Cisco Secure Email Reviews

We use the solution for endpoint protection, including email protection, such as antivirus, anti-phishing, content filtering, outbreak filtering, and greymail protection.

An important feature is retrospective analysis, which allows the solution to retrieve emails sent even a week ago, even if they have already been delivered. This is done by analyzing emails for malicious content after they have been sent.

Cisco Secure Email focuses on cloud-based threat intelligence and endpoint security. The current version improves on the on-premises version by integrating Threat Grid and Advanced Malware Protection, which helps users quickly identify malicious emails.

The product is stable. We never had issues. If everything is configured right, it's something you can easily forget about.

The solution is scalable.

1300 users are using this solution.

We used it once when the appliance was acting up and then realized that an upgrade was needed. We follow up on the requirements upgrades and patching. It doesn't require much patching.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Cisco Secure Email can be integrated in-house, but we are too busy. Therefore, we have decided to use an integrator.

Even though Cisco Secure Email is not cheap, it offers a good return on investment. Cisco needs to ensure that its products are functional and have a long support timeline.

The solution is not cheap.

Cisco Secure Email is a fast data service. Because of this, most of its features are already pre-configured. All clients need to do is customize and tailor the service to their specific use cases.

I would recommend anyone using the on-premise ports move to the cloud.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I use the solution for spam filtering.

The solution works well. Cisco claims to have the biggest threat intelligence database in the world. We trust them because they are enterprise-level products. If we are protected, then it is working well. I am satisfied with the overall performance of the solution.

The management features of the product are not up to date. It does not match the features provided by the new vendors in the market. The solution does not offer features to protect workloads on the cloud.

My organization has been using the solution for the last 20 years.

Support is not good. The support team provides a slow response. I rate the support team a six or seven out of ten.

Neutral

We pay at least 25% more for Cisco Secure Email than Trend Micro. Cisco’s support is better than that of Trend Micro.

The solution is expensive. Every additional workload or feature has an additional cost. The product should provide a single bundle for protecting both on-premises and cloud solutions. We do not have to pay for support.

We do not have the resources to review the product technically. It is very difficult to analyze these weaknesses. As an end user, we need something to defend us and block threats. If any product works with 95% efficiency, we can say that it works well. Email protection is very critical. No one should take risks.

Cloud protection apps are very critical to the business. They should be easy to configure and easy to manage. These days, there are hundreds of products available. It's very difficult to find a good solution. Just because a tool is popular, it does not mean that it will always be the best solution. The backend technique is very important. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and threat intelligence are very important.

If we have more knowledge, we can have more protection. If we don't have the knowledge, we can't. The solution does not offer a complete bundle for on-premise and cloud protection. If we need more features, they charge us more. They do not offer all features together.

Overall, I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case for Cisco Secure Email is placing it at the edge and then passing it off to another service, like, for example, Postfix. We have security policies that allow certain clients to email.

The user interface massively improved our organization. The device itself works perfectly fine and it's not too complicated to write policies.

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.

Cisco Secure Email could rename features in the menus. They could also show a flow of how things go and where the policies sit in conjunction with the actual application.

I have been using Cisco Secure Email for about seven years.

I would say that we hardly had any issues with the stability of this solution.

Tech support can be a bit of a hit-and-miss. Depends on what type of engineer you get when you contact them. Whenever we had an issue, we would either go to the account manager or another engineer.

Positive

My opinion on the licensing of this solution is that it is a mess that needs sorting out. I am not particularly bothered by pricing as I administer it and make recommendations for people to buy or not to buy.

We would use multiple vendors to secure our infrastructure from end to end so that we can detect and remediate threats. We would take everything through email. Email Security Appliance has antivirus and IDS and IPS on anyway. We've got policies in place that only we can receive from certain domains and certain emails within those domains from the customers that they were a part of. We would then pass that on to another service like Postfix. They would then sort out anything that needs to do attachment-wise or anything similar. Eventually, it would go through the Palo Alto firewall as well for the traffic, so anything malicious is picked up across all sets of vendors in that solution.

This solution did not save time for our IT staff, not particularly. It was something we had to deal with and as a network engineer, I had to deal with that aspect of it.

This solution did not save our organization's time because it was a new product that we were selling, so we had more work.

This tool did not help us consolidate our tools because it was a new solution.

