Cisco Secure Email vs Fortinet FortiMail comparison

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12,858 views|10,247 comparisons
97% willing to recommend
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9,348 views|6,215 comparisons
94% willing to recommend
Fortinet Logo
6,822 views|4,504 comparisons
93% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 6, 2023

We compared Cisco Secure Email and Fortinet FortiMail 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. Fortinet FortiMail is highly praised for its simplicity, intuitive interface, and smooth compatibility with other Fortinet products.

  • Room for Improvement: Cisco Secure Email should improve global malicious email defense, data loss prevention, and integration with third-party solutions. Fortinet FortiMail requires enhancements in integration, user management, and documentation.

  • 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. Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable.

  • 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. The setup process for Fortinet FortiMail is described as relatively easy and can be completed within a few hours or up to 14 working days. It is flexible and can be tailored to specific needs, although it may require help from technical professionals.

  • 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. Fortinet FortiMail is considered to have a moderate and fair setup cost, which is seen as reasonable.

  • ROI: Cisco Secure Email's return on investment is influenced by factors such as use case, organization size, and industry. Fortinet FortiMail provides enhanced email communication, decreased spam, stabilized collections, and altered expenses.

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. Fortinet FortiMail and Cisco Secure Email have distinct features and functionalities. Fortinet FortiMail is known for its simple setup, user-friendly interface, and effective email filtering. It can be customized and seamlessly integrated with other Fortinet products.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Email vs. Fortinet FortiMail Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,246 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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 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 solution is very easy to use. All you have to do is to assign the license to the end-user and it's done. The customer will only have the feature activated, and the solution will monitor the emails to determine if they are a threat or not.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links.""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 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 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.""The deployment capability is a great feature."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pros →

"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.""The tech engineers are very knowledgeable.""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 tool comes with AI features. It is good for clients who already use Cisco products due to integration.""The advanced phishing protection and the integration with the awareness tool that Cisco has embedded into the solution to bring awareness to the customers about the dangers of phishing attacks and other things that come from email are the most valuable features.""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.""Users were able to do a check by themselves on quarantined emails. They could check if a valid email had been stopped, if it matched up with the SPF certification.""This solution provides some benefits, like comfortable access to TAC support. You get prompt support when working directly with Cisco."

More Cisco Secure Email Pros →

"The solution is very reliable and very stable.""The most valuable aspects of this solution are that it protects us from spam and phishing attacks. We had a lot of attacks coming in and then we deployed this solution and they stopped. We no longer have any spam or phishing issues.""The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiMail are its virus outbreak prevention and FortiSandbox integration.""It is a scalable solution.""They have a feature called CDR, Content Disarm, Reconstruction, click protection, and DLP for encryption purposes.""The solution has a user-friendly interface. It is easy to deploy and handle. You can easily troubleshoot the issues of the solution.""The integration with FortiSandbox is good, and something that we utilize often.""The biggest implementation my team has done for Fortinet FortiMail was for more than five thousand people, and the most valuable feature was its anti-spam feature."

More Fortinet FortiMail Pros →

Cons
"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.""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.""You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers.""One area for improvement is integration. For example, when it comes to external SaaS platforms, we were not able to get a lot of information on integrations with such apps for security and authentication.""Microsoft should provide more documentation for users so they can self-educate. I would like to see more documentation for advanced security features.""There is room for improvement in terms of reporting.""The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved.""There needs to be an improvement in integrating the product to work across multiple operating systems, and to have better support for non-Microsoft file types."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Cons →

"Scalability has certain shortcomings and needs to be improved because there are service providers who provide better scalability.v""Licensing is quite complicated for a number of customers, including ourselves.""I use the search all the time. Sometimes, it is hard to search for things and things are hard to find. People come to me all the time, saying, "This email didn't get through." Then, I go searching and don't find it on the first search. You have to think about alternative searches. I don't know if there is an easier way that they could help to find things. I don't know how they could simplify it, because now everybody else is using the cloud and everything is coming from Office 365, or whatever. It is just not the same environment from years ago where everybody had their own server and you could search easier.""The user interface needs some improvement to become more user-friendly. The graphics could be better. It's designed more for a technical user rather than a business user.""I would like to see sandboxing for email, where suspicious emails received by the system are analyzed through online services.""There could be additional DLP functionality for it.""There are some concerns in the way the architecture is set up, making it an area where improvements are required.""In future releases, I would like to see two main improvements come to mind. First, the current solution requires maintaining two separate operating systems for FTD, which can be cumbersome. I'd love to see a single operating system for the FTD box."

