Barracuda Email Protection vs Cisco Secure Email comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on May 17, 2023

We performed a comparison between Barracuda Email Protection and Cisco Secure Email based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Barracuda Email Protection was described as simple, with some taking up to five days to complete it. Cisco Secure Email was generally found to be fast and easy, although some found it complex but engaging. The deployment model varied, with some using on-prem solutions and others using global providers. Both solutions were easily customizable, but some reviewers suggested that the setup guide could be improved. Upgrading the system did not affect production for either product.
  • Features: Barracuda Email Protection and Cisco Secure Email have distinct valuable features. Barracuda is excellent at blocking spam and malware, providing easy message retrieval, and cloud-to-cloud backup. It also has a user-friendly interface. Meanwhile, Cisco offers Advanced Malware Protection, Advanced Phishing Protection, and Outbreak Filters. The reputation filtering feature is useful as it enables the classification of IP sources and sender groups. Cisco's solution is highly customizable, with a clear graphical interface and robust tracking capabilities. Its advanced phishing protection and awareness tool integration are also highly regarded. While both solutions offer valuable features, Barracuda is more focused on ease of use and scalability, while Cisco offers a wider range of advanced protection features.
  • Pricing: Barracuda Email Protection offers reasonable setup pricing with sales team flexibility, though licensing and pricing could be better. Cisco Secure Email has a range of pricing options, with customizable solutions that may require more investment, but overall adaptable to market pricing. Cisco Secure Email has a medium level of pricing compared to other products.
  • Service and Support: Barracuda Email Protection's technical support is highly praised for being exceptional, helpful, and responsive. On the other hand, Cisco Secure Email's support is described as knowledgeable, patient, and prompt in resolving issues. Some customers have reported inconsistent experiences with Cisco's support engineers, but there is always the option to escalate. Some customers also depend on their local Cisco security team for assistance. In general, both products provide satisfactory levels of service to their customers.
  • ROI: Both Barracuda Email Protection and Cisco Secure Email have shown positive ROI according to reviewers, with no significant difference in this aspect between the two products.

Comparison Results: Based on peerSpot user reviews, Barracuda Email Protection is more affordable and user-friendly, while Cisco Secure Email offers more advanced features and customization options.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda Email Protection vs. Cisco Secure Email Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 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
"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 product is not resource-intensive.""The deployment capability is a great feature.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance.""The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use.""The technical support is good and quick to resolve issues.""Our customers are satisfied with Defender for 365 because Microsoft products are easy to use and customize to meet the client's needs. Everything is in one place, so we can adjust policies as needed for phishing, DLP, ATP, or any other security features that our clients want to apply.""Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pros →

"When we got the service, it included the email archiver with unlimited storage.""The most valuable features of Barracuda Essentials are it's a trusted name and is rated very high on review sites. It blocks high percentages of spam and junk email and it's in the cloud. They have hardware appliances, but this is in the cloud. The solution is very effective at blocking malware and blocking spam and this is what we are looking for. There's not a whole lot of complexity, you want a solution that is very good at blocking out all of the unwanted emails.""The best feature of Barracuda Email Protection is that it provides protection for Microsoft 365.""We now have a secondary backup of Office 365 that's much easier to retrieve compared to Microsoft. If someone deletes something in Office 365, we can get it back within Office 365, but it's difficult. Barracuda is much easier. There is a lot less management needed using Barracuda. The management becomes much easier for Office 365 and it's no longer on-prem, so there are fewer hours managing on-prem devices, servers, and things of that nature. We don't have network appliances anymore for the backup of our information.""The most valuable features of Barracuda Email Protection are flexibility and customization.""Barracuda email protection is stable. I would give it a nine because of its strong cybersecurity features.""The solution is straightforward to set up.""The most valuable aspect includes attempts to spoof or compromise domains from external sources."

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"The tool comes with AI features. It is good for clients who already use Cisco products due to integration.""I love the Advanced Malware Protection feature. It works very well... The appliance has more security such as SDF, DKIM, DMARC, and encryption.""Administration of the email domains and custom filters are easily done via the web interface.""Cisco Secure Email is part of Cisco's extensive efforts and investments in technology, especially in the realm of cyber security. The product is one among many security solutions offered by Cisco.""The tool has a DLP solution which we can implement. Its database is updated regularly.""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.""Because we scan products, and there is a lot of critical data, security is very important in these cases.""At one point, there was a zero-day attack. The Cisco appliance detected it and stopped it, helping us out. We avoided the attack and potential damage."

More Cisco Secure Email Pros →

Cons
"The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect.""They have moved features from one console to another. Things have been moved around in the interface and it takes me time to find where certain features are.""The UI needs to be more user-friendly.""It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers.""We noticed that from time to time, Microsoft's stability does have problems. Sometimes the service goes up and down. Sometimes they change without prior notice.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data.""You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers.""The visibility for the weaknesses in the system and unauthorized access can be improved."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Cons →

"They could simplify the licensing and the pricing.""Sometimes it is somewhat laggy, especially on the Archiver side. It should have improved performance on their Message Archiver.""I would like to see some additional functionality in terms of employee monitoring, as part of a work-from-home security solution.""I would like to see better integration with other products.""There is room for improvement, particularly in reaching out to technical support during deployment.""Barracuda Essentials can improve by continually adding more features.""The solution's reporting mechanism is a little poor and could be improved.""The platform's pricing needs improvement."

