We compared Cisco Secure Email and Microsoft Exchange Online Protection 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. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection offers seamless integration with Windows, a central alert console, and real-time monitoring of suspicious URLs.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Secure Email should improve global malicious email defense, data loss prevention, and integration with third-party solutions. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection could offer more training and enhance its security features. Users also requested better encryption, gray email management, and integration with non-Microsoft platforms.
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. While some users found Microsoft support to be helpful and responsive, others experienced slower response times.
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. Users had varied experiences setting up Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, ranging from easy to difficult. It may necessitate dedicated personnel for maintenance.
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. Some users said Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is expensive, but others considered it reasonable.
ROI: Cisco Secure Email's return on investment is influenced by factors such as use case, organization size, and industry. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection has proven to be a profitable investment.
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. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is praised for its seamless integration with Windows and useful features like URL holding and threat management. At the same time, users say it could improve in areas such as pricing, documentation, and security features.
"It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"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."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution."
"The security features are valuable."
"The solution is very configurable. It has enabled us to configure some specific filters to stop emails that general configurations didn't stop. It's a powerful solution. It can analyze a lot of emails simultaneously, with no problems of capacity or system load."
"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."
"It's a bit easy to handle Cisco Secure Email; it's not that difficult. For the logs, which are in PDF format, it's not hard to read them. We don't need Wireshark much to analyze the logs."
"It has the IMS engine, Intelligent Multi-Scan engine, and it does a good job, right out-of-the-box, of blocking the vast majority of things that should be blocked."
"Anti-Spam and Advanced Malware Protection are the most valuable features... and we also have the option to block Zero-day attacks."
"It's definitely scalable."
"You can use the product to create special accounts."
"The product protects against malware."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of administration. Other solutions require complex administration, but Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is easier."
"With Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, if malware is attached to a mailer, it's very easy to go into the incident alert and find out what's happening with that identity and the mail."
"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."
"The product's most valuable feature is third-party integrations."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection are the EOP, ATP, safe links, fishing, and antispam."
"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."
"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 pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should improve the troubleshooting tools. It's unclear whether the device is blocked at the firewall level or at the device itself. The granularity needed for troubleshooting is currently lacking. From my perspective, Microsoft should address this issue to benefit many users who likely share the same sentiment."
"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."
"Cisco Secure Email can be improved from the administrator's point of view. Usually, you have to work with different areas, and they can try to make it easy for the administrator to use different functions."
"I would like them to add some clustering or high availability features."
"One of the things that Cisco could improve on with IronPort is the support. Cisco doesn't really have enough engineers who have full, hands-on knowledge of IronPort. Knowledge of it is not something you can find easily compared to other security appliances."
"The user interface could be updated."
"The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky."
"The tool's pricing can be improved."
"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."
"I would rate the stability a six out of ten. We had multiple issues with the stability."
"We have experienced issues while migrating from on-prem to the cloud. The tool needs to improve its stability."
"When the product is being updated, it changes some of the setups. The support team is also not good."
"I would like to get reports about vulnerable connections from our clients with information about domains, public IPs, etc. That would be highly useful."
"The management interface of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) could be intuitive."
"The licensing can be on the expensive side, especially in the cloud space."
"Performance and speed should continue to be improved."
"The product could be more stable. Microsoft products could be more stable because sometimes, even though they are updating some things, we cannot find those updates."
"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."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 56 reviews while Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is ranked 3rd in Email Security with 34 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is rated 8.2. 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 Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) writes "An effective email security solution that provides DLP, Safe Attachment, and Safe Links". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Fortinet FortiMail, Proofpoint Email Protection, Trend Micro Email Security and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, whereas Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Fortinet FortiMail, Mimecast Email Security, Barracuda Email Security Gateway and Trend Micro Email Security. See our Cisco Secure Email vs. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) report.
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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.