We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Email and Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Cisco, TitanHQ and others in Email Security."Defender enables us to secure all 365-related activity from a single place. It gives us visibility into everything happening in Outlook, protecting us against phishing and other email-based threats. Defender helps us detect any suspicious behaviors."
"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."
"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."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"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."
"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 technical support is good and quick to resolve issues."
"The advanced phishing protection and the integration with the awareness tool that Cisco has embedded into the solution to bring awareness to the customers about the dangers of phishing attacks and other things that come from email are the most valuable features."
"The system enables end users to manage their own whitelists/blacklists."
"There is a huge return compared to if we didn't have a gateway appliance, as far as blocking malicious emails."
"I can customize the configuration and policies."
"It is a user-friendly product."
"Initially, the most valuable feature for us was the SenderBase Reputation, because that reduced the number of emails that were even considered by the system by a huge number..."
"The strong point of the solution is that we hardly get any spam emails because of Cisco Secure Email."
"The malicious URL scanning, as well as the anti-malware features, have been really useful for us in our environment."
"It is good at data leakage prevention (DLP). You can create the data exfiltration profile while sending the emails, which is one of the key advantages of the solution."
"Forcepoint Email Security is a good solution, and I don't have any issues with it. I found anti-spam and anti-spyware the most valuable features of Forcepoint Email Security."
"Using Forcepoint, we have created policies and rules for any suspicious mail. It is blocked and only released by an admin's approval."
"The email and the web filter aspects of the solution are the most valuable features."
"The filtering of the solution is very good. You can do URL filtering and, while you need a custom URL to filter under other solutions like Symantec, here the solution covers most categories and the database."
"We have found the product to be stable."
"I like how versatile the options are. For example, we can set it where we are able to access and browse Facebook but we are denied the ability to post photos. There is also that ability integrate with Office 365 - SharePoint app."
"The most valuable features of Forcepoint Email Security are the integration with other solutions. It provides a more secure infrastructure and views for the customers from the DLP. You can work on URLs, files, and advanced inspections that will protect the customers."
"In some situations, it has not been able to pick impersonated emails having no attachments. Technical support definitely has a scope for improvement."
"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."
"About eight months ago, we started to measure the quantity of phishing and spam that we have been receiving, and it has been increasing a lot. That means that protection for our email is not as good as we were expecting."
"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."
"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."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"In one of the reports I can get the exact place where a vulnerable file resides. But for that, I need to explicitly go into the device and check. If they could include that file part in the report, without my having to go to the device itself, that would help."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data."
"I would like to see sandboxing for email, where suspicious emails received by the system are analyzed through online services."
"While Cisco offers excellent solutions and innovations, the pricing may not be suitable for everyone. The cost of the software is relatively high. In the current market, there are numerous competitive alternatives that focus on security, enterprise networks, and various other aspects. Cisco, being a comprehensive provider, extends its expertise across data, servers, storage, and security, making them a preferred choice for many enterprises. However, when it comes specifically to security solutions, there are other vendors that specialize solely in this domain, offering competitive options."
"We have occasionally had hardware problems because we are using an appliance-based solution, but that might change. We may consider going to virtual systems."
"The interface is dated. It has looked pretty much the same for 15 years or so. It would be helpful to be able to do everything from one spot. The centralized quarantine and reporting are completely separate from policy administration."
"I have some frustrations with the user experience in the interface, specifically with regard to making a list of people for whom I want to allow email access."
"The user interface could be updated."
"They could improve the filters. In my time at the company, there were several times we had to contact support to update the filters."
"Scalability has certain shortcomings and needs to be improved because there are service providers who provide better scalability.v"
"Forcepoint is the best for DLP, but it is not better than other solutions in terms of phishing emails or threat protections on the email. It has less visibility over there. They might need to enhance these components because other solutions, such as Cisco Email Security and IronPort, have more advanced features. Forcepoint should focus more on threats and spam. They have a small database for spam. They must increase their solution's capability from this perspective."
"Technical support is lacking. It could be a lot better."
"We've fixed a couple of issues on the solution so far. It doesn't work perfectly all the time."
"The solution could use better integration capabilities."
"It's quite difficult to learn this solution, it's not an entry level product. If you are a skilled user you will think it's a very useful tool, but if you are not a skilled user, you'll think it is very difficult to learn."
"This solution could be improved by providing further functionality to reduce or to block ransom attacks, cross-site scripting and man-in-the-middle attacks."
"An area for improvement in Forcepoint Email Security is technical support. The agents need to be more knowledgeable. The support also needs to be faster."
"The pricing could always be just a little bit better."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
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Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 56 reviews while Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Email Security with 14 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Email writes "Has effortless spam control, improves security posture, and frees up our IT department's time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] writes "Easy to use and setup and expands well". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Fortinet FortiMail, Proofpoint Email Protection and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, whereas Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection.
