Perception Point Advanced Email Security vs Sophos Email comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Perception Point Advanced Email Security and Sophos Email 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 Perception Point Advanced Email Security vs. Sophos Email Report (Updated: March 2023).
688,618 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
"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 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's flexible. There are a lot of rules and policies that can be easily applied for certain employees or certain mailboxes.""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.""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.""The malicious URL scanning, as well as the anti-malware features, have been really useful for us in our environment.""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."

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"One of the most valuable features is the service provided by the incident response team. There have been cases where we have suspected that emails were fraudulent or something was suspicious. In those cases, we immediately contacted the incident response team through the platform, and we had a response in less than a minute.""What's really good about this platform is that you have full visibility, it has a very nice and very friendly UI, it's quick, and there's no latency in the scanning.""Their security engines are very effective at stopping malware and potential attacks before they reach a user's mailbox. They have the best detection engine.""The most valuable features of the solution are the ones that are related to finding impersonation attacks and detecting attempts to steal credentials. In scenarios where attackers get you to follow URLs to a malicious site that looks similar to a good site, and then ask for the user credentials to try to steal them, it is very useful.""It really works well on SharePoint when you upload a file or save a file. Advanced Email Security scans if it is malicious and identifies issues. It can do some forensics on its console, which is nice.""The Perception Point Incident Response team acts as an extension of our SOC team. This is very important for us. This is a benefit provided for their main product of scanning our emails. If Perception Point can give me IR, this is really good versus other products that do not provide this kind of service. Perception Point's service is great. They are very professional. That reduces the time that my internal SOC has to deal with my internal IT person. They just send an email to the IR team at Perception Point, who continues the investigation and blocks any emails, if necessary. This is very good because it can reduce a lot of time and effort from my team. It is like an extension of my SOC, but external.""The most valuable feature is the hardware-assisted platform module.""We can use it to perform detection and analysis of emails. For any malicious content found in emails, it gives in-depth analysis reports to end users. If you log into the console, you can see in-depth detection and how it happens."

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"I have found Sophos Email to be scalable.""It's easy to use and the configuration is straightforward.""When you say email security, it's about everything, incoming email, outgoing email, spam, phishing emails, unwanted marketing emails. You can set rules, but the main feature of Sophos Email is to make sure you don't get hacked. 95% of people who are hacked do not get hacked by typing the router password. They are hacked from the inside out, which means they send you a document that is a zero-day attack, you open it, nothing happens, but technically the attack is running in the background of your computer. This is how they gain access to your PC.""The speed and stability were fine.""Sophos Email is a stable solution.""The most valuable feature of Sophos Email is the sandbox. We're able to scan the file, isolate it, and look at it before it is delivered. It is highly effective."

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Cons
"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 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.""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.""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 UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky.""The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear.""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.""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."

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"We have had a few false positives, not that many, but a few... they have a feature where someone from the Incident Response team can look at an email and mark it as 'verified malicious.' You might think that if an engine detects it is malicious, and an IR team member has flagged it as malicious, it will definitely be malicious. But that's not always the case.""Our users would like the solution to scan outgoing emails. So, if my system is compromised, and I have malicious content in my system, then there is a possibility that I am sending a colleague that malicious content.""They can do better on the spam. Today, Perception Point is not our only solution. We have two solutions, and they are the second in line because the spam filtering is not yet the best.""I think the interface could be improved in the next release.""There is still room for improvement with BEC. There is more work to be done by Perception Point on machine learning and neuro language as well. BEC is very difficult if you don't have a computer language looking into the content of the email and trying to make a determination through that. With BEC you often don't have an attachment or a URL.""From a forensics point of view, it could improve a bit more from a threat intelligence aspect. So, if I find a malicious email, they could have more investigations about sources, headers, where it comes from, if they have seen it in other campaigns before, etc. I would like a little bit more from a threat intelligence point of view so I can understand who else might be affected and attacked as well as the vectors of attack.""It would be helpful for Perception Point Advanced Email Security to have more integration with other solutions.""The only thing that can be improved in Perception Point is the in-depth analysis and attribution to cyberattack groups."

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"The security of the solution could improve.""The installation of Sophos Email could be easier. It's a bit difficult because setting up the email virtually requires some bit of technical knowledge.""Sophos Email can improve mail security.""The solution should be able to support the cloud environment.""Sophos Email can improve security."

