Abnormal Security focuses on uncommon attacks, particularly advanced phishing and social engineering attempts. Their AI analyzes email content, sender/recipient information, user behavior, and email patterns to identify anomalies suggesting malicious intent. Cisco SETD employs a multi-layered approach, commended for its strong spam filtering, customizable security policies, and detailed reporting features, with users noting a need for improved integration options. Both products offer reasonable pricing and positive results, but Abnormal Security excels in customer service while Secure Email Threat Defense stands out for its real-time threat detection and automatic updates.
The summary above is based on 20 interviews we conducted recently with Abnormal Security and Secure Email Threat Defense users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution."
"Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features."
"Defender enables us to secure all 365-related activity from a single place. It gives us visibility into everything happening in Outlook, protecting us against phishing and other email-based threats. Defender helps us detect any suspicious behaviors."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps people to work remotely. It is a secure solution. We don't need to use our company's computers or get VPN connections to the networks. I can control how they share screens and what they send to the devices. It keeps our organizations confidential and sensitive information safe."
"It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself."
"The good part is that you don't have to configure it, which is very convenient."
"The initial setup was easy."
"One of the things that I love about them is that the setup and installation are super easy. All you do is give them access to your Microsoft 365 tenant, and through APIs, they are able to do their work. They are doing all this through APIs, so you do not have to install the software and take a month to get it all set up to even see the value of the solution. You could be up and running in less than an hour."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"It does some really cool stuff that other tools aren't doing. We found it to be really effective, and the AI/ML functionality is really what differentiates them."
"What I like about Abnormal Security is that it notifies me if any of my partners or suppliers are experiencing a security breach by analyzing their database and identifying potential cyber threats."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"It's very easy to deploy and configure."
"This solution is easy to use."
"Secure Email Threat Defense's scalability is good."
"The ability to see east-west traffic is its most valuable feature. Traditionally, email defense focuses on north-south, inbound-outbound, egress-ingress traffic. With Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox, it's able to quickly identify, track, tag, and categorize emails that are internal. That can typically give us visibility into if there's an internal compromised account (for example). Someone can then use that internal compromised account to email additional accounts with either malicious software or links, but internal within that Office tenant. Effectively, that email message never leaves the tenant. Any of the mail gateways really do not have any method or way of seeing this traffic since it's not leaving the environment."
"It has an efficient email filtering feature."
"Cisco has a threat mechanism called cloud-based Talos, where all the threats are inbuilt."
"I would say it's very comprehensive, with multiple antivirus OEMs, virus encrypt features, encryption, and more."
"On ease of use, it rates very high. It's something that I was able to get into without really looking at any documentation. I wanted to see what it felt like before I started looking at any documentation on how to use it, and it was very easy to use. It works very smoothly. The user experience is very intuitive. They did an amazing job on that."
"We are always looking for others tools to increase automation on tasks. There can be better integration with other solutions, such as PowerPoint and email."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"The only thing they should improve is the licensing model. They should stop changing it. A year ago, the five features I mentioned were included in one product. Now, three of them are bundled into one product, and you have to pay extra for the other two. I don't mind paying extra, but I don't want them to change it every year or every six months. I need to know what I'm looking at and not worry about it next year."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"Microsoft security solutions work as expected. They are constantly updating the solutions to make them better. At the same time, the changes can impact a customer's environment, and we need to adjust settings. Sometimes we aren't aware of the changes, and nothing is pushed from the backend automatically."
"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not."
"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"When we're working on something as engineers, and we find an idea or a method of doing something that would be greatly improved by doing it another way, there should be an ability for me to click the ideas button, type in an idea that I have, and submit it to a product review team or developers to have them think through the process a little bit more."
"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"I, as such, do not have anything that I do not like or would like to add, but you could argue that because they are doing it API-based, there is a chance that something could slip through temporarily before they are able to pull it out. In theory, it could happen just because of the nature of the system. They are not in line with the delivery of the mail. They are kind of asynchronous, which is a pro as well as a con. If it is synchronous, then I know it would always stop them, but because it is asynchronous, things could get through temporarily or because of some system issues on the Microsoft side or their side. It is the nature of the beast, but it is a little bit of a con."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox can improve by adding advanced phishing, then the solution would become the best in the market. However, this could increase the price even more. Additionally, if CES with domain protection could be added it would be an even better solution."
"The search area has room for improvement. When you go to the next page, it remains at the bottom of the current page that you're on. Also, under the reports section, it allows you to see any "convictions," but if you want to search for those convictions you have to remember when they all came in and go back and edit the search accordingly. You cannot click on the list of convictions to actually see if you had a spike at a certain time."
"There is still room for improvement in terms of integrations with other Cisco tools and non-Cisco tools. There is also some room for improvement needed in terms of the reporting."
"This solution could be improved by integration with Sandbox."
"We encounter issues while searching for missing emails."
"Customers will benefit greatly from monthly billing because the majority of customers today use the cloud, be it Office 365, or Google Cloud."
"From a technical point of view, Cisco is far behind in terms of cybersecurity, and it has to improve very much."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense Pricing and Cost Advice →
Abnormal Security is ranked 12th in Email Security with 8 reviews while Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is ranked 16th in Email Security with 11 reviews. Abnormal Security is rated 9.6, while Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Abnormal Security writes "Provides comprehensive email security management, effective in detecting a wide range of email threats". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense writes "Easy to deploy and configure with excellent support". Abnormal Security is most compared with Mimecast Email Security, Egress Intelligent Email Security, Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security and Avanan, whereas Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is most compared with Cisco Secure Email, Kiteworks, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) and Armorblox. See our Abnormal Security vs. Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense report.
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