Cisco Secure Email vs IRONSCALES comparison

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13,078 views|8,996 comparisons
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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Email and IRONSCALES 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 Cisco Secure Email vs. IRONSCALES Report (Updated: March 2023).
686,748 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
"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.""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.""I love the Advanced Malware Protection feature. It works very well... The appliance has more security such as SDF, DKIM, DMARC, and encryption.""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 malicious URL scanning, as well as the anti-malware features, have been really useful for us in our environment.""It's flexible. There are a lot of rules and policies that can be easily applied for certain employees or certain mailboxes.""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.""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."

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"I would say the most valuable feature is what they call Themis. It's like a virtual analyst that uses the decisions that system admins make to generate a score for whether an email is legitimate, spam, or phishing. It gets better based on the decisions that we make over time. The automation piece is great as well. The integrated approach of email security combined with employee awareness training is excellent.""For what was being offered with IRONSCALES, I feel like we got an incredible deal.""There is buzz around phishing awareness training. When I make a campaign, all of a sudden people in our organization are talking, thinking, and wondering about it. Therefore, it keeps people on their toes. That is perfect because it does exactly what we want it to do.""The stability is good.""The report function through Gmail is probably the most valuable feature. The next most valuable features are simulation and training.""Their anti-phishing platform is absolutely fantastic. The automated AI piece is amazing, and their technical support is fantastic.""The fact that it is set-and-forget is valuable. Once you turn it on, you very rarely have to micromanage it, whereas, with a lot of spam filters, you have to go in very often.""The biggest benefit is that we get fewer phishing and spam emails, so using IRONSCALES has made our environment much safer."

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Cons
"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 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.""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.""The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear.""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.""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 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."

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"Even though they have been continuously improving it, it is not 100% there. We have had a few incidents where legitimate emails were getting blocked, and we had to manually remove those emails from quarantine. It is 90% effective or accurate because, on rare occasions, some emails from customers were not getting delivered. In one or two instances, their emails got blocked by IRONSCALES, and we had to manually remove the emails from quarantine. I would like them to improve their algorithm to avoid flagging genuine emails as malicious. I would also like to be able to whitelist certain email addresses. I'd love to be able to whitelist a particular customer.""There is a feature called Account Takeover, which isn't what I want it to be able to do. I know that they're working on that, but when they first started the Account Takeover feature in incident management, it didn't have much information. It didn't have any usability to it. I already had tools in place that were better.""In addition to integrated training, they should also have personalized training that you don't have to do as part of a phishing campaign or a simulation.""I would love to see the indication of compromise and how the solution utilizes open source resources. It would be good to see that included in the paid versions. It would be a small addition but add a lot of value for clients.""I would like it if IRONSCALES had some sort of reminder mechanism, meaning IRONSCALES knows if a user completed the training or not. As long as it hasn't been completed, it keeps reminding every so often, alerts the manager, etc. Right now, it is all in the hands of the employee, and not all of them continue the process, which is a shame.""Its UI could be improved. My pet peeve with a lot of these cloud-based systems is that a lot of times, the interface for the management is a little clunky. If you live and breathe IRONSCALES all day long, you'll obviously know where everything is just from muscle memory, but the system is not designed for people to be in it all day long. You're only supposed to occasionally look at it. When things get moved around, it is not necessarily that intuitive. I'm an IT guy, and I can pretty much take the worst UI and figure it out, but the menus and the options in the interface could be a little cleaner graphically. If you have a quick problem that you want to resolve, it takes a little bit of digging in the admin console, whereas it should take a few clicks up front.""The integration with Google Suite needs to be better. it's something they can work on.""The only thing that I could say is that some of the reporting features could be better."

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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 →

  • "There is an installation cost. Since we have this as a managed service, we pay for licensing and the managed service itself. Other than that, there are no additional costs."
  • "They are pretty much the same as all the other competitors in the market."
  • "We pay $3000 plus a little more a year for the number of employees we have, and we're not even that big. The solution is at the higher end in terms of cost. It's not the most expensive product, but I would say it's worth the price if you have a high volume of email traffic. In our case, the solution has inspected over 162,000 emails between three and four months. It saved us a lot of time and money. It's a worthwhile investment because a bad actor only has to succeed once; we must defend against everything in our business. IRONSCALES offers a sense of security and confidence from being well protected."
  • "I don't know about its pricing because I don't run the budget or pay the bills, but if it was extortionate, we probably would be looking to scrap it, and because we are not, I assume its price is okay."
  • "Considering the value it provides, it is definitely worth the cost. We don't have to do manual analysis and remediation of phishing emails, which saves us a lot of hours. Its licensing is based on the number of users being supported and the number of email addresses being protected. I'm not aware of any additional costs."
  • "As compared to everything else we looked at, it was good. It was the best value for the dollars."
  • More IRONSCALES 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 mailboxes.
    Top Answer:It is a super big router that costs a few hundred thousand dollars.
    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 there was a better way to know how to do things or how to find things, it would be… more »
    Top Answer:Their anti-phishing platform is absolutely fantastic. The automated AI piece is amazing, and their technical support is fantastic.
    Top Answer:As compared to everything else we looked at, it was good. It was the best value for the dollars.
    Top Answer:The simulation and training piece could be improved by having more granularity in terms of scheduling how campaigns are run and allowing people to directly take the training rather than having to go… more »
    Ranking
    4th
    out of 63 in Email Security
    Views
    13,078
    Comparisons
    8,996
    Reviews
    10
    Average Words per Review
    1,435
    Rating
    8.6
    6th
    out of 63 in Email Security
    Views
    2,448
    Comparisons
    1,625
    Reviews
    10
    Average Words per Review
    1,426
    Rating
    9.4
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
    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.”

    IRONSCALES is an industry-leading email security solution which combines email security and security awareness training into a single, comprehensive solution. 


    Every day criminals launch billions of new phishing attacks. No company is immune. Legacy solutions can't keep up & cloud providers struggle to stop advanced attacks with native controls. IRONSCALES’ powerfully simple email security solution helps you fight back fast and keeps your company safe in today’s cloud-first world.


    How is IRONSCALES different? 

    IRONSCALES is fast to deploy, simple to manage and highly effective in stopping all types of email threats.

    IRONSCALES delivers email security in the mailbox using anomaly detection; this is the most effective way to stop all kinds of email-based security threats, particularly modern threats like BEC and ATO.

    IRONSCALES integrates both email security and awareness training into a single offering; one solution gets you everything you need.

    Offer
    Learn more about Cisco Secure Email
    Learn more about IRONSCALES
    Sample Customers
    SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
    Allegheny Millwork, Ayrshire College, Nium, Orris, Paramount School District, Pres Les, PRT Staffing, Recovery Unplugged, Telit, WebHelp
    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
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Hospitality Company14%
    Recreational Facilities/Services Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Retailer7%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise55%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise63%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business34%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise53%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco Secure Email vs. IRONSCALES
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. IRONSCALES and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    686,748 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco Secure Email is ranked 4th in Email Security with 8 reviews while IRONSCALES is ranked 6th in Email Security with 10 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.2, while IRONSCALES is rated 9.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Email writes "The amount of traffic that it stops is massive". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IRONSCALES writes "Reviews suspicious emails, helps with phishing campaigns and has excellent employee awareness training". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Proofpoint Email Protection, FireEye Email Security, Fortinet FortiMail and Sophos Email, whereas IRONSCALES is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Proofpoint Email Protection, Avanan, Perception Point Advanced Email Security and Mimecast Email Security with Targeted Threat Protection. See our Cisco Secure Email vs. IRONSCALES 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.