We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Email and Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Cisco, TitanHQ and others in Email Security.
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has improved my organization's security. It makes it easier to manage the infrastructure without the help of third-party applications."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps people to work remotely. It is a secure solution. We don't need to use our company's computers or get VPN connections to the networks. I can control how they share screens and what they send to the devices. It keeps our organizations confidential and sensitive information safe."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"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 is a stable solution."
"Defender for 365 is a comprehensive cloud-based solution. The value of the cloud is that you aren't alone. Threat intelligence and analytics are shared in the cloud. We don't have to find the solution alone. If you face an unknown threat with traditional solutions like Trend Micro and Symantec, you need to open a case and send your information to them to analyze forensically and identify the source of the attack."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"Defender helps us prioritize threats across our organization."
"This solution provides some benefits, like comfortable access to TAC support. You get prompt support when working directly with Cisco."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Gateway has allowed our users to be able to concentrate on the emails that they do receive. Previously, our users had to deal with nine million additional emails across the organization, which is nearly 1,000 emails per user to have to deal with a month. That's a massive amount for our staff to deal with and probably several hours of their time. We have a lot of clinical staff, being a hospital. We want to make our staff as productive as possible. By removing a lot of that spam and phishing type emails, this allows them to do their job."
"I can customize the configuration and policies."
"It provides good IT assistance."
"What I find the most valuable about Cisco Secure Email is that the logs are not that difficult to see even if you're not used to them. The logs are reasonably readable and diagnosing the problem is not too hard with them."
"The filtering is definitely better at catching both spam and malicious messages, and there's a lot of extremely granular ability for setting up rules. You can do it the way you want to. The Microsoft solution tends to be pretty limited in how it allows some of that to be done."
"The most significant enhancement we've gained is in terms of security through the upgrade we received."
"The tech engineers are very knowledgeable."
"The filtering of the solution is very good. You can do URL filtering and, while you need a custom URL to filter under other solutions like Symantec, here the solution covers most categories and the database."
"The Forcepoint Email Security roadmap easily integrates with the data loss prevention (DLP) suite of Forcepoint. Therefore, the customer doesn't have to buy another solution for DLP."
"The email and the web filter aspects of the solution are the most valuable features."
"This is a reasonably stable solution."
"Using Forcepoint, we have created policies and rules for any suspicious mail. It is blocked and only released by an admin's approval."
"Forcepoint Email Security is a good solution, and I don't have any issues with it. I found anti-spam and anti-spyware the most valuable features of Forcepoint Email Security."
"The feature I find most valuable is the web, email and DLP integration."
"I like how versatile the options are. For example, we can set it where we are able to access and browse Facebook but we are denied the ability to post photos. There is also that ability integrate with Office 365 - SharePoint app."
"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."
"One area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration."
"There is room for improvement in terms of reporting."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers."
"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."
"Microsoft should provide more documentation for users so they can self-educate. I would like to see more documentation for advanced security features."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"We cannot manage multiple devices from a single UI."
"Better dashboards and more interactive overviews would be nice, but the current functionality is sufficient."
"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 occasionally had hardware problems because we are using an appliance-based solution, but that might change. We may consider going to virtual systems."
"The user interface could be updated."
"The user interface is a bit complex."
"They can do it better with web links, with the URLs. They have a technology called Outbreak but it doesn't work as well as we would like."
"The product's GUI for the dashboard needs improvement."
"Customer support could be better."
"This solution could be improved by providing further functionality to reduce or to block ransom attacks, cross-site scripting and man-in-the-middle attacks."
"I would like to see some improvement like cloud application and integration capabilities and the classification part is missing from the DLP."
"We've fixed a couple of issues on the solution so far. It doesn't work perfectly all the time."
"The solution could use better integration capabilities."
"Technical support is lacking. It could be a lot better."
"I would like for deployment to be simplified."
"The pricing could always be just a little bit better."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 56 reviews while Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Email Security with 14 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] is rated 7.8. 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 Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] writes "Easy to use and setup and expands well". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Fortinet FortiMail, Proofpoint Email Protection and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, whereas Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection.
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Hi Kamal,
Firstly, you would have to recognize that there is/are no fast and hard rules to choosing a final preferred product, what works well for company A may not work extensively well for company B. Reason being that: the efficiency of the Security capabilities provided by one tool can be amplified by another tool, particularly for secure email gateway. Hence, if you have an XDR that you intend to leverage with your final product of choice, you will notice that you could experience a greater ROI than having a bare SEG tool.
However, I will advise based on a few realities of today's market in Q3 2022.
