Cisco Secure Email vs MetaDefender Email Security Solutions comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Email and MetaDefender Email Security Solutions 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. MetaDefender Email Security Solutions Report (Updated: May 2024).
771,170 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
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has improved my organization's security. It makes it easier to manage the infrastructure without the help of third-party applications.""The solution is very easy to use. All you have to do is to assign the license to the end-user and it's done. The customer will only have the feature activated, and the solution will monitor the emails to determine if they are a threat or not.""The benefit that stands out to me is the ability for multiple individuals to collaborate simultaneously within the same document. Additionally, there is the option to save the document directly in the integrated OneDrive or SharePoint.""The most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance.""Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance.""The basic features are okay and I'm satisfied with the Defender.""The technical support is good and quick to resolve issues.""I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."

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"I love the Advanced Malware Protection feature. It works very well... The appliance has more security such as SDF, DKIM, DMARC, and encryption.""It integrates with Active Directory and we can limit specific users to using specific applications.""The filtering is definitely better at catching both spam and malicious messages, and there's a lot of extremely granular ability for setting up rules. You can do it the way you want to. The Microsoft solution tends to be pretty limited in how it allows some of that to be done.""The tech engineers are very knowledgeable.""It does a great job of preventing spam, malware, and ransomware. I can only go by what people have told me and what I've seen, but I have not seen spam in a year and a half to two years in my own company mailbox. And there are not a lot of catches where it's catching something that should have gotten through, either.""Anti-Spam and Advanced Malware Protection are the most valuable features... and we also have the option to block Zero-day attacks.""It's a bit easy to handle Cisco Secure Email; it's not that difficult. For the logs, which are in PDF format, it's not hard to read them. We don't need Wireshark much to analyze the logs.""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."

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"The most valuable feature is called summary reconstruction which is used to deliver encrypted files to users.""The sanitization is very good.""The most valuable feature of MetaDefender Email Security is the CDR. Customers purchase this solution specifically for data communication, as the other features can be obtained through other technologies that most customers already possess. Therefore, data communication serves as the foundation for the platform."

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Cons
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers.""There is room for improvement with the UI.""It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers.""The custom alerts have to improve a lot.""One area for improvement is integration. For example, when it comes to external SaaS platforms, we were not able to get a lot of information on integrations with such apps for security and authentication.""Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization.""There is room for improvement in terms of reporting.""The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect."

More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Cons →

"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.""The user interface could be updated.""The reporting functionality needs to be improved.""We have occasionally had hardware problems because we are using an appliance-based solution, but that might change. We may consider going to virtual systems.""I would like to see sandboxing for email, where suspicious emails received by the system are analyzed through online services.""The management features of the product are not up to date.""Scalability has certain shortcomings and needs to be improved because there are service providers who provide better scalability.v""Cisco Secure Email can be improved from the administrator's point of view. Usually, you have to work with different areas, and they can try to make it easy for the administrator to use different functions."

