Abnormal Security and Proofpoint Email Protection are email security solutions with robust threat-detection capabilities. Abnormal Security focuses on behavioral analysis to identify novel and sophisticated attacks, while Proofpoint combines traditional methods like threat intelligence and sandboxing alongside some behavioral analysis. While they offer overlapping functionality, they could also be considered complementary solutions for a layered defense.
Proofpoint users have raised concerns about the software's limited customization options. Abnormal security users have expressed a need for better integration with email platforms and improved reporting features.
Also, it is essential to mention the integration with SIEM platforms, allowing you to centralize security logs and events. Abnormal Security's focus on behavioral analysis can potentially provide richer data points for SIEM integration, aiding in overall threat detection and response.
The summary above is based on 72 interviews we conducted recently with Proofpoint Email Protection and Abnormal Security users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"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."
"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"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."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"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."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"It's detection of true positives are great, as it's cloud based it's very scalable and stable."
"Proofpoint Email Protection is stable enough and does its job of virus, malware, and email scam detection. Setting it up is not too complicated."
"It's a mature product. It does a good job in detection."
"Proofpoint is the main tool for blocking spam because it denies the connection altogether."
"It's very good at identifying threats."
"The solution blocks malicious emails containing viruses and malware and reduces them out of spam."
"Its anti-phishing functionality is the most valuable. Certainly, the biggest problem I have is phishing."
"It was easy to set up."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"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."
"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."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"The high cost of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"There is room for improvement in detecting and preventing phishing attacks. While the solution performs well in some aspects, it struggles with phishing threats."
"The Secure Mail aspect should have an Outlook add-in, instead of an external dashboard that outside users have to access."
"Proofpoint should have better integration with complex environments that need more than one instance of Proofpoint, as there are issues with nested instances."
"The initial setup is complex."
"I want Security Awareness Training in there as a package deal. A lot of companies are starting to value email security a little bit more and take it a little bit more seriously, and the great product that we link together with a lot of these sales is a training product called Security Awareness Training. It is an upsell that we do with Proofpoint, and it is definitely something that I recommend everybody with email security to look into. It would be great if Security Awareness Training is included with the email security."
"Proofpoint Email Protection could improve the Mail Trace feature and make navigation easier."
"Unfortunately, the whole product is going downhill right now, ever since they were sold to Thoma Bravo. We're constantly having problems with stability and the product in general."
Abnormal Security is ranked 4th in Secure Email Gateway (SEG) with 8 reviews while Proofpoint Email Protection is ranked 1st in Secure Email Gateway (SEG) with 46 reviews. Abnormal Security is rated 9.6, while Proofpoint Email Protection is rated 8.4. 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 Proofpoint Email Protection writes "A reasonably priced product that offers protection to emails, along with spam filters". Abnormal Security is most compared with Mimecast Email Security, Egress Intelligent Email Security, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security and Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), whereas Proofpoint Email Protection is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Cisco Secure Email and Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security. See our Abnormal Security vs. Proofpoint Email Protection report.
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