1. From my perspective, It will make sense if you take advantage of the built-in protection capabilities from your cloud email provider (I assume you are using O365 or Google mail) rather than investing in a secure email gateway (SEG).
2. Most forward-thinking organizations are shifting away from traditional SEG tools and moving towards ICES, in my opinion, you should ideally be looking for an email security solutions that use ML / AI-based anti-phishing technology for BEC protection to analyze conversation history to detect anomalies, as well as computer vision to analyze suspect links within emails.
3. Should you still choose to pursue SEG asides from an ICES, or you choose to go for an ICES, bear in mind that nothing beats doing a POC as it clearly should consider the security apparatus/investments you have already made in times past.
4. it will be best that you look for solutions that integrate directly into your cloud email via an API, rather than as a gateway, this will ease your evaluation and eventual deployment, besides it improving your detection accuracy, while still taking advantage of the integration of the bulk of phishing protection with the core platform
5. Without having an insight into your current email provider (cloud/on-prem) or other tools in your organization or budget, it will be difficult to give you a bit of precise advice.
Either way, all the best with your selection process, and wishing you a cyber-safe organization.
Tunde is absolutely right and is what I was trying to say in my first answer, Tunde did a better job though. AI based tools without a gateway can be installed in minutes, will pick up more malicious attachments, more content related bad stuff, provide better visibility and introduce controls for you staff to further improve the effectiveness. Typically these tools learn over time and therefore get better as you use them.
Don't forget to consider 3rd party risk by looking at DMARC, SPF & DKIM as well as domain impersonation
Have you considered Proofpoint Email Protection? It’s not one of the options you listed, but I recommend Proofpoint for advanced email security to everyone.
Proofpoint Email Protection defends organizations against advanced email-borne threats, including spear phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attacks. Proofpoint provides inbound and outbound email filtering with industry-leading accuracy to protect users from email-based malware, ransomware, and other sophisticated threats. Proofpoint also helps organizations defend against targeted attacks that use spear phishing emails to bypass traditional security defenses. Proofpoint's Email Protection solution is powered by the Proofpoint Global Intelligence Network (GIN), which processes billions of threat indicators every day to deliver real-time protection against the latest email threats. This combination of technology and intelligence makes Proofpoint Email Protection the most effective way to defend against advanced email-borne threats.
I highly recommend Proofpoint Email Security. My organization has had a great experience so far. The solution completely lives up to its price point.
Proofpoint is an industry-leading email gateway, which can be deployed as a cloud service or on-premises. Apart from providing essential encryption and spam filtering, Proofpoint Email Security solutions also have specific controls to stop BEC attacks. That’s what impressed me because Business Email Compromise attacks have devastating consequences for businesses. Proofpoint has an in-built Advanced BEC Defense engine that’s powered by AI and machine learning. It analyzes multiple message attributes, like header data, sender’s IP address, and message body for red flags and urgency.
We use Managed Proofpoint Security. Managed email security providers like ACE MSS provide Proofpoint Email Security solutions in an end-to-end managed service. With managed email security, you no longer have to worry about managing encryption keys or sudden email attacks. You’ll have a dedicated team of security experts monitoring and analyzing all incoming and outgoing email traffic.
Between the two? I prefer Cisco over Forcepoint. If budget is not a problem a hybrid Cisco Forcepoint multilayer. Or a hybrid Cloud + on-premises.
Bur someone asked about three options...? Which was the third? Why was intentionally avoided Proofpoint and compared "Sharks" with "Piranhas" or Barracudas?
I only can recommend Cisco because it´s the only one with which I'd worked enough. I think it is powerful enough and has a lot of possibilities. In addition, to a great support team.
Top brands don't mean best or most cost-effective. My advice is to look a bit further before you make a decision.
Evidence suggests that most top brands are pretty good at detecting and blocking malicious attachments, best case letting through 1%, but can be worse than 50% when it comes to detecting malicious links in the text of the email.
There are numerous less well-known vendors with lower-cost AI-based solutions that have a far better success rate, also providing employees the ability to report on suspect emails which auto-removes them from other staff members' inboxes until they have been properly assessed. Some will provide a visual risk score to the recipient to give them advance warning to be more cautious.
Combining this kind of capability with staff awareness products keeps your vendor list lower and further improves efficiency.
For around £2 GBP per user per month (less than $3) we provide different vendors depending upon the customer's environment but provided as a managed service. This allows our customers to outsource some of the monitoring and day-to-day management, spread the cost on a monthly basis, and flex how many licences they need on a monthly basis too i.e. if you drop 20 users don't pay for them but if you increase by 20 you don't need complex co-termination and pro rata discussions.