More Cisco Secure Email Cons →

"An additional feature that could be added is a pop-up screen notifying you that an email has been blocked, without having to double click on it to take you there it could provide you with a summary explaining why it was on hold or why was it spam when you hover over it with your cursor.""In the Latin America market, some spam messages use Portuguese language. Some clearly spam messages would be better identified by the anti-spam if not for the language.""It's difficult for me to talk about areas for improvement in Fortinet FortiMail because I'm the general manager of the company and I'm an engineer with knowledge about the solution, but I'm not deeply involved in its implementation. As I mentioned previously, Fortinet FortiMail is also being used within the company, and I'm happy with its functionality, but sometimes, attacks pass and avoid the Fortinet FortiMail filters, but those could be very sophisticated attacks. There could still be an improvement in the filtering feature of the solution, though the security of Fortinet FortiMail is okay for me because I believe you can't implement one hundred percent security in any solution. The initial setup for the solution also needs improvement. The setup is supposed to be simple, but then the customer starts to complain that some of the false positive emails are reaching quarantine, so my team has to configure it again. There have been instances when Fortinet FortiMail rejects valid emails because some of the service partners of the customer have not been configured accurately, so the system considered valid mails as attacks to be quarantined, so aside from improving the filters, there should also be an improvement in the categorization of emails in the server. My team has to modify the configuration so that valid emails could pass and for Fortinet FortiMail to correctly filter the SPAM traffic. A feature that could be added to Fortinet FortiMail in its next release is advanced AI, so it can analyze and decide accurately on which mail is valid and which mail is SPAM.""I believe there is room for enhancement in content and web security features.""The solution could improve by making the UI more user-friendly and increasing spam and threat detection capabilities.""I have little to say about possible improvements, but the configuration for content blocking could be better. So, for example, if the email includes the line "You have a Bitcoin", I would like it to be easier to block it before it enters an inbox. Fortinet could maybe offer better or simpler help on how to do this properly.""The only drawback to this solution is that the firmware is frequently updated, and each update results in downtime.""The biggest room for improvement would be the deployment. It will be hard for someone who doesn't understand the interface to deploy. If you understand it, you can find your way around the problems."

More Fortinet FortiMail Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's a user-base subscription."
  • "From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
  • "Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
  • "For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
  • "Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
  • "Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
  • "The solution saves money so we have seen a return on investment."
  • "Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We do annual licensing for Cisco Secure Email Gatewayand SMA together, and possibly SmartNet support. Packaged together, the cost is just under $38,000."
  • "In addition to the standard licensing, there is a cost for SMARTnet as well."
  • "Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
  • "Licensing costs depend on how many users there are. It could range between $5 and $7 per month, per user."
  • "The license was not per user, the license model was per feature. You could choose anti-virus, anti-spam, etc. It was feature-based and charged yearly."
  • "There were no other costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
  • "We were using Proofpoint and then we switched to Cisco... reportability was one of the main reasons we switched, but the biggest one was cost. If you can get an equivalent functionality for a better price it's wise to do so. That's what our primary decision came down to: We could get equivalent functionality at a lower price point."
  • "It is not that costly. We pay for the solution through a contractor and pay an annual fee."
  • More Cisco Secure Email Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The licensing model for this solution is better because it is based on the box and not the number of users."
  • "It is an expensive product."
  • "The annual cost is $55,000."
  • "Pricing is straight-forward and renewable without complicated pricing structures."
  • "Pricing is based on initial license purchase and use volume."
  • "In the future I would like it if there's a possibility to lower the price of the bandwidth and UTM. It is quite expensive."
  • "This is a good solution and value for the money."
  • "If you don't need the full bundle that includes everything, you have options for the small or medium enterprise environments."
  • More Fortinet FortiMail Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various… more »
    Top Answer:The product must provide better malware detection. The detection algorithms don't perform the way I hope they would.
    Top Answer:The product's initial setup phase was easy.
    Top Answer:The product's price falls on the higher side when compared to the other products on the market. Whether the product… more »
    Top Answer:There are some concerns in the way the architecture is set up, making it an area where improvements are required. When… more »
    Top Answer:FortiMail possesses notable strengths, and one key feature is its store-and-forward concept.
    Top Answer:It could benefit from enhancing its functionality, especially in terms of advanced filtering. Introducing features such… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    MS Defender for Office 365
    Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
    FortiMail
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect organizations against advanced threats in their email, collaboration, and productivity environments. It combines the power of Microsoft's threat intelligence, machine learning, and behavioral analytics to provide real-time protection against phishing, malware, ransomware, and other malicious attacks.

