We compared Cisco Secure Email and Microsoft Exchange Online Protection across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Cisco Secure Email offers advanced protection against phishing attacks, reputation-based filtering, and robust tracking functionalities. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection offers seamless integration with Windows, a central alert console, and real-time monitoring of suspicious URLs.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Secure Email should improve global malicious email defense, data loss prevention, and integration with third-party solutions. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection could offer more training and enhance its security features. Users also requested better encryption, gray email management, and integration with non-Microsoft platforms.
Service and Support: Cisco support is generally considered knowledgeable and helpful, but a few users reported slow response times and difficulty navigating the support process. While some users found Microsoft support to be helpful and responsive, others experienced slower response times.
Ease of Deployment: Cisco Secure Email is generally straightforward and seamless to set up. It provides a modular and adaptable environment, but new users may need training. Users had varied experiences setting up Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, ranging from easy to difficult. It may necessitate dedicated personnel for maintenance.
Pricing: Opinions on the pricing of Cisco Secure Email are mixed. Some find it expensive but worth the investment, while others find it reasonably priced and competitive with other vendors. Some users said Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is expensive, but others considered it reasonable.
ROI: Cisco Secure Email's return on investment is influenced by factors such as use case, organization size, and industry. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection has proven to be a profitable investment.
Comparison Results: Cisco Secure Email is highly regarded for its intelligence threat detection, reputation filtering, and robust tracking abilities. The solution’s areas for improvement include data loss prevention and third-party integration. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is praised for its seamless integration with Windows and useful features like URL holding and threat management. At the same time, users say it could improve in areas such as pricing, documentation, and security features.
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."
"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."
"The good part is that you don't have to configure it, which is very convenient."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, and Safe Links."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"The system provides our service desk with the means to troubleshoot email delivery issues with ease."
"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."
"I can customize the configuration and policies."
"It's flexible. There are a lot of rules and policies that can be easily applied for certain employees or certain mailboxes."
"The advanced phishing protection and the integration with the awareness tool that Cisco has embedded into the solution to bring awareness to the customers about the dangers of phishing attacks and other things that come from email are the most valuable features."
"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."
"It has the ability to tell us, after an email has been delivered, where else it went, once it got inside. Maybe it's something we wanted it to stop and it didn't stop it, but it notified us later that it was something that it should have stopped. It can give us a trajectory of all the other places that it went internally and it can tell us what files were transferred as well."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is the accidental release of information protection capabilities. Additionally, the solution is easy to use."
"The product protects against malware."
"Online Protection's most valuable feature is its admin interface."
"Microsoft EOP's most valuable feature is a shared mailbox."
"It is scalable."
"The threat management feature includes policies and alerts that are valuable."
"I like the product's ZAP feature."
"The product's most valuable feature is third-party integrations."
"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."
"One area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration."
"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."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"Microsoft should provide more documentation for users so they can self-educate. I would like to see more documentation for advanced security features."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"The initial setup was complex because I have two sites with physical clusters."
"I would like them to add some clustering or high availability features."
"The reporting functionality needs to be improved."
"Better dashboards and more interactive overviews would be nice, but the current functionality is sufficient."
"Many smaller businesses opt for more cost-effective solutions, such as Gmail or Hotmail accounts, instead of investing in Cisco Secure Email, given its higher cost."
"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."
"I would like to see sandboxing for email, where suspicious emails received by the system are analyzed through online services."
"There could be additional DLP functionality for it."
"When the product is being updated, it changes some of the setups. The support team is also not good."
"The licensing can be on the expensive side, especially in the cloud space."
"The reporting needs a little bit of improvement."
"The management interface of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) could be intuitive."
"The security compliance features need to be improved. Sometimes, a client's mailbox becomes full because of retained information and not because of mail. I would like to see improvement in block rules as well."
"We have experienced issues while migrating from on-prem to the cloud. The tool needs to improve its stability."
"The security features could be better."
"If a company wants to put in line back-to-back anti-spam solutions, they need to work on that part because Microsoft recommends either you use EOP as a front line or you don't use it."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Secure Email is ranked 2nd in Email Security with 56 reviews while Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is ranked 3rd in Email Security with 34 reviews. Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is rated 8.2. 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 Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) writes "An effective email security solution that provides DLP, Safe Attachment, and Safe Links". Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Trellix Collaboration Security, Fortinet FortiMail, Proofpoint Email Protection, Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense and Trend Micro Email Security, whereas Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Mimecast Email Security, Fortinet FortiMail, Barracuda Email Security Gateway and Trend Micro Email Security. See our Cisco Secure Email vs. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) 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.