Fortinet FortiMail and Cisco Secure Email are leading competitors in the email security sector. Despite both having robust features, Cisco Secure Email appears to have a slight edge due to its comprehensive protection features and integration capabilities.
Features: Fortinet FortiMail impresses with its strong anti-spam capabilities, greylisting, and spam filtering, supported by FortiGuard integration for real-time updates. It allows multiple deployment modes, offering flexibility. On the other hand, Cisco Secure Email stands out with Advanced Malware Protection, cloud-based threat intelligence, and strong anti-phishing measures, providing cohesive security across email and other facets.
Room for Improvement: Fortinet FortiMail can enhance by improving integration with FortiSandbox, adding more robust encryption features, and making deployment processes more seamless. Improvements in documentation and a more intuitive dashboard are also suggested. Cisco Secure Email could enhance its user interface intuitiveness, improve documentation, and better handle sophisticated attacks. Simplifying complex licensing and configuration processes would also increase usability.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fortinet FortiMail, mostly used in on-premises environments, is straightforward to deploy, supported by strong technical support with rapid response, especially for elite subscribers. Cisco Secure Email, deployed in public and hybrid clouds, is scalable but has variable support feedback, with suggestions for better response times and support quality. Cisco's customer service is generally rated positively yet recommended for more intuitive processes.
Pricing and ROI: Fortinet FortiMail is appreciated for its competitive pricing with no per-user charges, seen as cost-effective. Although some find it expensive, users acknowledge a high return on investment from reduced spam disruptions. Cisco Secure Email is perceived as costly but worth the investment due to its comprehensive features and reliable protection, contributing to significant ROI through reduced email threats. Its feature bundling is valued for enhancing overall security.
It has also decreased our time to detection and response by about 15 to 20 percent.
It offers cost savings compared to Cisco, which was very expensive.
Any issues are addressed quickly by Microsoft's support.
Customer service and support have been fantastic.
Cisco's tech support can be hit or miss, depending on the engineer you get.
The support is pretty decent, with a rating of eight out of ten.
I have direct communication with Kenyan system engineers and local support in Ethiopia, enabling good support.
Fortinet's technical support offers high-quality support.
We have never faced scalability problems, and Microsoft manages it effectively.
The on-premises hardware is not very scalable, but switching to the SaaS offering is expected to improve scalability.
The solution is stable, as we have been using it for the past two years.
Based on my experience, the stability of Cisco Secure Email is very strong.
This stability is consistent across Fortinet products, including FortiGate firewall.
Microsoft could improve by offering recommendations for domain spoofing attacks, especially scenarios where DNS records like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are not properly published.
The main area for improvement is simplifying the implementation and rollout process.
I would reduce the cost.
The solution should better analyze the actual content rather than only focusing on the email header or origin.
It would be beneficial to have the functionality of the Email Threat Defense integrated into the Email Security Gateway so customers don't have to buy two products for full email protection.
The transition from on-premises devices to virtual appliances may be necessary as more organizations migrate email services to the cloud.
Providing comprehensive documentation on how to deploy and configure would improve the solution.
The area that could use some improvement in Fortinet FortiMail is the integration process.
Money-wise, it is a part of the Office 365 suite, making it slightly more expensive compared to Trend Micro.
Microsoft is quite affordable with a lot of features available for any size organization.
Its cost is bundled with other Cisco products.
The licensing is a mess and needs sorting out.
The pricing structure is good as it is user-based or email client-based, which is positive for clients.
Fortinet FortiMail is considered overpriced by Indian rupee standards.
It ranks the threats and allows us to prioritize those hitting us the hardest, such as email threats.
It provides end-to-end visibility on email threats such as phishing, extending beyond Exchange Online Protection.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is now part of a centralized tenant for my entire group.
It is highly effective in catching phishing and spam emails.
It also possesses multiple modules for spam detection, malware detection, and threat intelligence, which are valuable in categorizing emails and determining actions.
It covers everything through email, like antivirus, IDS, and IPS.
Its threat detection capabilities have been beneficial.
The most valuable features are Fortinet FortiMail's ability to protect from advanced features of email-based attacks, including protection against ransomware and malware attacks.
Fortinet FortiMail offers capabilities like settings for mail delivery, mail filtering, spam controls, and email bursting prevention.
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.
Cisco Secure Email ensures email traffic security, acting as a checkpoint before emails enter environments like Office 365. It filters out spam, phishing attempts, and malicious content, scanning emails for threats. It offers both inbound and outbound email security with features like URL filtering, spam filtering, and encryption.
Cisco Secure Email functions as an email gateway in cloud, on-premise, and hybrid deployments. Offering capabilities such as Advanced Malware Protection, URL and Reputation Filtering, and real-time threat intelligence from Talos, it efficiently safeguards email traffic. Detailed logging, reporting, and quarantine management features provide robust security while being highly configurable. Its integration with SecureX and customizable rules enhance its effectiveness. Though strong in malware protection, improvements in reporting, phishing detection, user-friendliness, and integration with Office 365 are areas of focus. Scalability, cost-effectiveness, and AI-driven features are also areas where it can advance.
What are the most important features of Cisco Secure Email?Cisco Secure Email integrates effectively in sectors like finance, healthcare, and education that need stringent data protection and compliance. Financial institutions favor it for its encryption and data leak protection features ensuring secure transactions. Healthcare organizations use it to adhere to compliance requirements like HIPAA, safeguarding patient data with advanced threat detection and email security. Educational institutions rely on it for protecting student data and intellectual property from phishing and malware attacks, ensuring a secure communication environment.
As cyber attacks become more sophisticated, it is crucial for email security solutions to offer multi-layered protection. Fortinet's proven email security platform, FortiMail, is a comprehensive multi-layered threat protection solution designed to secure users from the full spectrum of email-based threats, which includes zero-day threats, credential impersonation, spam, phishing, malware, and business email compromise (BEC) attacks.
Fortinet FortiMail offers a variety of deployment models to best fit your organization’s email security needs. On-premises, private or public cloud, or hybrid email environments can be deployed and managed in-house by your team or managed by Fortinet’s data centers. FortiMail also employs virtual machines that provide robust scalability options and flexible deployment of email security infrastructure.
Fortinet FortiMail Benefits
Fortinet FortiMail provides your organization with the following benefits:
Fortinet FortiMail Benefits
Some of Fortinet FortiMail’s top features include:
Reviews from Real Users
Fortinet FortiMail stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful anti-virus tool and its robust spam protection capabilities.
Flamur P., head of security management at Ipko Telecommunications, writes, "Fortinet FortiMail has a lot of valuable features. It works great. It also has an antivirus feature. Support for Fortinet FortiMail was also great when my team wanted to block some geographic IPs, but couldn't figure out how to do it. The support team provided clear communication on how to resolve that issue. Another valuable feature of Fortinet FortiMail is spam filtering which tells you how many spammy emails you've received. Based on my current use cases, I'm happy with Fortinet FortiMail."
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