We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Email vs Proofpoint Email Protection based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: In this comparison, reviewers give similar ratings in most categories. The main difference between the two products is that the majority of Cisco users find the interface to be dated.
"Microsoft Defender has a feature to protect each and every attachment. Even if it's an encrypted attachment, it will check for any potential threats."
"The product's scalability is good."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features."
"It also gives the vulnerability status according to the versions you have selected. Let's say you have Google Chrome. It mentions the versions it has, and it updates. Within two hours of an update, it is reflected in the dashboard. That's really nice to have."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"The deployment capability is a great feature."
"The most valuable feature is the different content filters we are using, such as DKIM."
"The most significant enhancement we've gained is in terms of security through the upgrade we received."
"The solution works well."
"I can customize the configuration and policies."
"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."
"The tech engineers are very knowledgeable."
"It integrates with Active Directory and we can limit specific users to using specific applications."
"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."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"It's a mature product. It does a good job in detection."
"A one-stop shop for email protection"
"The most valuable feature is the ability to remove bad messages that were delivered, prior to being classified as unwanted."
"Proofpoint is the main tool for blocking spam because it denies the connection altogether."
"The anti-spam features are excellent on the email firewalls."
"Proofpoint Email Protection's advantage is that, when it's working properly, it tends to catch more threats as compared to other products."
"Proofpoint Email Protection offers an additional layer of protection compared to other brands like Microsoft, Mimecast, and Barracuda. While these major companies excel at detecting malicious attachments, the solution goes further by analyzing the context of emails, allowing for more nuanced decision-making."
"Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites."
"Microsoft should provide more documentation for users so they can self-educate. I would like to see more documentation for advanced security features."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products."
"Several simulation options are available within 365, and the phishing simulation could be better."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should be more proactive."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
"There is room for improvement in terms of reporting."
"They can do it better with web links, with the URLs. They have a technology called Outbreak but it doesn't work as well as we would like."
"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 tool's pricing can be improved."
"While Cisco offers excellent solutions and innovations, the pricing may not be suitable for everyone. The cost of the software is relatively high. In the current market, there are numerous competitive alternatives that focus on security, enterprise networks, and various other aspects. Cisco, being a comprehensive provider, extends its expertise across data, servers, storage, and security, making them a preferred choice for many enterprises. However, when it comes specifically to security solutions, there are other vendors that specialize solely in this domain, offering competitive options."
"The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky."
"Typically, in a phishing email, they try to use a name everybody's going to recognize, like the CEO's name or the CFO's name... With this appliance, the way it's designed at the moment, for us to really stop that with any level of confidence, we have to build a dictionary of all the names of the people we want it to check, and all the ways they could be spelled. My name would be in there as Phillip Collins, Phillip D. Collins, Phillip Dean Collins, Phil Collins, Phil D. Collins. There could be eight or 10 variations of my name that we'd have to put in the dictionary. There's no artificial intelligence to say "Phil Collins" could be all these other things, and to stop phishing from coming through in that way."
"Cisco is already providing a very good environment with the IronPort solution, but there could be some more integration with other products. For instance, an integration with the EDR solution could be there to raise an alert."
"The configuration UI should be made more intuitive. Currently, it takes a while to understand how to do the basic configurations."
"It's scalable, but the devil's in the details — you have to know your email volumes."
"The solution's server console and cluster dashboard have been the same for four years so need to be upgraded."
"Pricing for the platform could still be cheaper."
"The solution could lower its price."
"The price could be improved."
"We find the cost to be prohibitive."
"You only receive one model in Proofpoint Email Protection and the other ones you have to purchase at a high price. There should be more available with the solution and additional models should be less expensive."
"The false positives are an issue."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 55 reviews while Proofpoint Email Protection is ranked 1st in Secure Email Gateway (SEG) with 44 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while Proofpoint Email Protection is rated 8.4. 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 Proofpoint Email Protection writes "A reasonably priced product that offers protection to emails, along with spam filters". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Fortinet FortiMail, Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense and Trend Micro Email Security, whereas Proofpoint Email Protection is most compared with Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Fortinet FortiMail, KnowBe4 and Barracuda Email Security Gateway. See our Cisco Secure Email vs. Proofpoint Email Protection report.
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.