Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense vs Fortinet FortiMail comparison

Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense vs. Fortinet FortiMail

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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

Cisco Secure Email Threat D...

Ranking in Email Security

23rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Fortinet FortiMail

Ranking in Email Security

6th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiMail is 2.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Email Security Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiMail	2.6%
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense	1.1%
Other	96.3%

Email Security

Featured Reviews

Glenn-Camilien

Senior Cybersecurity Engineer at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees

Provides robust email security features but requires improved modernization and complexity management

Modernization is an area that could be improved for Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, as some features have lagged behind newer competitors, potentially offering more advanced analysis capabilities. The initial setup is not straightforward and requires expertise and time to master configurations such as spoofing and DLP. More control over backend functionalities and simplifying rule management could enhance user experience. The product's complexity at times results in redundant rule sets that are difficult to untangle, highlighting the need for streamlined management systems and a more user-centric approach to system configuration. Furthermore, the pricing might deter new users who could opt for alternative, more cost-effective solutions.

Read full review

Abhimanyu Das

Senior Cybersecurity Engineer at Kyndryl

Targeted email filtering has reduced spam and phishing and now saves significant investigation time

The best features of Fortinet FortiMail include its techniques and tactics, which are highly effective compared to other solutions such as Microsoft 365. Although Fortinet FortiMail may not be as advanced in some aspects, it is well recognized for its strong performance in handling spam and phishing. It performs thorough mail scanning and also offers a sandboxing feature that enhances protection. Fortinet FortiMail has had a positive impact on my organization by significantly reducing unwanted email activities such as spam and phishing. It provides accurate detection and generates results that often exceed what can be achieved through manual analysis. Since deploying Fortinet FortiMail, I have observed a reduction in investigation time by at least 20 to 30 percent.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense's best features include user management of graymail, enhancing security awareness by allowing users to manage cold calls, sales-based items, and ensuring email compliance."

"The ability to see east-west traffic is its most valuable feature. Traditionally, email defense focuses on north-south, inbound-outbound, egress-ingress traffic. With Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox, it's able to quickly identify, track, tag, and categorize emails that are internal. That can typically give us visibility into if there's an internal compromised account (for example). Someone can then use that internal compromised account to email additional accounts with either malicious software or links, but internal within that Office tenant. Effectively, that email message never leaves the tenant. Any of the mail gateways really do not have any method or way of seeing this traffic since it's not leaving the environment."

"It has an efficient email filtering feature."

"The product offers protection, email security, anti-spam, and antivirus."

"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."

"It's very easy to deploy and configure."

"Cisco has a threat mechanism called cloud-based Talos, where all the threats are inbuilt."

"Currently, the ease of deployment is the low-hanging fruit for Cisco email security."

More Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the tool's ability to prevent phishing attacks."

"The anti-spam feature is very valuable."

"FortiMail possesses notable strengths, and one key feature is its store-and-forward concept."

"Fortinet FortiMail's most valuable features are antispam, antivirus, database, and data loss prevention (DLP)."

"FortiMail effectively filters all emails coming to our mail server, blocking malicious ones automatically."

"The technical support is excellent."

"The spam filtering is great."

"The product helps users handle security challenges as it offers prefiltering options and does relatively good incident reporting."

More Fortinet FortiMail pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"From a technical point of view, Cisco is far behind in terms of cybersecurity, and it has to improve very much."

"The tool gives false positives and it needs to be more accurate. I would like to see AI as a new feature."

"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."

"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 solution is a bit expensive. It could be cheaper."

"I wouldn't recommend Cisco to others because I think Fortinet is better."

More Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense cons

"For example, there was malware in some emails that weren't detected in some of the Fortinet FortiMail sessions, but it should have been configured from my company's end to better catch scam emails, but overall, the solution is okay."

"In my opinion, points for improvement for Fortinet FortiMail include sometimes the speed and fine-tuning the false positive problems, especially with the signed PDF attachments and the whitelist and blacklist."

"The product should work on licensing and provide more detail once the license is selected for the customer."

"Fortinet FortiMail can be improved in terms of its dashboard, which is small and not visually appealing, making deeper investigations difficult."

"The logging information is sometimes not clear or easy to understand."

"The product could incorporate even more artificial intelligence to enhance the functionality, but it is a competetive and intelligent product as it."

"The security products stop their operations once the subscription period expires. It is a wrong policy. If I trust a product, it has to continue working even after expiry. It should have a grace period of 30, 40, or 60 days. We can extend the subscription during those days. In some places, subscription extensions can take up to six weeks. During the renewal process, the support offered by the company is very poor. It also reduces security. We pay for the expired period but do not get protection during those times. The user of Fortinet FortiMail should have a feature to see spam names."

"I'll rate it higher when it can be easier to configure or connect to the cloud to report on the attachments."

More Fortinet FortiMail cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The solution’s pricing is manageable."

"It is expensive compared to other vendors."

"The fees for Fortinet FortiMail can be complicated. However, overall the pricing is fair."

"The licensing model for this solution is better because it is based on the box and not the number of users."