We chose Cisco Secure Email because, as the phrase goes, you can't get fired for buying Cisco. We are used to the Cisco product stack as we used the Cisco suite in previous companies.

We started using Cisco Secure Email because we had a lot of junk emails, phishing, and things like that. We wanted to secure the email sites for the end users.

It has had an impact on the awareness of the employees. Previously, a lot of employees were complaining about junk emails, phishing, etc. After using Cisco Secure Email, spam, and other things have been reduced drastically. I'm not sure how it filters them out, but it just learns based on the email subject and other factors. It just filters them and sends them to the junk box. There is an add-on, and if you think that an email is suspicious, you just add it to the add-on or move it to the junk box.

It saves time. Previously, we had to filter the emails and see which ones are junk and if it has been reported or not. There was a daily checking of the mailboxes to see what was going on and what had been blocked, but with Cisco Secure Email, all of that is just in one tab. You see all the emails that have been blocked and the reason they have been blocked. It saves a lot of time for us. It does the job that we need it to do. 

It's flexible. There are a lot of rules and policies that can be easily applied for certain employees or certain mailboxes.

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.

We have been using Cisco Secure Email for two and a half to three years.

It's stable. We haven't had any issues with it.

After moving from Exchange to Office 365, we thought that we needed to upgrade the license or do a couple of changes, but it was already a part of the plan from the product itself. So, it was easily scalable.

We didn't have to contact them. Our partner did all the jobs that were needed. It was part of the AMC, and since they set it up, it needed just a couple of tweaks when we shifted from Exchange to Office 365. All the support has always been through the partner. Our experience with them has been good. 

Based on my knowledge, its implementation was fast, and there were no issues when it was implemented.

We did a couple of PoC, and it was leading at that time in the market. We compared it to Barracuda and a couple of others. Its ability had set it apart from others. The partner was good, and the PoC was on point. It did what needed to be done. 

I would rate Cisco Secure Email an eight out of ten.

It is like a gateway for email. They receive all your email traffic. They send over your email traffic, and it is the first incoming point and the last outgoing point. They deliver the traffic to the destination. Whatever it is, you want to be informed of what is happening. Depending on the site's deployment, if you have a single device, then you have all the information on the device. And if you have several devices, you have all the information on every single device for each device. However, for consolidation, you need another device called Security Management Appliance (SMA).

It has no real interaction with other stuff. It does not interact with a gateway beyond the networking level. You have a router and that router provides IP addresses for a switch, etc. You don't have to integrate Cisco Secure Email with something specific since it is standalone and only requires basic essential networking. You can integrate it with a firewall, like ASA, but that firewall has to allow traffic. To do that, you would open port 25.

It is available to be deployed as on-premises, on the cloud, and hybrid cloud.

The solution is valuable if you are looking for a security email gateway that provides you with the most services possible. It has anything that you may be looking for in an email deployment, except for the endpoint which should be supported by something else, like Exchange. It doesn't have mailboxes because it is a gateway.

There are some methods to authenticate email, i.e., putting a stamp or seal of trust on an email, where one method is DKIM and another is SPF.

• For SPF in the DNS, where you have records that list the different devices or IP addresses that can send email from a specific domain, a security device can consult that DNS and check if the mail coming from that domain is coming from an authorized source.
• DKIM is a cryptographic signature of an email. It is usually what you announce is the public key of that system's PKI and verify the signature in the headers. You have a checksum of all the contents so it is possible to define or identify whether the message has been tampered with in route.

They are mutually exclusive in a way, so DMARC consolidates both. It provides alignment with the IP address, domain name, etc., and has to match at least one, being properly aligned. It has become something very important for compliance.

When you are receiving, you use all this information to decide whether an email is legitimate. Or, if you also need to deploy your DKIM, DMARC, and SPF infrastructure, that lets the rest of the world know where you are sending email from and how you are authenticating your email.

It can honor all SPF, DKIM, and DMARC rule sets and apply rules based on the results of these tests as well as sign the DKIM. Therefore, your email can comply with whatever you are announcing on your DNS for the rest of the world to know that you know about the signed domains. It has perfect, robust integration on that. 

