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."The good part is that you don't have to configure it, which is very convenient."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution."
"Defender for Office 365 has helped eliminate having to look at multiple dashboards and that is the aspect I like most about it. It is simpler, effective, and convenient. The users like the process efficiency."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"Defender helps us prioritize threats across our organization."
"Avanan is a stable software. My company hasn't faced any issues, bugs, or problems with the performance of Avanan."
"Email encryption enhances end to end security of any data before it passes through the networking system."
"It can detect corrupted files and filters out documents with viruses."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its Anti-Malware solution for Office 365, and box.com."
"The program has reduced the dangers related to phishing, malware, ransomware, and other vulnerabilities."
"Email Attachment Protection detects any insecure files and quickly blocks them to prevent the spread of viruses to other secure documents."
"The ease of installation and the AI capacity of the product are valuable."
"The most valuable feature of Avanan is its effectiveness. When scanning incoming emails for threats it can in an automated fashion, quarantine suspicious attachments."
"Defender helps us control which applications are being used and gain more security insight into remote and hybrid users based on user identity and log in location. You can also integrate Defender for Cloud Apps with Defender for Endpoint to extend its capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its monitoring."
"The feature that helps us in detecting the sensitive information being shared has been very useful. In addition, the feature that allows MCAS to apply policies with SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive is being used predominantly."
"The most valuable feature is its policy implementation."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is to stop shadow IT."
"All of the features are valuable because all of the features are related."
"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 product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products."
"The XDR dashboard has room for improvement."
"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."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"Configuration requires going to a lot of places rather than just accessing one tab."
"Microsoft should provide more documentation for users so they can self-educate. I would like to see more documentation for advanced security features."
"The system response in a slow computing device affects performance when sending and receiving emails."
"The customer service team could come up with clear tutorials on how to use this platform to help new teams."
"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."
"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."
"Familiarization with performance for new teams may take a long time."
"It is complicated for new users unfamiliar with the modern cloud networking infrastructure."
"In Avanan, the email channel is one of the channels where data leakage happens, and they need to consider it from a DLP perspective."
"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."
"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."
"We sometimes get errors when we create policies, which is somewhat annoying because some policies stop working due to misconfigurations. We find this challenging because it limits our options for troubleshooting an issue."
"I would prefer to have filtering options incorporated within the policies, enabling the solution to perform tasks beyond mere blocking or allowing."
"Defender for Cloud apps is primarily useful for Azure apps. It has limited capabilities for applications based on other cloud platforms."
"There are some features, such as user navigation content filtering, that are disabled by default, and it probably makes sense to enable them by default."
"They need to improve the attack surface reduction (ASR) rules. In the latest version, you can implement ASR rules, which are quite useful, but you have to enable those because if they're not enabled, they flag false positives. In the Defender portal, it logs a block for WMI processes and PowerShell. Apparently, it's because ASR rules are not configured. So, you generally have to enable them to exclude, for example, WMI queries or PowerShell because they have a habit of blocking your security scanners. It's a bit weird that they have to be enabled to be configured, and it's not the other way around."
"This service would be better if it had a separate license, only for this service, that could be used to track usage."
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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.
