We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Email and Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Cisco, TitanHQ and others in Email Security."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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."
"Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple."
"The good part is that you don't have to configure it, which is very convenient."
"Defender helps us prioritize threats across our organization."
"It gives us visibility into threats and, for endpoints, it helps us to prioritize threats. We used to have a lack of visibility, but now our time to detect and respond has decreased."
"Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various email campaigns, pinpointing where they emanate from, and identifying the individuals within our organization who are affected."
"I can customize the configuration and policies."
"We like the in-built features, like the email filtering based on the IP and domain. Cisco has its own blacklisted domains and IPs, which is very good. This filters around 70 percent of emails from spam, and we are seeing fewer false positives with this."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"The most valuable features are protection against ransomware and spam."
"The most valuable feature is the different content filters we are using, such as DKIM."
"Initially, the most valuable feature for us was the SenderBase Reputation, because that reduced the number of emails that were even considered by the system by a huge number..."
"It provides good IT assistance."
"There are a lot of filters for scam emails and things like that work out of the box. You can also use the antivirus features. I like its features."
"Forcepoint Email Security is a good solution, and I don't have any issues with it. I found anti-spam and anti-spyware the most valuable features of Forcepoint Email Security."
"I like how versatile the options are. For example, we can set it where we are able to access and browse Facebook but we are denied the ability to post photos. There is also that ability integrate with Office 365 - SharePoint app."
"The feature I find most valuable is the web, email and DLP integration."
"Using Forcepoint, we have created policies and rules for any suspicious mail. It is blocked and only released by an admin's approval."
"We have found the product to be stable."
"This is a reasonably stable solution."
"It is good at data leakage prevention (DLP). You can create the data exfiltration profile while sending the emails, which is one of the key advantages of the solution."
"The Forcepoint Email Security roadmap easily integrates with the data loss prevention (DLP) suite of Forcepoint. Therefore, the customer doesn't have to buy another solution for DLP."
"Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 could improve by giving customers information on techniques to prevent threats. For example, information about best practices on how to protect their own devices against hackers and scammers, such as educational information or training. This would help others have a better understanding of cyber security. Additionally, there can be more security features added."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"There needs to be an improvement in integrating the product to work across multiple operating systems, and to have better support for non-Microsoft file types."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
"In some situations, it has not been able to pick impersonated emails having no attachments. Technical support definitely has a scope for improvement."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"About eight months ago, we started to measure the quantity of phishing and spam that we have been receiving, and it has been increasing a lot. That means that protection for our email is not as good as we were expecting."
"The tool's pricing can be improved."
"It is not user-friendly, and it is quite complicated. So, it should be more user-friendly."
"In future releases, I would like to see two main improvements come to mind. First, the current solution requires maintaining two separate operating systems for FTD, which can be cumbersome. I'd love to see a single operating system for the FTD box."
"Licensing is quite complicated for a number of customers, including ourselves."
"I would rate the stability a six out of ten. We had multiple issues with the stability."
"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 user interface needs some improvement to become more user-friendly. The graphics could be better. It's designed more for a technical user rather than a business user."
"The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear."
"An area for improvement in Forcepoint Email Security is technical support. The agents need to be more knowledgeable. The support also needs to be faster."
"It would be better if it were simpler to deploy on one or two machines instead of three or four machines."
"We've fixed a couple of issues on the solution so far. It doesn't work perfectly all the time."
"I would like to see some improvement like cloud application and integration capabilities and the classification part is missing from the DLP."
"The solution could use better integration capabilities."
"It's quite difficult to learn this solution, it's not an entry level product. If you are a skilled user you will think it's a very useful tool, but if you are not a skilled user, you'll think it is very difficult to learn."
"The pricing could always be just a little bit better."
"Forcepoint is the best for DLP, but it is not better than other solutions in terms of phishing emails or threat protections on the email. It has less visibility over there. They might need to enhance these components because other solutions, such as Cisco Email Security and IronPort, have more advanced features. Forcepoint should focus more on threats and spam. They have a small database for spam. They must increase their solution's capability from this perspective."
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Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 55 reviews while Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] doesn't meet the minimum requirements to be ranked in Email Security with 14 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Email writes "Has effortless spam control, improves security posture, and frees up our IT department's time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] writes "Easy to use and setup and expands well". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Fortinet FortiMail, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Proofpoint Email Protection and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, whereas Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection.
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Hi Kamal,
Firstly, you would have to recognize that there is/are no fast and hard rules to choosing a final preferred product, what works well for company A may not work extensively well for company B. Reason being that: the efficiency of the Security capabilities provided by one tool can be amplified by another tool, particularly for secure email gateway. Hence, if you have an XDR that you intend to leverage with your final product of choice, you will notice that you could experience a greater ROI than having a bare SEG tool.