The most valuable feature is reputation filtering. In the beginning, it was based on just the IP source. but it has now evolved to domain reputation. It allows you to classify different IP sources and different sender groups, where you can reject to throttle to whitelist from any IP sources, domains, etc. Based on the reputation gathering, the reputation is powered by Talos security. It is a super powerful feature. That alone gets rid of more than 50% of the crap from the traffic flow, before even hitting the anti-spam or antivirus.

If you have some knowledge about email, it is a pretty simple solution that has many controls on different levels, from the gateway part to accepting messages from certain sources to stringent filtering. It is state of the art with anti-spam, antivirus, and different threat prevention features. 

SecureX is powered by Talos, Sourcefire, etc. Today, it is the largest, richest threat intelligence on the market. SecureX is quite standalone in regards to integration since you put it into the network, whether it is on your own cloud or a third-party cloud.

If you go to the filtering level, you can have very accurate features or filters since it is programmatic. At a certain point, you can define sets of rules, such as where the email is coming from, whether it has this content, or to apply this policy. For example, if it has the same considerations, but the content is different, apply this another policy. It is super flexible and very customizable to your needs. It is not difficult to use.

It provides information, reporting, logging, and tracking. It has powerful tracking, so you can know exactly and accurately where an email came from, for which specific device, etc. It shows the emails which were:

• Dropped
• Rejected
• Quarantined
• Accepted by which policies.

It also shows the rule sets applied for that email and considers

• The source
• The Offender
• Anything else that you may consider in an email.

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. 

You can consolidate on SMA if you want to spam or threats quarantined for multiple devices. It is not advisable for a single device, because if it fails, you are left without any email.

I would like to see a few changes to the UX. 

There is space for improvement with data loss prevention, particularly with third-parties integration. Data loss prevention is quite important, though most customers have some third-party or other elements in their network doing data loss prevention, specifically for email. However, if it could be possible to integrate with other solutions, not only on the email flow, but on analysis for a connector or something like that, then that would be ideal.

The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear.

I have been using it since 2004.

It does not add anything to the potential downtime for a corporation, unless everything fails. If all your email exchanges fail, then you don't have email, but this solution does not affect the performance of your whole network. 

At the minimum, you need two devices. If you have two devices and one fails, then the other one can handle the work, though you might have some email delays.

You should keep track of what is going on. It does need some daily administration, fixes, and policy changes.

In general, their technical support is really good. There are a few who are still learning, e.g., not providing enough help, but there is always the option to escalate.

It was the IronPort before Cisco acquired it in 2007. It is the same appliance and software. This solution has been upgraded by several versions, but it is basically the same, they just changed the name. 

I have done the architecture for a company in China.

It is a super big router that costs a few hundred thousand dollars.

These days, the first tiers of this market have good enough anti-spam, antivirus, etc. These have become routine. There are some other not-so-good solutions, like Barracuda and Fortinet, but it depends on how much you are willing to pay as this solution is not cheap.

The best other solution is Proofpoint. They have been long-time competitors who have also been evolving. The big difference is it is more fancy because it has more bells and whistles. The solution is good as well. However, they are super expensive, not cheap.

If you want a multi-tiered deployment, you could perhaps have Secure Email on the cloud and Proofpoint on-premises. Then, you have the two best solutions in the market working together. I have customers who have done this and are satisfied. Very few solutions can compete with Secure Email and Proofpoint outside of the price. If your budget is a problem, then you have a problem.

Along with Proofpoint, this is the best solution in terms of preventing spam, malware, and ransomware.

Check Point has fancy graphics and an interface where you can do a lot. The Cisco Secure gateway has both, though not as fancy as Check Point, but a big majority of the tasks can be done on the graphical interface level.

It is not so difficult to us, but neither is it easy, particularly if you don't have some knowledge about email.

Whatever you are looking for with an email security appliance or device, you mostly have it, though nobody is perfect.

The solution’s ability to prevent phishing and business-email compromise is fairly good. DKIM, DMARC, and SPF integration are the best way to prevent phishing, spoofing, etc. However, they still have room to work in this area.

Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution.

I am not satisfied with the solution's reporting and logging.

I have been using Cisco Secure Email for the last five years.

I like Proofpoint's reporting, management, and interface. It has a single dashboard, very simple configuration and integration, and a very user-friendly GUI.

The solution's initial setup is not difficult. However, it has the management's separate interface and email security's separate interface, which we need to manage.

