Avanan vs Cisco Secure Email comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 17, 2023
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
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Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (9th)
Avanan
Ranking in Email Security
6th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (7th)
Cisco Secure Email
Ranking in Email Security
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 13.1%, down from 20.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Avanan is 4.2%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 10.3%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
Unique Categories:
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
12.3%
Microsoft Security Suite
1.5%
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
0.2%
 

Featured Reviews

Nagendra Nekkala. - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 14, 2023
The automated attack disruption works well if you have a strong policy configuration
365 Defender is a critical tool for mitigating attacks and preventing threats. We use it for email filtering and blocking phishing attacks throughout the entire enterprise. We have around 1,500 users.  365 Defender has improved our security across multiple categories. It's effective against…
BW
Nov 4, 2022
Fast support, easy tracking, and great customization
The main reason why we secured Avanan Cloud Email Security was to protect business emails from third-party threats. The digital coordination team has updated our outdated email conversation channels with a modern platform.  Customization has helped all the teams to define policies that can help…
Muhammad Naeemuddoja - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 14, 2023
Robust email security with advanced threat protection, seamless integration with the Cisco security ecosystem, and flexibility in deployment options
While Cisco is a preferred choice for larger enterprises, its products, especially in the realm of security, tend to be more expensive due to their advanced features. Many organizations commonly rely on Microsoft Outlook for their email needs. Transitioning to Cisco security solutions, including Cisco SecureMail, requires careful consideration and typically involves a learning stage. The decision between traditional hardware and virtual machines (VMs) for deploying solutions like Cisco Secure Mail often depends on financial considerations. VMs are generally more cost-effective compared to dedicated hardware, leading industries to increasingly favor VM deployment. The choice is particularly relevant when the server's capabilities are robust enough to meet organizational needs. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"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."
"Defender is a SaaS platform, so it offers more flexibility. Managing the permissions is easier. The solution's automated detection and response features are scalable."
"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."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"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."
"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."
"The product is not resource-intensive."
"The integration with all our existing and new applications is great."
"If we look at four to five years ago, we had close to six or eight people click a link in an email per month. Now, we are probably down to about five or six clicks a year, if not less."
"Email inspection has saved many employees from spam attacks and viruses from unauthorized sources."
"It can detect corrupted files and filters out documents with viruses."
"It can retract unsafe emails and remove them from the entire communication channel."
"This technology is one of Check Point's acquisitions, and it is currently a powerful tool that provides all the protection that is not found in other tools."
"When we don't understand some functionalities, the customer support staff responds fast to our calls and provides immediate action."
"The threat detection tools enable us to ascertain malware and phishing messages across the email network infrastructure."
"Administration of the email domains and custom filters are easily done via the web interface."
"It does a great job of preventing spam, malware, and ransomware. I can only go by what people have told me and what I've seen, but I have not seen spam in a year and a half to two years in my own company mailbox. And there are not a lot of catches where it's catching something that should have gotten through, either."
"The tech engineers are very knowledgeable."
"Cisco Secure Email has strong inbound services."
"There are a lot of filters for scam emails and things like that work out of the box. You can also use the antivirus features. I like its features."
"The most valuable features are protection against ransomware and spam."
"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."
"It is doing its work. It is doing what it was actually designed to do. It has ensured we don't have business email compromises, and it has also ensured that our brand Galaxy is unique all year round."
 

Cons

"The product must provide better malware detection."
"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not."
"This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."
"The customer service team could come up with clear tutorials on how to use this platform to help new teams."
"It is very difficult to find the required documentation."
"It should reduce the amount of time needed for thorough scanning."
"The unified dashboard that it displays needs some improvements in terms of the KPIs that they have."
"It is complicated for new users unfamiliar with the modern cloud networking infrastructure."
"The overall user interface is not attractive. It needs some improvement."
"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."
"The user interface is a bit complex."
"The user interface could be updated."
"I would rate the stability a six out of ten. We had multiple issues with the stability."
"Cisco Email Secure's pricing needs to be less. We have vendors who provide cheaper solutions with the same features."
"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 interface is dated. It has looked pretty much the same for 15 years or so. It would be helpful to be able to do everything from one spot. The centralized quarantine and reporting are completely separate from policy administration."
"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."
"Typically, in a phishing email, they try to use a name everybody's going to recognize, like the CEO's name or the CFO's name... With this appliance, the way it's designed at the moment, for us to really stop that with any level of confidence, we have to build a dictionary of all the names of the people we want it to check, and all the ways they could be spelled. My name would be in there as Phillip Collins, Phillip D. Collins, Phillip Dean Collins, Phil Collins, Phil D. Collins. There could be eight or 10 variations of my name that we'd have to put in the dictionary. There's no artificial intelligence to say "Phil Collins" could be all these other things, and to stop phishing from coming through in that way."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license."
"The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
"The solution could be better by simplifying the business model of their licensing. It was hard to figure out how to get the licensing done for the environment, initially."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution saves money so we have seen a return on investment."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"Avanan’s price is comparable to Barracuda."
"Having the flexibility and modeling to do the pricing that best fits the needs of the organization is incredibly ideal. That is what Avanan does. They know exactly how many users are using it, etc. We can tune the invoicing associated with how we are using the product so we can charge it back to the shows appropriately."
"The product is not the cheapest in the market."
"We have a monthly license that is $4 to $8 per user."
"Good pricing arrangement as an SaaS offering."
"The pricing of Avanan is reasonable."
"It is expensive. I would rate it 2 out of 10, where 1 is the most expensive and 10 is the cheapest."
"It's adapted to the market. It's similar to other vendors. We at least don't have many problems regarding that because Cisco is adaptable on that side. When we present the solutions to the customers, we tend to achieve the goals that the customer has in terms of the budget for such implementations."
"Cisco Secure Email is more expensive than other products. I rate it a five out of ten. There are no additional costs. You only need to pay the subscription amounts."
"It is a super big router that costs a few hundred thousand dollars."
"In my previous organization, avoiding four instances of CryptoLocker within an estimated six month period is approximately $600,000 in lost time and effort. Our five year cost was about a million dollars, and the four outages that we had equated to 65 percent of that five year cost."
"We do annual licensing for Cisco Secure Email Gatewayand SMA together, and possibly SmartNet support. Packaged together, the cost is just under $38,000."
"Licensing costs depend on how many users there are. It could range between $5 and $7 per month, per user."
"The pricing is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
48%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Construction Company
4%
Computer Software Company
17%
Educational Organization
17%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of variou...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
The product must provide better malware detection. The detection algorithms don't perform the way I hope they would.
What do you like most about Avanan?
Spam protection is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement with Avanan?
Avanan doesn't cover certain tool segments. Barracuda provides backup and retention of emails and Microsoft 365’s bac...
What do you like most about Cisco Secure Email?
Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Email?
The product's price falls on the higher side when compared to the other products on the market. Whether the product w...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Email?
I am not satisfied with the solution's reporting and logging.
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
No data available
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Bethel School District, ServiceSource, Capital Caring
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Find out what your peers are saying about Avanan vs. Cisco Secure Email and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
787,817 professionals have used our research since 2012.