Cisco Secure Email Reviews

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. 

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.

We are using it as our email firewall. It's our first line of email defense.

Overall, the ease of migration to Cisco's cloud email security from the on-prem solution was a positive experience. We are very happy with the change. It makes security easy. The cloud solution is doing a great job. We are stopping more emails, and in a better way, than we did in the past. It's also not stopping as many good emails, but I think this is because Talos has gotten better, rather than something to do with the cloud technology. But the numbers over the past year are significantly better compared to the past.

We like 

• AMP
• Threat Grid
• Sandboxing

The spam protection is also very good and 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 in terms of capacity or system load. It seems that machines on the cloud are more powerful than the ones that we had, in the legacy solution, on-premises.

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. It does have a new feature called Cloud URL Analysis, but we can see enough information about detection, information that helps us to properly configure the technology.

We have been using the cloud solution for one year, but before that we were using it on-premises for three years.

It's very stable. We haven't had any issues with the stability. It hasn't gone down, and it has managed the flow of our email volume really well.

The technical support is excellent. They are proactive. They are monitoring things and helping us every step of the way. The technical support is at an excellent level.

The migration to the cloud email security was complex because we have a lot of customization. We needed to reevaluate some of the policies that we were applying via the email security. But technically we had more difficulty previously because we didn't have the premium support. We had to read a lot of documentation and experiment. Now, with the premier support, it's easier.

We re-created everything in the cloud solution. We re-evaluated everything when we migrated. There were some things we didn't migrate, while some new things were created.

It took us nearly one year for all the integrations and the migration to be complete, from the initial evaluation of the new product to the end of the migration to CSE, when it assumed all the email traffic for our organization. We didn't have any particular problems with downtime during the migration. That time includes analyzing, configuring, and improving things in production.

Our team that works directly with Secure Email consists of five people who are configuring the tool.

We used consulting from Cisco the whole time during our migration. With the premium support we now have one person who knows our configuration, our needs, and who can help us more than in the past when we didn't have that level of support.

ROI is difficult to determine. We think we have seen ROI, but we need to have an incident to evaluate whether the investment has really paid off. But no incidents means it's a good investment.

We haven't saved money by moving from on-prem to the cloud email security because we acquired the premium support. But we are happy with it, as they help us not only with issues that have happened, but also with configuration and with learning the technology. This is a very important factor, which we value.

Cisco Secure Email and the support are priced well. It's not cheap, but there are other solutions that offer less and cost so much. For example, Microsoft is more expensive than Cisco.

We know there are some solutions that have a higher level of protection for email, but we're very happy with the price of this one and with the way it is working.

We have Microsoft email security too, but not as the first line of defense. Microsoft's email security has its advantages but it is less secure, less configurable, and less powerful than Cisco's solution.

It's a great solution for big enterprises that need a higher level of security than is offered by Microsoft solutions. Other solutions are targeted at smaller enterprises, that are without a security administrator and without people monitoring and supervising the technology. But for a big enterprise, Cisco Secure Email is a great option.

We have integrated the solution with SecureX and Threat Grid, and we already had Talos, of course. The Sandboxing is needed, it's a basic functionality for us. As for the rest of the integrations, they are less important. We integrate with some external feeds, but Talos is good enough for the technology not to need additional feeds.

When migrating from on-prem to the cloud email security, the interfaces are basically the same. The new interface was developed only for the cloud solution, but the classic interface, when it comes to the configuration of the machine, is basically the same for both the on-premises and cloud solutions.

Overall, it's a very configurable technology. We think it has all the weapons we need to fight against threats.

We are using it for our email gateway security for all our inbound and outbound email. We use a lot of the URL filtering and spam filtering as well as the dictionaries, e.g., if they try to spoof employee names.

We didn't have an email gateway initially. As spam was ramping up, the junk was getting through. So, we needed a gateway. We then worked with a local company who sold us this product and some training as well as how to get it up and running, configuring it. Over the years, they have been constantly changing it.

