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Arkose vs Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Arkose
Ranking in Email Security
27th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Bot Management (9th), Anomaly Detection Tools (5th)
Cisco Secure Email Threat D...
Ranking in Email Security
23rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Arkose is 0.4%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense1.1%
Arkose0.4%
Other98.5%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Rajesh Podishetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Fraud controls have protected patient portals and now support trusted digital healthcare access
Arkose can be improved in several ways. Integration complexity requires alignment with healthcare IT systems, which is an area where Arkose is currently lagging. There is a need to balance security versus patient experience, as overly strict controls frustrate legitimate users who want to access the patient portal without excessive restrictions. Evolving threats present another challenge. Every day, fraudsters use generative AI to mimic human behavior, which requires Arkose to continually improve its threat detection. Since Arkose handles different systems that need to be controlled over time, there should be regular audits to determine which features need adjustment. Cost-wise, the platform requires improvement, as there is significant cost involved and considerable manual intervention needed, which should be brought into the AI automation. On an everyday basis, patient login verification sometimes experiences delays when internet issues occur, causing patients to wait long in queue. Insurance claims validation does not always happen easily due to application environment downtime. These operational improvements need to be addressed in Arkose Labs systems.
NM
Enginner at Millennium Information Technologies
Has faced challenges with configuration, taking actions, and learning curve but benefits from centralized management and good technical support
We have deployed Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense in two customer environments. It is still in development as a new product. Some customer requirements, such as sending logs to a Syslog server, are limited as ETD only supports sending audit logs. Customers have requirements for other system logs as well, which should be developed from their side. Another customer request is to restrict the IPs that can log in, which cannot be done from Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense yet. Any user with login details can log in. We can restrict the IPs in Cloud Mail Gateways, but not from Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense. It would be beneficial to improve this feature. Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense can take actions, such as requesting O365 to quarantine mail. In that case, the customer requires notification to the recipient from Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense. This option would be valuable if available. The real-time threat intelligence of Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is an AI-based classification. It took one to two months to optimize the classification, but we still experience some false positives. Reducing the learning period would be beneficial. The learning curve shows that in the beginning, there are numerous false positives. For one month, we had to reclassify the false positives manually until the system learned. Reducing the learning time would be much better. Additional features desired in the next release include IP restrictions and user logging IP restrictions, ensuring only the customer environment can log in to Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense. Logs forwarding needs improvement as currently it only has audit logs. In Cloud Mail Gateway, we can create an IPsec tunnel to forward logs. However, in Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, there is no option, and we must do API integration to send logs. Only SIM can get logs; Syslog cannot retrieve them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I also like that they challenge crawling in CAPTCHA for mobile. This is good compared to the traditional way."
"This solution is easy to use."
"I highly recommend it as one of the best choices."
"Currently, the ease of deployment is the low-hanging fruit for Cisco email security."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox can handle a complete portfolio, which is required to protect any kind of attack coming from emails. However, it does not have advanced phishing, but it is available through Cisco. If you compare Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox with the competition, in the competition you have to have one or two solutions together to address the customer's requirement, whereas Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox is addressing everything, such as web domain and email protection. If there is any kind of challenge it will come across through email."
"The features and functionalities are much better than Microsoft's in-built Defender plan, and this product has helped us to protect our organization from any malware attack in the past."
"Cisco has a threat mechanism called cloud-based Talos, where all the threats are inbuilt."
"Overall, it's certainly a very good idea to integrate another layer on top of Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection."
"Cisco's technical support is very good."
 

Cons

"Arkose need to provide something for testing."
"Integration complexity requires alignment with healthcare IT systems, which is an area where Arkose is currently lagging."
"The behavioral analysis capability of Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is not particularly helpful for identifying new, evolving threats within my company, as it keeps flagging legitimate emails as malicious."
"The solution is a bit expensive. It could be cheaper."
"There is still room for improvement in terms of integrations with other Cisco tools and non-Cisco tools. There is also some room for improvement needed in terms of the reporting."
"The search area has room for improvement."
"The search area has room for improvement. When you go to the next page, it remains at the bottom of the current page that you're on. Also, under the reports section, it allows you to see any "convictions," but if you want to search for those convictions you have to remember when they all came in and go back and edit the search accordingly. You cannot click on the list of convictions to actually see if you had a spike at a certain time."
"Cisco's multiple product lines and verticals made this just one of their many verticals, and we could see a shift in focus."
"I wouldn't recommend Cisco to others because I think Fortinet is better."
"Customers will benefit greatly from monthly billing because the majority of customers today use the cloud, be it Office 365, or Google Cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution’s pricing is manageable."
"It is expensive compared to other vendors."
"The feedback from vendors and customer is that it is expensive."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox does not have any competition with Sophos, Trend Micro, or other vendors of the world. However, there is a pricing premium for the solution. One has to look at it from that angle that while they are buying Cisco, there will be a premium, and Cisco justifies that premium value. That's why they're charging a high price."
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909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arkose?
Earlier, fraud management used to cost us around 15 million dollars per annum. After using Arkose Labs for fraud control, it helped us save around 9 million dollars. The cost is now 6 million dolla...
What needs improvement with Arkose?
Arkose can be improved in several ways. Integration complexity requires alignment with healthcare IT systems, which is an area where Arkose is currently lagging. There is a need to balance security...
What is your primary use case for Arkose?
I have been using Arkose for the last four years. Arkose is a fraud prevention and trust management platform that helps different sectors in the healthcare industry, including healthcare providers,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Secure Email Threat Defense?
Comparatively with other products, the pricing of Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is normal. As a technical guide, I am not very aware of the pricing details.
What needs improvement with Secure Email Threat Defense?
We have deployed Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense in two customer environments. It is still in development as a new product. Some customer requirements, such as sending logs to a Syslog server, ar...
What is your primary use case for Secure Email Threat Defense?
We are working with Cloud Mail Gateway and on-premise mail gateways. We have worked with Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense.
 

Also Known As

Arkose Email Intelligence, Arkose Bot Manager
Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox, Cisco CMD, Cisco Cloud Mailbox Defense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Luiss University, Lone Star College, T-Systems, Magyar Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about Arkose vs. Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.