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.
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"Threat Explorer is one of the features that I very much like because it is a real-time report that allows you to identify, analyze, and trace security attacks."
"It gives us visibility into threats and, for endpoints, it helps us to prioritize threats. We used to have a lack of visibility, but now our time to detect and respond has decreased."
"Some of the valuable features on the email side are anti-phishing, anti-malware, 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."
"Defender helps us prioritize threats across our organization."
"Anti-Spam and Advanced Malware Protection are the most valuable features... and we also have the option to block Zero-day attacks."
"There is a huge return compared to if we didn't have a gateway appliance, as far as blocking malicious emails."
"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."
"We like the in-built features, like the email filtering based on the IP and domain. Cisco has its own blacklisted domains and IPs, which is very good. This filters around 70 percent of emails from spam, and we are seeing fewer false positives with this."
"Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution."
"The most valuable feature is the different content filters we are using, such as DKIM."
"The strong point of the solution is that we hardly get any spam emails because of Cisco Secure Email."
"It is a user-friendly product."
"Microsoft Exchange Online Protection has features like DLP (data loss protection), Safe Attachment, and Safe Links."
"It's definitely scalable."
"What I like most about Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is its integration with Windows, so we have one central view for all alerts and incidents."
"The initial setup of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection was easy."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection are the EOP, ATP, safe links, fishing, and antispam."
"We use the solution in all our environments. We use it for remedy tickets and give them updates. It was our main communication point."
"Online Protection's most valuable feature is its admin interface."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of administration. Other solutions require complex administration, but Microsoft Exchange Online Protection is easier."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"There needs to be an improvement in integrating the product to work across multiple operating systems, and to have better support for non-Microsoft file types."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"The visibility for the weaknesses in the system and unauthorized access can be improved."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should improve the troubleshooting tools. It's unclear whether the device is blocked at the firewall level or at the device itself. The granularity needed for troubleshooting is currently lacking. From my perspective, Microsoft should address this issue to benefit many users who likely share the same sentiment."
"The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear."
"It would be nice to have an easier way to check on the health of the system, how stressed these appliances are. Sure, you can do it, but it would be helpful to have an easier way to do it, maybe even at a glance."
"It is not user-friendly, and it is quite complicated. So, it should be more user-friendly."
"We didn't get any malware, but a few phishing emails, maybe one or two, slipped in."
"There could be additional DLP functionality for it."
"The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky."
"They can do it better with web links, with the URLs. They have a technology called Outbreak but it doesn't work as well as we would like."
"I would like them to add some clustering or high availability features."
"The product could be more stable. Microsoft products could be more stable because sometimes, even though they are updating some things, we cannot find those updates."
"Not all settings can be configured automatically and most still require manual configuration. However, there is an automation tool available that can be used to input all the configurations either as a script or a tool it would be helpful."
"Having orchestration features added to Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, particularly automation and remediation, would be quite useful."
"I would like to get reports about vulnerable connections from our clients with information about domains, public IPs, etc. That would be highly useful."
"When you're using a Microsoft product solution, you can scale it, but if you're not, there are limitations."
"The tool's classification for bulk email is cumbersome."
"I think the implementation could be more streamlined."
"When the product is being updated, it changes some of the setups. The support team is also not good."
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, Trend Micro Email Security and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, whereas Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Fortinet FortiMail, Mimecast Email Security, 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.