Avanan vs Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Avanan and Microsoft Defender for Office 365 based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Email Security solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Avanan vs. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Report (Updated: March 2023).
688,083 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
"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.""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.""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.""I love the Advanced Malware Protection feature. It works very well... The appliance has more security such as SDF, DKIM, DMARC, and encryption.""It's flexible. There are a lot of rules and policies that can be easily applied for certain employees or certain mailboxes.""The malicious URL scanning, as well as the anti-malware features, have been really useful for us in our environment.""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.""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."

More Cisco Secure Email Pros →

"I highly recommend this solution to any prospective buyer.""Email Attachment Protection detects any insecure files and quickly blocks them to prevent the spread of viruses to other secure documents.""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.""It can detect corrupted files and filters out documents with viruses.""I like Avanan's SmartDLP module. It's seamless, and the administrative overhead is low. We aren't a very sophisticated operation. We just want to reduce our exposure, so we find ThreatCloud helpful. Avanan's acquisition by Check Point was beneficial for them.""The most valuable feature of Avanan is its effectiveness. When scanning incoming emails for threats it can in an automated fashion, quarantine suspicious attachments.""Email encryption enhances end to end security of any data before it passes through the networking system.""The customizable rules allow you to change aspects."

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"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution.""Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content.""At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us.""It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself.""The technical support is good and quick to resolve issues.""Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features.""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 most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pros →

Cons
"We have been struggling in the last month with Cisco encryption and with the S/MIME encryption. I don't know if it is an issue on our side or if these features of the solution are not working very well.""We have Microsoft and we have the E5 licenses, they have more EDR responses on certain emails. That's something that Cisco ESA on the cloud doesn't have. They don't do anything about MITRE attacks. They only detect if there is a malicious email or a threat and they remove it.""I would like more functionality and how to use it for Level 2 type staff. The biggest issue is it needs to be easier to use and navigate.""The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky.""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.""The area of license renewal should be improved. We normally renew our license every year. There is a feature called smart licensing, and I switched from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode because of what I thought smart licensing does. I thought it would make licensing renewal seamless and very swift, but ever since I've switched to smart licensing, each time I want to renew my license, it is a whole lot of headache. The process is not smooth, and I had to keep calling Cisco TAC to see how the issue can be resolved. At one point, I wanted to revert back to the legacy mode, but I can't revert. Once you switch from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode, you can't revert. They should improve on the visibility of the smart licensing mode so that it can indeed be smart and easier to use for the license renewal every year. That is one challenge.""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.""The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear."

More Cisco Secure Email Cons →

"It should reduce the amount of time needed for thorough scanning.""They should come up with a mobile application so that it can be more flexible.""The cost can be reviewed to enable SMEs to acquire it and enjoy great security features.""The system could be designed to give corporate emails first priority due to demands.""The unified dashboard that it displays needs some improvements in terms of the KPIs that they have.""Sometimes it seemed like the allow list wasn't working. I've created many allow list rules however, they still seem to be blocked; the same is true with the blocked list rules.""The system response in a slow computing device affects performance when sending and receiving emails.""There are times when we have false positives."

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"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.""I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way.""This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products.""Configuration requires going to a lot of places rather than just accessing one tab.""The custom alerts have to improve a lot.""In some situations, it has not been able to pick impersonated emails having no attachments. Technical support definitely has a scope for improvement.""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.""In one of the reports I can get the exact place where a vulnerable file resides. But for that, I need to explicitly go into the device and check. If they could include that file part in the report, without my having to go to the device itself, that would help."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There are additional fees for adding features."
  • "At times, we feel the pricing is a bit too high, but then, there is also room for discounts. We enjoy a lot of discounts, and that is why we are still with them. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
  • "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."
  • "It is a super big router that costs a few hundred thousand dollars."
  • More Cisco Secure Email Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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."
  • "We have a monthly license that is $4 to $8 per user."
  • More Avanan Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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."
  • "The pricing is normal. Considering its popularity, it's not overpriced."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It's flexible. There are a lot of rules and policies that can be easily applied for certain employees or certain… more »
    Top Answer:My opinion on the licensing of this solution is that it is a mess that needs sorting out. I am not particularly bothered… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:It is simple to deploy this platform and interact with the set features.
    Top Answer:The pricing and licensing terms are favorable to our enterprise.
    Top Answer:For the period I have been using Avanan, most services have been excellent and ever-productive. The scanning system and… more »
    Top Answer:Defender for Office 365 has helped eliminate having to look at multiple dashboards and that is the aspect I like most… more »
    Top Answer:If we had compared it with other vendors, then I would have more to say about the cost, but we didn't. However… more »
    Top Answer:One area for improvement is integration. For example, when it comes to external SaaS platforms, we were not able to get… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
    MS Defender for Office 365
    Learn More
    Overview

    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.”

    Avanan is The Cloud Security Platform. Protect all your SaaS applications using tools from over 60 industry-leading vendors in just one click.

    How can Avanan protect any SaaS with any security in just one click? We 'cloudify' over 60 best-of-breed security solutions and connect them directly to your SaaS account without rerouting traffic or using a proxy. It takes just seconds to build the most complete security stack from the industry’s most trusted names in malware protection, data leak prevention, encryption, endpoint compliance and more.

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 protects all of Office 365 against advanced threats like business email compromise and credential phishing, and automatically investigates and remediates attacks. With Defender for O365 you get Integrated threat protection for all of Office 365 that gives you:

    - Native protection for Office 365 with built-in protection that simplifies administration, lowers total cost of ownership, and boosts productivity.

    - Unparalleled scale and effectiveness with powerful automated workflows to improve SecOps efficiency.

    - A complete solution for collaboration that protects you from attacks across the kill chain.

    To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

    Offer
    Learn more about Cisco Secure Email
    Learn more about Avanan
    Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Office 365
    Sample Customers
    SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
    Bethel School District, ServiceSource, Capital Caring
    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Energy/Utilities Company18%
    Retailer18%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Government8%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    REVIEWERS
    Recruiting/Hr Firm23%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    Media Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization30%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Construction Company5%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Government8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise55%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise33%
    Large Enterprise43%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise34%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business28%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise54%
    Buyer's Guide
    Avanan vs. Microsoft Defender for Office 365
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Avanan vs. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    688,083 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Avanan is ranked 5th in Email Security with 17 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is ranked 1st in Email Security with 19 reviews. Avanan is rated 9.4, while Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Avanan writes "We've noticed a significant decline from people accidentally or intentionally clicking on things". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 writes "Prioritizes threats across our enterprise and safeguards us from any incoming threats or viruses". Avanan is most compared with Abnormal Security, IRONSCALES, Mimecast Email Security with Targeted Threat Protection, Proofpoint Email Protection and Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection, whereas Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Mimecast Email Security with Targeted Threat Protection, Barracuda Email Security Gateway, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection and IRONSCALES. See our Avanan vs. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 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.