We use a lot of their search features to search for emails that have come through. Our end users come through it. They say, "This didn't email didn't arrive," or "How did this email get through?" So, I am constantly searching through message tracing and using that all the time.

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.

When you run a trace and you are in the cloud, it's harder. You run a trace and it generates trace results. I haven't figured out how to get those off of the cloud. I don't know if there is a path to open up a ticket on that.

Before it was purchased by Cisco, we had already been using IronPort since 2005 or earlier.

It is very stable. We have never had any problems.

The way we are using it now, it does require maintenance. I decided to take a zero trust for URL links coming in emails or unknown links. Then, if there is a link that somebody wants to get through, then I have to add that to the list to allow it. So, there are some dictionaries and things to maintain the way we are running it now that we didn't have in the past. For many years, we got it running, then forgot about it. It just ran and ran. Now, I think it is just a different environment due to the level of phishing emails, etc. 

The way that we are running it now, there is more to maintain, like the dictionaries and the list of employees, so somebody doesn't spoof an employee's name. It takes maybe an hour or so a week to update the dictionaries and things like that. 

Right now, I'm the only one maintaining it.

The scalability is good. It seems like it still has capacity in the cloud. It is hard to tell in the cloud. However, the ones that we had on-prem were running real close to their limit for whatever reason: memory swapping and CPU utilization. So, we had to do something there. Right now, it seems like there is capacity/room to grow.

The solution protects 450 users. We plan to gradually increase users.

They have always been good when helping with problems. They are responsive and always come up with an answer.

We migrated from Cisco ESA to Cisco Cloud Email Security. 

The appliances were getting close to the end of life. They were using a lot of CPU, so it was time to do something with them. IT management seems to be going more to the cloud now, so it made sense to go to the Cisco Cloud solution. The machines that we had on-prem were really slow. For whatever reason, they were getting real slow. When we went to the cloud, we got away from that problem.

For the initial deployment, we might have spent a week getting it up and running. Then, we went for a day or two to training.

There wasn't really any downtime involved during the migration from our on-prem to Cisco Cloud Email Security, which was important to us. We didn't want to interrupt email flow. So, we prepared it, then there was a cutover. 

The migration from the vendor’s on-prem to Cloud Email Security wasn't too difficult.

A few times, we needed Cisco's expertise in the migration process to solve some problems for free. Because it is in the cloud, you can't get to the command line interface to access and download/upload files. So, I had to rely on Cisco for that.

There is a huge return compared to if we didn't have a gateway appliance, as far as blocking malicious emails.

The licensing was all transferred. A fair amount of the configuration had to be done by hand. We didn't transfer the people safe list and block lists. There were a number of things that we didn't transfer because they were in the cloud. It was a matter of going through and reconfiguring.

The familiar user interface was important in our decision to migrate from Cisco’s on-prem to Cloud Email Security. We have a lot of other projects going on. Being able to migrate to something that we were already familiar with versus migrating to Proofpoint or something else was a major decision factor. I didn't have to invest that much time, resources, and learning in a whole new product.

If you compare it over Proofpoint, it was a big savings. It was very competitive. It saved us from buying new appliances. Though, I don't know that would have been a big expense, because I didn't do a cost analysis of staying on-prem and replacing the appliances. We were more comparing the solution to Proofpoint, and the cost was considerably less than Proofpoint. It was already in place and working for us on-prem. So, I didn't want to move to Proofpoint because there would have been much more to learn.

Some of the things that we were doing in Cisco, we can't do it the same way in Proofpoint, from as much as I have looked at it. I know there is a difference. They have different solutions. They have some solutions that aren't configurable at all, such as, the lower price ones. They have another one where you are just like a tenant and everybody gets the same thing, then for it to be customizable, it is a lot more expensive. In orders of magnitude, it is more expensive than Cisco, which didn't make sense. With all the little tweaks and customizations that we're doing, I couldn't see how to do that based on the time I spent looking at Proofpoint. It might be doable, but I didn't figure out how to do it. So, I think Cisco is a little more configurable than Proofpoint for tweaking. I could be wrong, but that is my impression.