It was not difficult to integrate Cisco Secure Email with other products in our infrastructure, but it has many complicated options. Sometimes, we need to go to the command line to check the debugging. The solution's DLP (data loss prevention) feature is partially for compliance. DLP needs a full-fledged solution with the agent implementation. Until the agent is not there, you cannot implement DLP.

The solution's email encryption feature works fine. Cisco Secure Email is not a single platform. The engineer has to be a little technical to understand the command line, which is different from the firewall. There are different types of command lines. You have to check the mail log using different command lines.

Overall, I rate the solution eight and a half out of ten.

I use the solution for email security. 

The tool comes with AI features. It is good for clients who already use Cisco products due to integration. 

Cisco Email Secure's pricing needs to be less. We have vendors who provide cheaper solutions with the same features. 

I have been using the product for half a year. 

I rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. 

I rate Cisco Secure Email a nine out of ten. 

The tool's technical support team answers queries quickly. 

Positive

Comparing Microsoft Defender and Cisco's Email Secure service, partners have noted that while Microsoft Defender offers email security, the tool's additional layer of protection provides further defense against threats like spam and phishing emails. The AI features filter out phishing emails. I have worked with FortiMail and Barracuda before Cisco Secure Email. 

The product's deployment is easy in a cloud environment. You don't need to install it for the Office 365 product. 

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. 

I rate the overall product a seven to eight out of ten. 

Cisco Secure Email has strong inbound services. 

The solution does not have a strong outbound service. It should also integrate DLP. 

I have been working with the solution for five to six years. 

I rate the tool's stability seven to eight out of ten. 

I rate Cisco Secure Email's scalability a five out of ten. 

Cisco Secure Email's installation is neither difficult nor simple. I rate it a seven out of ten. The tool's deployment takes around an hour to complete. 

You need to look for more options before finalizing Cisco Secure Email. It does not get in touch with us regularly for feedback. I rate it a seven out of ten. 

It is easy to use. It is not widely used, but it is not tough to understand. Usually, it takes five to six months to become an expert in that particular product because there is not much in it.

The Cisco database is more bug-prone and less accurate than the databases of other email security solutions. Whenever we get a phishing email, Microsoft email server, TruePoint, or Barracuda, they have a much better database. Because Cisco is using Talos, which is not a good database, they do not have much information in the database. So that is really lagging very much behind.

So that is not much recommended by the customers. Every time, customers get frustrated by using them.

There's room for improvement in the DevOps database. It has many spam emails. Usually, we have to report to the Telos team for samples, whether it's spam or a legitimate email. If that is done, then the customer environment won't get compromised easily because more than 80% of cyber-attacks are through emails. So email is like sanitizer it was used in hospitals before COVID, but after, it's provided widely to users.

I used this solution for a year. 

I would rate the stability a six out of ten. We had multiple issues with the stability. Usually, the customer complains that there's an email coming from an outside sender, and it enters our environment, and our email gets multiple emails from a single sender. There might be suspicious emails or multiple things that we usually get from customers.

I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. Cisco has to improve its database because email security is something like DNS servers. So we have to improve the database and put more information initially in it. 

The initial setup is easy. It starts with the VLS for Open IT. Initially, the host access table is there in the front end. Based on that, we can filter out traffic with IPs from the scale of -10 to +10 if it applies. If you want to whitelist an IP, you need to check the IVRX code. If that code is okay, then we provide a list based on the organization. 

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.

Usually, it's GUI-friendly, and also, the Relics are there on the GUI. We can create some relics, or it's automated from the backend by the development team. We just put in our initial setup requirements, and based on that, we create a red x rule. Then we can implement it into the message filter, and we can handle whatever we want, whether it's blocking emails coming from spam or anything else.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. Once you have hands-on experience with it over a period of time, you will get hands-on experience, and you will be able to understand it. It's easy to use, not that much complicated.

Cisco Secure Email's most valuable is email certification.

The product's GUI for the dashboard needs improvement.

We have been using Cisco Secure Email for one year.

I rate the product's stability a ten out of ten.

One administration executive in our organization uses Cisco Secure Email. I rate its scalability a ten out of ten.

The initial setup has medium complexity. I rate the process a five out of ten. We follow the Cisco guidelines for deployment. It requires two executives to conduct the process.

It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing an eight or nine.

I recommend Cisco Secure Email and rate it a ten out of ten.