However, I will advise based on a few realities of today's market in Q3 2022.
1. From my perspective, It will make sense if you take advantage of the built-in protection capabilities from your cloud email provider (I assume you are using O365 or Google mail) rather than investing in a secure email gateway (SEG).
2. Most forward-thinking organizations are shifting away from traditional SEG tools and moving towards ICES, in my opinion, you should ideally be looking for an email security solutions that use ML / AI-based anti-phishing technology for BEC protection to analyze conversation history to detect anomalies, as well as computer vision to analyze suspect links within emails.
3. Should you still choose to pursue SEG asides from an ICES, or you choose to go for an ICES, bear in mind that nothing beats doing a POC as it clearly should consider the security apparatus/investments you have already made in times past.
4. it will be best that you look for solutions that integrate directly into your cloud email via an API, rather than as a gateway, this will ease your evaluation and eventual deployment, besides it improving your detection accuracy, while still taking advantage of the integration of the bulk of phishing protection with the core platform
5. Without having an insight into your current email provider (cloud/on-prem) or other tools in your organization or budget, it will be difficult to give you a bit of precise advice.
Either way, all the best with your selection process, and wishing you a cyber-safe organization.
Tunde is absolutely right and is what I was trying to say in my first answer, Tunde did a better job though. AI based tools without a gateway can be installed in minutes, will pick up more malicious attachments, more content related bad stuff, provide better visibility and introduce controls for you staff to further improve the effectiveness. Typically these tools learn over time and therefore get better as you use them.
Don't forget to consider 3rd party risk by looking at DMARC, SPF & DKIM as well as domain impersonation
Have you considered Proofpoint Email Protection? It’s not one of the options you listed, but I recommend Proofpoint for advanced email security to everyone.
Proofpoint Email Protection defends organizations against advanced email-borne threats, including spear phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attacks. Proofpoint provides inbound and outbound email filtering with industry-leading accuracy to protect users from email-based malware, ransomware, and other sophisticated threats. Proofpoint also helps organizations defend against targeted attacks that use spear phishing emails to bypass traditional security defenses. Proofpoint's Email Protection solution is powered by the Proofpoint Global Intelligence Network (GIN), which processes billions of threat indicators every day to deliver real-time protection against the latest email threats. This combination of technology and intelligence makes Proofpoint Email Protection the most effective way to defend against advanced email-borne threats.
I highly recommend Proofpoint Email Security. My organization has had a great experience so far. The solution completely lives up to its price point.
Proofpoint is an industry-leading email gateway, which can be deployed as a cloud service or on-premises. Apart from providing essential encryption and spam filtering, Proofpoint Email Security solutions also have specific controls to stop BEC attacks. That’s what impressed me because Business Email Compromise attacks have devastating consequences for businesses. Proofpoint has an in-built Advanced BEC Defense engine that’s powered by AI and machine learning. It analyzes multiple message attributes, like header data, sender’s IP address, and message body for red flags and urgency.
We use Managed Proofpoint Security. Managed email security providers like ACE MSS provide Proofpoint Email Security solutions in an end-to-end managed service. With managed email security, you no longer have to worry about managing encryption keys or sudden email attacks. You’ll have a dedicated team of security experts monitoring and analyzing all incoming and outgoing email traffic.
Between the two? I prefer Cisco over Forcepoint. If budget is not a problem a hybrid Cisco Forcepoint multilayer. Or a hybrid Cloud + on-premises.
Bur someone asked about three options...? Which was the third? Why was intentionally avoided Proofpoint and compared "Sharks" with "Piranhas" or Barracudas?
I only can recommend Cisco because it´s the only one with which I'd worked enough. I think it is powerful enough and has a lot of possibilities. In addition, to a great support team.
Top brands don't mean best or most cost-effective. My advice is to look a bit further before you make a decision.
Evidence suggests that most top brands are pretty good at detecting and blocking malicious attachments, best case letting through 1%, but can be worse than 50% when it comes to detecting malicious links in the text of the email.
There are numerous less well-known vendors with lower-cost AI-based solutions that have a far better success rate, also providing employees the ability to report on suspect emails which auto-removes them from other staff members' inboxes until they have been properly assessed. Some will provide a visual risk score to the recipient to give them advance warning to be more cautious.
Combining this kind of capability with staff awareness products keeps your vendor list lower and further improves efficiency.
For around £2 GBP per user per month (less than $3) we provide different vendors depending upon the customer's environment but provided as a managed service. This allows our customers to outsource some of the monitoring and day-to-day management, spread the cost on a monthly basis, and flex how many licences they need on a monthly basis too i.e. if you drop 20 users don't pay for them but if you increase by 20 you don't need complex co-termination and pro rata discussions.