    With Microsoft Defender for Office 365, organizations can safeguard their email communication by detecting and blocking malicious links, attachments, and unsafe email content. It employs advanced anti-phishing capabilities to identify and prevent sophisticated phishing attacks that attempt to steal sensitive information or compromise user credentials.

    This solution also offers robust protection against malware and ransomware. It leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze email attachments and URLs in real-time, identifying and blocking malicious content before it reaches users' inboxes. Additionally, it provides advanced threat-hunting capabilities, allowing security teams to proactively investigate and respond to potential threats.

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 goes beyond email protection and extends its security features to other collaboration tools like SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. It scans files and documents stored in these platforms, ensuring that they are free from malware and other malicious content. It also provides visibility into user activities, helping organizations detect and mitigate insider threats.

    Furthermore, this solution offers rich reporting and analytics capabilities, providing organizations with insights into their security posture and threat landscape. It enables security administrators to monitor and manage security incidents, track trends, and take proactive measures to enhance their overall security posture.

    Cisco Secure Email is an email security solution that provides advanced protection to safeguard inboxes. The solution includes comprehensive defense from the most damaging threats so your employees and organization can remain secure at all times. In addition, it includes advanced threat defense capabilities that detect, block, and remediate threats in incoming email faster. Simultaneously, it protects an organization’s brand, prevents data loss, and secures important information in transit with end-to-end encryption.

    Cisco Secure Email Features

    Cisco Secure Email has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Advanced threat analysis: Easily identify the malicious techniques used in attacks targeting your organization. Understand the specific business risks and categorize threats to gain insight into the parts of your organization that are most vulnerable to attack.
    • Robust, actionable threat data: The solution’s searchable threat analysis data provides critical contextual insight to the attack scope and breadth and expedites remediation.
    • Real-time URL analysis: With this feature, you can drop emails with risky links automatically or block access to newly infected sites with real-time URL analysis to protect against phishing.
    • Domain-based message authentication (DMARC): Users can prevent brand abuse from attackers using their organization’s domain to carry out phishing campaigns with automation of the domain-based message authentication (DMARC) process.
    • Data loss prevention (DLP): The solution enables users to protect sensitive content in outgoing emails.

    Cisco Secure Email Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Cisco Secure Email. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Optimize your defenses: The solution is designed to protect your organization from threats that can come from multiple sources, including phishing, malware, and ransomware. It can defend against all of them with industry-leading threat intelligence that empowers you to act quickly.
    • More efficient processes: You can use the solution’s orchestration feature to simplify workflows, reduce the burden on your team, and focus on more strategic initiatives.
    • Easy-to-manage tools: The solution is built with tools that are user-friendly and help you spend less time managing alerts. They allow users to quickly detect emerging threats and quarantine suspected threats to prevent their spread.
    • Flexible license options: Cisco Secure Email provides three different license choices: Secure Email Essentials, Secure Email Advantage, and Secure Email Premier.
    • Increase spam catch rates: Cisco Secure Email blocks unwanted emails using a multilayered scanning architecture.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Cisco Secure Email is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are that it has an intuitive interface, reputation filtering, few false positives, and great protection features.

    Enrique J., Owner at Jolly Security Inc., says, "It has an intuitive, clear graphical interface where you can deploy your policies and understand the overall flow. The most valuable feature is reputation filtering.”

    The solution has a “low rate of false positives, good support, and it integrates well with other Cisco security products,” explains Mark R., IT Admin / Manager at a retailer.