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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 →

  • "They are not the most expensive vendor. There are much more expensive vendors. They are not cheap, but they are not the most expensive. They are somewhere in the middle."
  • "We were able to get reasonable pricing that matches the ROI we want, so I think that it is the correct price point."
  • "The price of this solution was within our budget and I think that it will suit most SMBs."
  • "It fits every budget. It has a low price. I can't go ahead and sell it for any price I want. They are quite strict. They say, "This is the price that you can sell it for and this is the price for you as a reseller." That is it. It is not a lot of money. I will not become rich from it, but I like that they keep a standard for everyone. They are a fair company."
  • "It has very reasonable pricing. Normally, the end user is paying. Perception Point is already in the Amazon marketplace, so we cannot sell it as a distribution partner. For example, we cannot take more than that margin of what they offer in the marketplace. Whatever the end user is paying, it is definitely worth it and it is not that high."
  • "The pricing and licensing are very fair compared to competing companies in the same field."
  • "There is room for improvement for them with an MSP partner. The pricing is good and fair. Our customers don't complain. The only thing is that it's a little bit old school. They don't have a system that automatically checks the number of users that our customers have so we can just update the licenses ourselves through a website. It is still done manually. They have a person who checks invoicing monthly to determine if there have been any changes. A nice improvement would be if they could get automated licensing counts."
  • "The pricing compared to the value Perception Point brings is super-competitive. They're not the cheapest in the market, but the value and the quality of the product are superior to anything else in the market, so we don't mind paying more for it."
  • More Perception Point Advanced Email Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Licensing is paid on a yearly basis."
  • "Most of our clients are on a perpetual license. If there is a budget issue, they can choose a subscription. However, most of the clients choose the perpetual license."
  • "The pricing could improve by having additional discounts. For example, when customers buy have more than 50 or more users, there should be additional discounts."
  • "I rate the price of Sophos Email a four out of five."
  • More Sophos Email 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… more »
    Top Answer:My opinion on the licensing of this solution is that it is a mess that needs sorting out. I am not particularly bothered… more »
    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… more »
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature is the hardware-assisted platform module.
    Top Answer:The price of this solution was within our budget and I think that it will suit most SMBs. There are no additional costs… more »
    Top Answer:Email alerts should be available in real-time. Alternatively, emails should be sent more often. It would be better to… more »
    Top Answer:The speed and stability were fine.
    Top Answer:We didn't have any issues with the solution. It was a good appliance. The solution should be able to support the cloud… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
    Sophos Email Security
    Learn More
    Sophos
    Video Not Available
    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.”

    Perception Point is a Prevention-as-a-Service company, offering fast interception of any content-based attack across all collaboration channels including email, cloud storage, CRM apps, and messaging platforms. The company prevents phishing, BEC, spam, malware, Zero-days, N-days well before it reaches the enterprise’s end-users. Deployed in minutes with no change to the enterprise’s infrastructure, our solution conforms with any policy and requires zero fuss from IT teams. On top of that, the company offers a significant added value service through our Incident Response team that serves as a force multiplier to the enterprise’s SOC team.

    Perception Point's unique technology, which folds 7 different detection layers to provide a single verdict, has been recognized by Gartner and has proven time and time again to deliver the most effective ROI when compared to leading cyber solutions. As a result, the company now serves many global enterprises of all sizes and across all verticals, including Telecom, Food & Beverage, Tech, Healthcare, and more.

    Sophos Email is a cloud-based secure email gateway solution for Sophos Central. Built to integrate seamlessly with popular email platforms, Sophos Email is engineered to keep businesses safe from email threats, simply stopping spam, phishing, malware, and data loss.

    Offer
    Learn more about Cisco Secure Email
    Learn more about Perception Point Advanced Email Security
    Learn more about Sophos Email
    Sample Customers
    SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
    Information Not Available
    Del Monte Foods, Terra Verde, spicerhaart, RIVERLITE, Dataprise, SureBridge, Reed's School, Sayfol International School
    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
    Manufacturing Company25%
    Hospitality Company17%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Transportation Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company13%
    Retailer12%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Government10%
    Construction Company8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise55%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business44%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise54%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business63%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise25%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise42%
    Buyer's Guide
    Perception Point Advanced Email Security vs. Sophos Email
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Perception Point Advanced Email Security vs. Sophos Email and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    688,618 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Perception Point Advanced Email Security is ranked 7th in Email Security with 15 reviews while Sophos Email is ranked 18th in Email Security with 6 reviews. Perception Point Advanced Email Security is rated 8.8, while Sophos Email is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Perception Point Advanced Email Security writes "Catches emails that others don't, and we can escalate messages to the Incident Response team for additional expertise". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos Email writes "Effective on-premises and cloud, beneficial sandboxing, and advanced AI detection". Perception Point Advanced Email Security is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Proofpoint Email Protection, IRONSCALES, Avanan and FireEye Email Security, whereas Sophos Email is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, Fortinet FortiMail, Proofpoint Email Protection and Fortinet FortiMail Cloud. See our Perception Point Advanced Email Security vs. Sophos Email 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.