Microsoft EOP is praised for its reliable email filtering capabilities, integration with Office 365, and customization options. Users appreciate the ease of setup but have concerns about mobile device management capabilities. Abnormal Security is known for its comprehensive email security capabilities, advanced threat detection, strong protection against phishing attacks, and behavioral AI engine.
The summary above is based on 46 interviews we conducted recently with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) and Abnormal Security users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The good part is that you don't have to configure it, which is very convenient."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"The risk level notifications are most valuable. We get to know what kind of intrusion or attack is there, and we can fix a problem on time."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution."
"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 features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"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."
"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"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."
"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."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"We use the solution to receive emails. We do not use the calendar function as our clients are slow adaptors to the latest features."
"We can migrate seamlessly without any disruptions to our operations."
"It's definitely scalable."
"In general, my company is happy with Microsoft support...My company hasn't faced any stability issues with the solution."
"It offers great security against malware and other threats."
"Microsoft Exchange Online Protection has features like DLP (data loss protection), Safe Attachment, and Safe Links."
"What I like most about Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is its integration with Windows, so we have one central view for all alerts and incidents."
"I like the product's ZAP feature."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"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."
"Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"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."
"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."
"The XDR dashboard has room for improvement."
"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."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"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."
"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."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"Not all settings can be configured automatically and most still require manual configuration. However, there is an automation tool available that can be used to input all the configurations either as a script or a tool it would be helpful."
"It doesn't protect against everything. We do need protection for, for example, endpoints."
"Having orchestration features added to Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, particularly automation and remediation, would be quite useful."
"The solution lacks to elaborate on its spam policies."
"Microsoft has some training portals, but more could be developed."
"The solution can be complex at times. It would be nice to have the on-server version. It needs to improve the stability as well."
"Microsoft 365 Defender and EOP policies are stable with the proper license. However, with the basic policy, it's hard to say it's stable due to configuration limitations."
"When you're using a Microsoft product solution, you can scale it, but if you're not, there are limitations."
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Abnormal Security is ranked 10th in Email Security with 8 reviews while Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is ranked 3rd in Email Security with 34 reviews. Abnormal Security is rated 9.6, while Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) 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 Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) writes "An effective email security solution that provides DLP, Safe Attachment, and Safe Links". Abnormal Security is most compared with Mimecast Email Security, Egress Intelligent Email Security, Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Avanan and Darktrace, whereas Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Cisco Secure Email, Fortinet FortiMail, Mimecast Email Security and Trellix Collaboration Security. See our Abnormal Security vs. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) report.
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