    PeerSpot user Charles N., Network Security Engineer at Galaxy Backbone Ltd., mentions, “It is doing its work. It is doing what it was actually designed to do. They have a lot of features such as Advanced Malware Protection, Email Protection, Advanced Phishing Protection, Antispam, Antivirus, and Outbreak Filters.”

    As cyber attacks become more sophisticated, it is crucial for email security solutions to offer multi-layered protection. Fortinet's proven email security platform, FortiMail, is a comprehensive multi-layered threat protection solution designed to secure users from the full spectrum of email-based threats, which includes zero-day threats, credential impersonation, spam, phishing, malware, and business email compromise (BEC) attacks.

    Fortinet FortiMail offers a variety of deployment models to best fit your organization’s email security needs. On-premises, private or public cloud, or hybrid email environments can be deployed and managed in-house by your team or managed by Fortinet’s data centers. FortiMail also employs virtual machines that provide robust scalability options and flexible deployment of email security infrastructure.

    Fortinet FortiMail Benefits

    Fortinet FortiMail provides your organization with the following benefits:

    • Eliminate message-based threats by using FortiMail’s advanced inspection capabilities before they can harm your users.
    • Flexible licensing ensures that you don’t have to create a license for each user as you scale your network upwards.

    • Achieve regulatory compliance with sophisticated messaging content archiving, quarantining, and routing tools.
    • Stop spam before it takes over your messaging system and network resources, ensuring that your messaging performance remains optimized.

    Fortinet FortiMail Benefits

    Some of Fortinet FortiMail’s top features include:

    • Spam and malware prevention: FortiMail employs advanced techniques and technologies, such as outbreak protection, impersonation detection, content disarm and reconstruction, and sandbox analysis to provide users with high-performing antispam and antimalware tools designed to prevent unwanted bulk email, ransomware, and other targeted attacks.
    • Powerful data loss prevention: Identity-based email encryption and archiving help prevent the loss of sensitive and important information and ensure that your organization adheres to compliance with corporate and industry regulations.
    • Automatic updates: Receive dynamic updates from the FortiGuard subscription services that automatically upgrade your antispam and antivirus functionality using intelligence gathered by Fortinet's dedicated global threat research team.
    • Seamless integration: Integrations with other Fortinet products and external third-party components enable companies to enhance their security by sharing indicators of compromise (IoCs) across a unified security system.
    • Easy email management: Gain full visibility over real-time email traffic with Fortinet FortiMail’s intuitive dashboards, rich reporting features, centralized quarantine tools, and end-user controls. Control email traffic with the solution’s full mail transfer agent and mail-handling capabilities. The solution’s quick-start setup wizard greatly reduces the complexity of deployment and management.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Fortinet FortiMail stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful anti-virus tool and its robust spam protection capabilities.

    Flamur P., head of security management at Ipko Telecommunications, writes, "Fortinet FortiMail has a lot of valuable features. It works great. It also has an antivirus feature. Support for Fortinet FortiMail was also great when my team wanted to block some geographic IPs, but couldn't figure out how to do it. The support team provided clear communication on how to resolve that issue. Another valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is spam filtering which tells you how many spammy emails you've received. Based on my current use cases, I'm happy with Fortinet FortiMail."

    Sample Customers
    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
    SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
    Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company16%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Energy/Utilities Company10%
    Retailer10%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Educational Organization16%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider17%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Government14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization44%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Government5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise51%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise37%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise28%
    Large Enterprise49%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business45%
    Midsize Enterprise31%
    Large Enterprise24%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise54%
    Large Enterprise28%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco Secure Email vs. Fortinet FortiMail
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. Fortinet FortiMail and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,246 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 55 reviews while Fortinet FortiMail is ranked 5th in Email Security with 54 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while Fortinet FortiMail is rated 8.6. 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 Fortinet FortiMail writes "Good GUI and configuring security policies is easy but the pricing needs improvement". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Proofpoint Email Protection, Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense and Trend Micro Email Security, whereas Fortinet FortiMail is most compared with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Fortinet FortiMail Cloud, Proofpoint Email Protection and Trend Micro Email Security. See our Cisco Secure Email vs. Fortinet FortiMail report.

    See our list of best Email Security vendors.

    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.