We compared Cisco Secure Email and Fortinet FortiMail across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Cisco Secure Email offers advanced protection against phishing attacks, reputation-based filtering, and robust tracking functionalities. Fortinet FortiMail is highly praised for its simplicity, intuitive interface, and smooth compatibility with other Fortinet products.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Secure Email should improve global malicious email defense, data loss prevention, and integration with third-party solutions. Fortinet FortiMail requires enhancements in integration, user management, and documentation.
Service and Support: Cisco support is generally considered knowledgeable and helpful, but a few users reported slow response times and difficulty navigating the support process. Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable.
Ease of Deployment: Cisco Secure Email is generally straightforward and seamless to set up. It provides a modular and adaptable environment, but new users may need training. The setup process for Fortinet FortiMail is described as relatively easy and can be completed within a few hours or up to 14 working days. It is flexible and can be tailored to specific needs, although it may require help from technical professionals.
Pricing: Opinions on the pricing of Cisco Secure Email are mixed. Some find it expensive but worth the investment, while others find it reasonably priced and competitive with other vendors. Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable.
ROI: Cisco Secure Email's return on investment is influenced by factors such as use case, organization size, and industry. Fortinet FortiMail provides enhanced email communication, decreased spam, stabilized collections, and altered expenses.
Comparison Results: Cisco Secure Email is highly regarded for its intelligence threat detection, reputation filtering, and robust tracking abilities. The solution’s areas for improvement include data loss prevention and third-party integration. Fortinet FortiMail and Cisco Secure Email have distinct features and functionalities. Fortinet FortiMail is known for its simple setup, user-friendly interface, and effective email filtering. It can be customized and seamlessly integrated with other Fortinet products.
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"The product is not resource-intensive."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."
"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 basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender."
"ATP has been the most valuable in improving our email security posture."
"The solution works well."
"The strong point of the solution is that we hardly get any spam emails because of Cisco Secure Email."
"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 most valuable feature is the different content filters we are using, such as DKIM."
"The added value of it is that every migration to a new version is initiated by the Cisco version itself, so that is a bunch of work that you don't have to do on the Cisco ESA system on-premise. As it becomes a safe platform, you don't need to invest anything in your own data center or in your upgrade path."
"The security features are valuable."
"There are a lot of filters for scam emails and things like that work out of the box. You can also use the antivirus features. I like its features."
"The GUI isn't hard to use. When we do a demo and explain the features of Fortinet products to our customers, they understand very quickly. They can easily manage their systems without us."
"The spam filtering is great."
"Clean user interface and good sandbox."
"The anti-spam features are valuable."
"Technical support is great. They're available 24/7 and their response time is typically within the hour."
"When combining this solution with other Fortinet products, such as FortiGate, it integrates well and provides a comprehensive protection package."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is its fully detailed dashboard."
"The number of false positives is minimal."
"One area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should be more proactive."
"This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products."
"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."
"We are always looking for others tools to increase automation on tasks. There can be better integration with other solutions, such as PowerPoint and email."
"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."
"The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect."
"The user interface is a bit complex."
"The hardware is not up to the mark. Two to three times a year we have complete downtime."
"In future releases, I would like to see two main improvements come to mind. First, the current solution requires maintaining two separate operating systems for FTD, which can be cumbersome. I'd love to see a single operating system for the FTD box."
"I would like more functionality and how to use it for Level 2 type staff. The biggest issue is it needs to be easier to use and navigate."
"We have been struggling in the last month with Cisco encryption and with the S/MIME encryption. I don't know if it is an issue on our side or if these features of the solution are not working very well."
"Typically, in a phishing email, they try to use a name everybody's going to recognize, like the CEO's name or the CFO's name... With this appliance, the way it's designed at the moment, for us to really stop that with any level of confidence, we have to build a dictionary of all the names of the people we want it to check, and all the ways they could be spelled. My name would be in there as Phillip Collins, Phillip D. Collins, Phillip Dean Collins, Phil Collins, Phil D. Collins. There could be eight or 10 variations of my name that we'd have to put in the dictionary. There's no artificial intelligence to say "Phil Collins" could be all these other things, and to stop phishing from coming through in that way."
"The user interface needs some improvement to become more user-friendly. The graphics could be better. It's designed more for a technical user rather than a business user."
"Better dashboards and more interactive overviews would be nice, but the current functionality is sufficient."
"They should add a lot of threat-intelligence feeds from different sources - not only from one source (FortiGuard)."
"Improving the upgrade process, making it more user-friendly, and simplifying the management of hardware components could enhance the overall user experience and appeal of Fortinet's email security solution."
"FortiMail's dashboard is somewhat complex and could be made simpler."
"What's missing in Fortinet FortiMail is some sandbox information for some of the emails. It's probably configuration-based, where it could be configured on some emails. For example, there was malware in some emails that weren't detected in some of the Fortinet FortiMail sessions, but it should have been configured from my company's end to better catch scam emails, but overall, the solution is okay. At the moment, my company is okay with the current Fortinet FortiMail offerings, but in the past, because of a lack of understanding, my team wasn't able to quickly implement the geographical IP blocking feature. It was time-consuming to implement that feature, but that wasn't a fault of Fortinet FortiMail. The issue was from my team's end, but just by emailing the support team, that issue was resolved, so right now, there isn't any additional feature I'd like added to Fortinet FortiMail."
"The product should work on licensing and provide more detail once the license is selected for the customer."
"The solution's pricing is flexible and can be adjusted for African utility companies. Microsoft often offers special pricing formulas for African governments and organizations and it is similar to Fortinet FortiMail. In my country, government institutions receive discounted pricing from Fortinet FortiMail."
"I think they need to look into it and improve their signatures. This will help with blocking incoming spam emails."
"The statistics and BI in general could be improved."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 55 reviews while Fortinet FortiMail is ranked 5th in Email Security with 55 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while Fortinet FortiMail is rated 8.6. 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 Fortinet FortiMail writes "Good GUI and configuring security policies is easy but the pricing needs improvement". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Proofpoint Email Protection, Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense and Trend Micro Email Security, whereas Fortinet FortiMail is most compared with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Fortinet FortiMail Cloud, Proofpoint Email Protection and Trend Micro Email Security. See our Cisco Secure Email vs. Fortinet FortiMail report.
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