More Barracuda Email Protection Cons →

"It is not user-friendly, and it is quite complicated. So, it should be more user-friendly.""The configuration UI should be made more intuitive. Currently, it takes a while to understand how to do the basic configurations.""The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky.""We have occasionally had hardware problems because we are using an appliance-based solution, but that might change. We may consider going to virtual systems.""I would like them to add some clustering or high availability features.""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.""I would like to see sandboxing for email, where suspicious emails received by the system are analyzed through online services.""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."

More Cisco Secure Email Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's a user-base subscription."
  • "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."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The price of Barracuda Essentials is better than some of the competing products."
  • "We pay annually. They never charged us for anything else. And they were quite a bit under that $20,000 mark. It was $19,074. And they've been pretty good about not skyrocketing the price or anything like that. It has gone up. It's gone up to $24,000 in 2020."
  • "Price-wise, this product is middle-of-the-road."
  • "On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
  • "The product is expensive."
  • More Barracuda Email Protection Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We do annual licensing for Cisco Secure Email Gatewayand SMA together, and possibly SmartNet support. Packaged together, the cost is just under $38,000."
  • "In addition to the standard licensing, there is a cost for SMARTnet as well."
  • "Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
  • "Licensing costs depend on how many users there are. It could range between $5 and $7 per month, per user."
  • "The license was not per user, the license model was per feature. You could choose anti-virus, anti-spam, etc. It was feature-based and charged yearly."
  • "There were no other costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
  • "We were using Proofpoint and then we switched to Cisco... reportability was one of the main reasons we switched, but the biggest one was cost. If you can get an equivalent functionality for a better price it's wise to do so. That's what our primary decision came down to: We could get equivalent functionality at a lower price point."
  • "It is not that costly. We pay for the solution through a contractor and pay an annual fee."
  • More Cisco Secure Email Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various… more »
    Top Answer:The product must provide better malware detection. The detection algorithms don't perform the way I hope they would.
    Top Answer:The tool comes with AI features. It is good for clients who already use Cisco products due to integration.
    Top Answer:Cisco Secure Email is more expensive than other products. I rate it a five out of ten. There are no additional costs… more »
    Top Answer:Cisco Email Secure's pricing needs to be less. We have vendors who provide cheaper solutions with the same features.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    MS Defender for Office 365
    Barracuda Essentials
    Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect organizations against advanced threats in their email, collaboration, and productivity environments. It combines the power of Microsoft's threat intelligence, machine learning, and behavioral analytics to provide real-time protection against phishing, malware, ransomware, and other malicious attacks.

    With Microsoft Defender for Office 365, organizations can safeguard their email communication by detecting and blocking malicious links, attachments, and unsafe email content. It employs advanced anti-phishing capabilities to identify and prevent sophisticated phishing attacks that attempt to steal sensitive information or compromise user credentials.

    This solution also offers robust protection against malware and ransomware. It leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze email attachments and URLs in real-time, identifying and blocking malicious content before it reaches users' inboxes. Additionally, it provides advanced threat-hunting capabilities, allowing security teams to proactively investigate and respond to potential threats.

    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 goes beyond email protection and extends its security features to other collaboration tools like SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. It scans files and documents stored in these platforms, ensuring that they are free from malware and other malicious content. It also provides visibility into user activities, helping organizations detect and mitigate insider threats.

    Furthermore, this solution offers rich reporting and analytics capabilities, providing organizations with insights into their security posture and threat landscape. It enables security administrators to monitor and manage security incidents, track trends, and take proactive measures to enhance their overall security posture.

    The popularity of Microsoft 365 means criminals test and design their attacks to bypass its native security features. And that means you need additional layers of defense. With Advanced Threat Protection enabled, Barracuda uses multiple layers of detection, including signature, static, and behavioral analysis, along with CPU-emulation sandboxing to accurately detect and block zero-hour targeted attacks and ransomware.

    Traditional email gateways use static rules and policies—reputation analysis, block lists, and malicious payloads—to determine if an email is malicious.

    Barracuda protects your Microsoft 365 inbox against evasive threats with a powerful AI engine that learns the unique communication patterns within your organization through access to internal and historical emails. Once it understands what legitimate emails looks like for each user, it can detect anomalies that signal malicious intent. This context-based detection is more effective at blocking targeted attacks, which are designed to bypass traditional rule-based email security.

    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.”

    Sample Customers
    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
    ACT Government, Acumen Group, AGIP, Delta Dental Plans Association, Desai/Nasr Consulting Engineers, Inc., Equinox Information Systems
    SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company16%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Government6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Security Firm25%
    Construction Company25%
    Manufacturing Company25%
    Educational Organization13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Construction Company8%
    Real Estate/Law Firm7%
    Healthcare Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Energy/Utilities Company10%
    Retailer10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Educational Organization15%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Government6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise51%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business54%
    Midsize Enterprise38%
    Large Enterprise8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business41%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise42%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise37%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise49%
    Buyer's Guide
    Barracuda Email Protection vs. Cisco Secure Email
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Email Protection vs. Cisco Secure Email and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Barracuda Email Protection is ranked 15th in Email Security with 12 reviews while Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 55 reviews. Barracuda Email Protection is rated 8.8, while Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Barracuda Email Protection writes "Set-it-and-forget-it type of product that doesn't require a lot of management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Email writes "Has effortless spam control, improves security posture, and frees up our IT department's time". Barracuda Email Protection is most compared with Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, TitanHQ SpamTitan, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Abnormal Security and Mimecast Email Security, whereas Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Trellix Collaboration Security, Fortinet FortiMail, Proofpoint Email Protection and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense. See our Barracuda Email Protection vs. Cisco Secure Email 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.