Cisco Secure Email is valuable for its advanced threat protection capabilities, and customization options, but have concerns about complexity, performance, and customization limitations. On the other hand, Abnormal Security is praised for its strong email security, and behavioral AI engine, but users have noted the need for better integration with email platforms.
The summary above is based on 39 interviews we conducted recently with Cisco Secure Email and Abnormal Security users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The product's scalability is good."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"Threat Explorer is one of the features that I very much like because it is a real-time report that allows you to identify, analyze, and trace security attacks."
"The most valuable feature is protection against malicious links, fishing, and impersonation. You can train people to be aware of these threats, but they're not always careful. When they're using their phones between meetings, they click on a link, and it's game over."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The deployment capability is a great feature."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"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."
"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."
"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"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."
"Spam controls are excellent because they are a powerful feature that operates almost effortlessly."
"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."
"ATP has been the most valuable in improving our email security posture."
"At one point, there was a zero-day attack. The Cisco appliance detected it and stopped it, helping us out. We avoided the attack and potential damage."
"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..."
"It has an intuitive, clear graphical interface where you can deploy your policies and understand the overall flow. There are a lot of things that you cannot handle on the graphic interface, like message filters. For this, you need to go to a lower level where you have more power, like command line interface. So, this solution has the best of both worlds. There are not a lot of bells and whistles. It is more practical with access to most features that you can configure."
"I can customize the configuration and policies."
"It is a user-friendly product."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect."
"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."
"Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"The only thing they should improve is the licensing model. They should stop changing it. A year ago, the five features I mentioned were included in one product. Now, three of them are bundled into one product, and you have to pay extra for the other two. I don't mind paying extra, but I don't want them to change it every year or every six months. I need to know what I'm looking at and not worry about it next year."
"Configuration requires going to a lot of places rather than just accessing one tab."
"The visibility for the weaknesses in the system and unauthorized access can be improved."
"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."
"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"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."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"The graphical user interface is not user-friendly like other vendors. I find it very difficult at times to find some options on the UI."
"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."
"We cannot manage multiple devices from a single UI."
"I would like them to add some clustering or high availability features."
"If you are not a technical guy, it is hard to maneuver, but as soon as you work on it, it gets better and better. If there was a better way to know how to do things or how to find things, it would be good."
"Many smaller businesses opt for more cost-effective solutions, such as Gmail or Hotmail accounts, instead of investing in Cisco Secure Email, given its higher cost."
"They could improve the filters. In my time at the company, there were several times we had to contact support to update the filters."
"The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear."
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Abnormal Security is ranked 9th in Email Security with 8 reviews while Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 55 reviews. Abnormal Security is rated 9.6, while Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4. 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 Cisco Secure Email writes "Has effortless spam control, improves security posture, and frees up our IT department's time". Abnormal Security is most compared with Mimecast Email Security, Egress Intelligent Email Security, Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Avanan and Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), whereas Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Fortinet FortiMail, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Proofpoint Email Protection and Mimecast Email Security. See our Abnormal Security vs. Cisco Secure Email report.
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