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Hi Kamal,
Firstly, you would have to recognize that there is/are no fast and hard rules to choosing a final preferred product, what works well for company A may not work extensively well for company B. Reason being that: the efficiency of the Security capabilities provided by one tool can be amplified by another tool, particularly for secure email gateway. Hence, if you have an XDR that you intend to leverage with your final product of choice, you will notice that you could experience a greater ROI than having a bare SEG tool.
However, I will advise based on a few realities of today's market in Q3 2022.
1. From my perspective, It will make sense if you take advantage of the built-in protection capabilities from your cloud email provider (I assume you are using O365 or Google mail) rather than investing in a secure email gateway (SEG).
2. Most forward-thinking organizations are shifting away from traditional SEG tools and moving towards ICES, in my opinion, you should ideally be looking for an email security solutions that use ML / AI-based anti-phishing technology for BEC protection to analyze conversation history to detect anomalies, as well as computer vision to analyze suspect links within emails.
3. Should you still choose to pursue SEG asides from an ICES, or you choose to go for an ICES, bear in mind that nothing beats doing a POC as it clearly should consider the security apparatus/investments you have already made in times past.
4. it will be best that you look for solutions that integrate directly into your cloud email via an API, rather than as a gateway, this will ease your evaluation and eventual deployment, besides it improving your detection accuracy, while still taking advantage of the integration of the bulk of phishing protection with the core platform
5. Without having an insight into your current email provider (cloud/on-prem) or other tools in your organization or budget, it will be difficult to give you a bit of precise advice.
Either way, all the best with your selection process, and wishing you a cyber-safe organization.
Tunde is absolutely right and is what I was trying to say in my first answer, Tunde did a better job though. AI based tools without a gateway can be installed in minutes, will pick up more malicious attachments, more content related bad stuff, provide better visibility and introduce controls for you staff to further improve the effectiveness. Typically these tools learn over time and therefore get better as you use them.
Don't forget to consider 3rd party risk by looking at DMARC, SPF & DKIM as well as domain impersonation
Have you considered Proofpoint Email Protection? It’s not one of the options you listed, but I recommend Proofpoint for advanced email security to everyone.
Proofpoint Email Protection defends organizations against advanced email-borne threats, including spear phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attacks. Proofpoint provides inbound and outbound email filtering with industry-leading accuracy to protect users from email-based malware, ransomware, and other sophisticated threats. Proofpoint also helps organizations defend against targeted attacks that use spear phishing emails to bypass traditional security defenses. Proofpoint's Email Protection solution is powered by the Proofpoint Global Intelligence Network (GIN), which processes billions of threat indicators every day to deliver real-time protection against the latest email threats. This combination of technology and intelligence makes Proofpoint Email Protection the most effective way to defend against advanced email-borne threats.
I highly recommend Proofpoint Email Security. My organization has had a great experience so far. The solution completely lives up to its price point.
Proofpoint is an industry-leading email gateway, which can be deployed as a cloud service or on-premises. Apart from providing essential encryption and spam filtering, Proofpoint Email Security solutions also have specific controls to stop BEC attacks. That’s what impressed me because Business Email Compromise attacks have devastating consequences for businesses. Proofpoint has an in-built Advanced BEC Defense engine that’s powered by AI and machine learning. It analyzes multiple message attributes, like header data, sender’s IP address, and message body for red flags and urgency.
We use Managed Proofpoint Security. Managed email security providers like ACE MSS provide Proofpoint Email Security solutions in an end-to-end managed service. With managed email security, you no longer have to worry about managing encryption keys or sudden email attacks. You’ll have a dedicated team of security experts monitoring and analyzing all incoming and outgoing email traffic.
Between the two? I prefer Cisco over Forcepoint. If budget is not a problem a hybrid Cisco Forcepoint multilayer. Or a hybrid Cloud + on-premises.
Bur someone asked about three options...? Which was the third? Why was intentionally avoided Proofpoint and compared "Sharks" with "Piranhas" or Barracudas?
I only can recommend Cisco because it´s the only one with which I'd worked enough. I think it is powerful enough and has a lot of possibilities. In addition, to a great support team.
Top brands don't mean best or most cost-effective. My advice is to look a bit further before you make a decision.
Evidence suggests that most top brands are pretty good at detecting and blocking malicious attachments, best case letting through 1%, but can be worse than 50% when it comes to detecting malicious links in the text of the email.
There are numerous less well-known vendors with lower-cost AI-based solutions that have a far better success rate, also providing employees the ability to report on suspect emails which auto-removes them from other staff members' inboxes until they have been properly assessed. Some will provide a visual risk score to the recipient to give them advance warning to be more cautious.
Combining this kind of capability with staff awareness products keeps your vendor list lower and further improves efficiency.
For around £2 GBP per user per month (less than $3) we provide different vendors depending upon the customer's environment but provided as a managed service. This allows our customers to outsource some of the monitoring and day-to-day management, spread the cost on a monthly basis, and flex how many licences they need on a monthly basis too i.e. if you drop 20 users don't pay for them but if you increase by 20 you don't need complex co-termination and pro rata discussions.