others in Email Security."At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"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."
"There are several features that I consider valuable."
"The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple."
"It also gives the vulnerability status according to the versions you have selected. Let's say you have Google Chrome. It mentions the versions it has, and it updates. Within two hours of an update, it is reflected in the dashboard. That's really nice to have."
"Defender helps us prioritize threats across our organization."
"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."
"If we look at four to five years ago, we had close to six or eight people click a link in an email per month. Now, we are probably down to about five or six clicks a year, if not less."
"Avanan is a stable software. My company hasn't faced any issues, bugs, or problems with the performance of Avanan."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its Anti-Malware solution for Office 365, and box.com."
"When we don't understand some functionalities, the customer support staff responds fast to our calls and provides immediate action."
"The customizable rules allow you to change aspects."
"Easy to use for non-technical users."
"The threat detection tools enable us to ascertain malware and phishing messages across the email network infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature is the alerting system."
"In Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, there is an option to enable files. Once you enable that, it will give you all the files in your organization and where they are located in the cloud... That feature is very useful for investigation purposes."
"We have become more aware of what services our users are using, how often they are using them, and what data is being sent out of the organization and to which services. So, it is really a lot about visibility and helping us make decisions based on that. It drives some of our policy decisions for adding extra security controls."
"The ability to prevent users from using certain applications is one of the most valuable features. It doesn't require any configuration for implementation from the client perspective. It just works right away and gives you the information you need."
"The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long."
"The general usability of the solution is very straightforward."
"Defender's integration with our identity solutions is critical in our current setup."
"All of the features are valuable because all of the features are related."
"Microsoft should provide more documentation for users so they can self-educate. I would like to see more documentation for advanced security features."
"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 area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration."
"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."
"Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It is complicated for new users unfamiliar with the modern cloud networking infrastructure."
"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."
"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."
"It is very difficult to find the required documentation."
"The user experience must be improved."
"It should also offer a quick backup in case any email is wrongly quarantined or deleted to ensure no data loss."
"They should come up with a mobile application so that it can be more flexible."
"Integration with various SaaS offerings, who are leading in the SaaS market."
"There could be more granular roles that are out of the box included in the product."
"This service would be better if it had a separate license, only for this service, that could be used to track usage."
"It takes some time to scan and apply the policies when there is some sensitive information. After it applies the policies, it works, but there is a delay. This is something for which we are working with Microsoft."
"I would like more customization of notifications. Currently, you either get everything or you get limited information. I would like to have something in between where we can customize the data that is included in notifications."
"I would like for it to be available on Mac and for it to support all of the features of Microsoft financing products. It is really for Windows."
"In the future, I would like to see more plug-and-play capabilities that use AI to tell you what needs to be done. It would be helpful if it scanned our devices and made security suggestions, on a configuration basis."
"The interface needs to be more user-friendly."
"It doesn't actually decrease the time to respond. This has been an issue with Microsoft recently. Sometimes, there is a delay when it comes to getting an alert policy email... Sometimes it takes two or three hours for that email to be sent."
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Avanan is ranked 6th in Email Security with 21 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is ranked 2nd in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 30 reviews. Avanan is rated 9.2, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Avanan writes "We've noticed a significant decline from people accidentally or intentionally clicking on things". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps writes "Integrates well and helps us in protecting sensitive information, but takes time to scan and apply the policies and cannot detect everything we need". Avanan is most compared with Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, IRONSCALES, Perception Point Advanced Email Security, Abnormal Security and Mimecast Email Security, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Cisco Umbrella, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Qualys VMDR.
We monitor all Email Security reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.