"We paid approximately $30,000 for the solution. It is less expensive than some other solutions. We have one license that carries all the features that we wanted."

"This is a good solution and value for the money."

"In terms of licensing, we are using a virtual machine license for the single virtual server which it runs on. Doing it this way enables us to cut costs by only licensing FortiMail for our exact use case. If you need to expand in future, you can later buy extra licenses per virtual machine."

"You need to pay additional fees for premium support."

"There is either an annual or six-month charge to use this solution. Fortinet FortiMail is cheaper than Proofpoint or Cisco Security, or other email security appliances."

"FortiMail has extra charges for installation, configuration, and project management."

More Fortinet FortiMail pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Marketing Services Firm

11%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare Company

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	33
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

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.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiMail?

The setup cost is a little bit costly.

What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiMail?

I think they should improve Fortinet FortiMail on-premises by enhancing its user interface. Additional features they could have in the future would include advanced analytics capabilities. I do thi...

What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiMail?

I do have a partnership with Fortinet. I have been both a partner and reseller.

Cisco Secure Email vs Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense

Comparisons

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Kiteworks vs Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) vs Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense

Compared 3% of the time

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Cisco Secure Email vs Fortinet FortiMail

Compared 7% of the time

Mimecast Advanced Email Security vs Fortinet FortiMail

Compared 6% of the time

Proofpoint Email Protection vs Fortinet FortiMail

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs Fortinet FortiMail

Compared 5% of the time

Fortra's Clearswift Secure Email Gateway vs Fortinet FortiMail

Compared 5% of the time

More Fortinet FortiMail Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense

Download Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense product report

Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense report

Fortinet FortiMail

Download Fortinet FortiMail product report

Also Known As

Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox, Cisco CMD, Cisco Cloud Mailbox Defense

FortiMail

Overview

Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense offers robust email security with features like east-west traffic visibility and seamless SaaS deployment. It enhances cloud email protection by integrating Threat Grid sandboxing and AMP for malware defense, supported by Cisco Talos threat intelligence.

Enhancing email security for Microsoft 365 and cloud emails, Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense acts as an email gateway, blocking phishing, malware, and business email compromise. Users benefit from a centralized management console, efficient graymail administration, and strong filtering capabilities. Despite its strengths, it requires improvements in integration, spam detection accuracy, and enhances phishing protection.

What are the most important features of Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense?

East-West Traffic Visibility: Offers insight into email tenant interactions.
SaaS Application Deployment: Simplifies deployment processes.
Threat Grid Sandboxing: Provides advanced malware protection.
AMP Integration: Enhances malware defense capabilities.
Anti-Spam and Antivirus: Powered by Cisco Talos threat intelligence.
Cloud Mailbox Features: Includes robust email filtering and management.

What benefits or ROI should be evaluated in reviews?

Enhanced Security: Provides protection against advanced threats.
Operational Efficiency: Reduces reliance on help desk services.
User-Friendly Management: Streamlines email administration tasks.
Improved Email Filtering: Ensures effective threat blocking.

Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is highly applicable in industries requiring stringent data protection, such as finance and healthcare. It serves cloud-based environments by closely monitoring email activity to prevent unauthorized access and breaches. Tailored deployment options cater to both on-premise and cloud architectures, allowing flexible integration in existing workflows.

Cisco

Fortinet FortiMail is a robust email security platform offering anti-spam, antivirus, and anti-phishing capabilities. It integrates with Fortinet products to ensure seamless protection against email threats in on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, enhancing secure communication for businesses.

Fortinet FortiMail is designed to protect against a range of email threats including spam, phishing, and malware, ensuring email safety for organizations. It operates as both a gateway and server, allowing for secure filtering of incoming and outgoing emails. The integration with Fortinet’s suite of security tools provides a comprehensive approach to managing threats effectively, while user-friendly interfaces and detailed reporting systems aid in threat monitoring and management. Frequent updates are implemented, though scalability and web console enhancements are necessary for improved performance.

What are the key features of Fortinet FortiMail?

Anti-Spam: Provides reliable filtering to block unwanted emails.
Antivirus: Ensures protection against harmful viruses.
Anti-Phishing: Prevents phishing attempts through advanced detection.
Sandboxing: Enhances threat detection to manage email security efficiently.
Integration: Seamlessly works with other Fortinet products for unified security.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiMail?

Comprehensive Security: Offers robust protection against multiple email threats.
Ease of Use: Features a user-friendly interface for better accessibility.
Detailed Reporting: Provides insights into threat management activities.
Reliable Performance: Delivers consistent updates for maintaining email protection.

Fortinet FortiMail is implemented by companies across industries seeking to secure their email communications. In healthcare, it protects sensitive patient information, while in finance, it safeguards transactional data against phishing attacks. Retailers utilize FortiMail to prevent data breaches from fraudulent emails, demonstrating its versatility in diverse sectors.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

Luiss University, Lone Star College, T-Systems, Magyar Telekom

Magromer Cueros y Pieles S.A.

Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense vs. Fortinet FortiMail