There wasn't much of a learning curve involved in migrating from Cisco’s on-prem to Cloud Email Security because they are very similar. There were just a few things that were different.

It is a good product. Be prepared to invest time in learning it, like anything. You need to have somebody who is a key administrator, like any enterprise-level product that you would bring in. Even if you will have Salesforce or whatever, you need to have an administrator who knows how to keep it running.

Email threats just keep getting worse and worse, so you need to keep on your toes.

I would rate this solution as a nine (out of 10).

The primary use case for Cisco Secure Email is for email security. It is used in scenarios similar to Fortinet, focusing on email security and integrating with Cisco Firewalls.

The integration with Cisco Firewalls has worked fine, allowing the two devices to share information about incidents. When deployed in an environment where most products are from Cisco, it facilitates easier integration.

Cisco's Secure Email integrates with Cisco Firewalls, utilizing the AMP as their anti-malware engine, which allows for information sharing between devices. 

Additionally, Cisco Secure Mail works well with data security integration, particularly in environments where all or most products are from Cisco.

The primary areas for improvement are the pricing and the complexity of deployment. 

The pricing is considered expensive, and the deployment process is complex, involving many steps and usually requiring more than one technician.

You can say the same period also as one year for Fortinet.

The latency is better compared to Fortinet. Based on my experience, it is a faster solution, particularly in scenarios involving firewall or malware protection.

Scalability is fine with Cisco Secure Email, as it does not place any limitations.

I would rate Cisco's customer support between eight and nine out of ten. Cisco's support is much better than Fortinet.

Positive

The initial setup is a bit complex due to multiple steps required for deployment.

The return on investment is not very good due to the expensive nature of the product.

The licensing is expensive and a bit complex with the new approach Cisco has taken. It is considered more complicated than other vendors.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Cisco Secure Email is our primary gateway. We are a service provider in India. Cisco scans every email that gets into our system.

We faced a targeted attack. Most of our customers were targeted, but no one got the email. It was quarantined by Cisco. That is why we are still using Cisco.

The solution has no competition. ATP has been the most valuable in improving our email security posture. It has helped our customers too. The click-time URL protection is also valuable.

When we use multiple Cisco devices, we cannot manage the servers with a single UI. We must log in to each server for the management. We cannot manage multiple devices from a single UI. The solution has some inhibitions. They need to be finetuned.

I have been using the solution for 15 years. I am using the latest version.

I rate the tool’s stability an eight out of ten.

We are supporting around two million mailboxes. I rate the tool’s scalability a seven out of ten. It is a multi-server architecture, and I have to manage them separately.

We hardly get in touch with the support team. Whenever we got in touch with the team, the support was good.

Positive

We are using both cloud and on-prem versions. The deployment took less than two hours. We keep a backup of the configuration ready. Once we implement the server, we just put in the configuration and start.

We do the deployment ourselves. We also do maintenance and troubleshooting. We have around 20 L3 engineers on our technical team.

The pricing is good. We do not have any issues. I rate the pricing a five to six out of ten. There are no hidden costs. We know about the additional costs associated with the tool.

We do not integrate the product with other tools. I will recommend the product to others. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

It provides good IT assistance. 

It is not user-friendly, and it is quite complicated. So, it should be more user-friendly. The GUI is difficult to understand. 

We have been using this solution for four years. We don't use the latest version of the hardware. 

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, it is good.

It is not scalable. For scalability, Cisco products are not good. That is the problem. And for deployment, it's a three-tier architecture system.

We have around 200+ users.

Cisco's tech support is good. But they respond very late. The support in itself is good, so there is room for improvement. 

The setup is quite complicated. It took us one week to deploy. 

The deployment was done by the consultant company.

As per market availability, this solution is more expensive than other vendors.

My company is looking for a new email filtering server or system. So, I was just making the comparison with Cisco and FortiMail, and that's what we're actually looking for a new or updated system. So this is the reason I was doing this R&D.

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