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"Although the number of AV engines is good, it could be better.""They offer a feature called SmartLink neutralization. I have tried it before. It seemed to work most of the time; however, I had a few users for whom it just wouldn't work. Whenever they click on a link, it stays on the MetaDefender page, saying that it's scanning it and never moves forward.""The DLP should be upgraded and has room for improvement."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's a user-base subscription."
  • "From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
  • "Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
  • "For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
  • "Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
  • "Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
  • "The solution saves money so we have seen a return on investment."
  • "Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We do annual licensing for Cisco Secure Email Gatewayand SMA together, and possibly SmartNet support. Packaged together, the cost is just under $38,000."
  • "In addition to the standard licensing, there is a cost for SMARTnet as well."
  • "Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
  • "Licensing costs depend on how many users there are. It could range between $5 and $7 per month, per user."
  • "The license was not per user, the license model was per feature. You could choose anti-virus, anti-spam, etc. It was feature-based and charged yearly."
  • "There were no other costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
  • "We were using Proofpoint and then we switched to Cisco... reportability was one of the main reasons we switched, but the biggest one was cost. If you can get an equivalent functionality for a better price it's wise to do so. That's what our primary decision came down to: We could get equivalent functionality at a lower price point."
  • "It is not that costly. We pay for the solution through a contractor and pay an annual fee."
  • More Cisco Secure Email Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "According to our customers, the price of MetaDefender is high and it continues to increase by almost 15 percent each year."
  • More MetaDefender Email Security Solutions Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various… more »
    Top Answer:The product must provide better malware detection. The detection algorithms don't perform the way I hope they would.
    Top Answer:The product's initial setup phase was easy.
    Top Answer:The product's price falls on the higher side when compared to the other products on the market. Whether the product… more »
    Top Answer:There are some concerns in the way the architecture is set up, making it an area where improvements are required. When… more »
    Top Answer:We paid for a three-year agreement. The cost is kind of high. For smaller companies, it may be outside of their budget… more »
    Top Answer:They offer a feature called SmartLink neutralization. I have tried it before. It seemed to work most of the time… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    MS Defender for Office 365
    Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
    OPSWAT MetaDefender Email Security, MetaDefender Email Gateway Security, MetaDefender Email Security
    Learn More
    Overview

    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 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.”

    OPSWAT MetaDefender Email Security solutions are a set of industry-leading email security solutions for organizations, especially critical infrastructures. OPSWAT MetaDefender Email Security solutions introduce key capabilities to elevate organizations’ email security posture, protecting against undisclosed vulnerabilities, zero-day exploits, and malware.

    OPSWAT MetaDefender Email Security solutions leverage proprietary OSPWAT technologies such as Deep CDR, Multiscanning, and Proactive DLP to prevent advanced malware attacks and data breaches. This set of solutions includes an on-premises deployment and a cloud service.


    Key Features:

    Anti-Phishing and Anti-Spam
    Utilizing layered anti-phishing and anti-spam technologies, OPSWAT MetaDefender Email Security solutions perform real-time URL reputation checks and spear-phishing detection to prevent sophisticated attacks. Links are also redirected to MetaDefender Cloud for additional checks.

    Deep CDR
    OPSWAT’s Deep CDR technology sanitizes attachments and emails in real-time to remove malicious components. A new file with similar characteristics will then be reconstructed with only benign components. Deep CDR supports over 130 file types.

    Multiscanning
    MetaDefender Email Security solutions scan files with 20 AV engines to deliver a detection rate of over 98%, with fewer false positives.

    Proactive DLP
    The Proactive DLP technology redacts sensitive and confidential data, including personally identifiable information (PII), in emails, preventing data breaches and helping comply with industry standards. Proactive DLP supports over 40 file types.


    Benefits:

    Protection against Advanced Phishing Attacks
    Protect users from social engineering attacks, thus ensuring IT can raely less on user awareness. 

    Removal of Malicious Content
    Protect business productivity files by removing document-based threats from attachments.

    Zero-Day Exploit Prevention
    Effectively eliminate zero-day targeted attacks by relying on prevention rather than detection.

    Compliance with Industry Standards
    Proactively identify and redact PII and sensitive data to prevent accidental leakage.

    Protection Against Threats Hidden in Encrypted Files
    Decrypt all password-protected files with user engagement.

    Sample Customers
    Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
    SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
    Information Not Available
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company17%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Energy/Utilities Company10%
    Retailer10%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Educational Organization16%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Government6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Retailer14%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Government11%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise42%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise51%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise37%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise28%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco Secure Email vs. MetaDefender Email Security Solutions
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Email vs. MetaDefender Email Security Solutions and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 56 reviews while MetaDefender Email Security Solutions is ranked 24th in Email Security with 3 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while MetaDefender Email Security Solutions 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 MetaDefender Email Security Solutions writes "Helpful support, and useful dashboards". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Fortinet FortiMail, Proofpoint Email Protection and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, whereas MetaDefender Email Security Solutions is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection and Barracuda Email Security Gateway. See our Cisco Secure Email vs. MetaDefender Email Security Solutions 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.