Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is a collection of cybersecurity services for home professionals looking for a solution against data loss and cyberattacks.
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Mimecast Advanced Email Security
Score 8.7 out of 10
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The Mimecast Secure Email Gateway is a messaging security option with anti-spam / anti-malware, data loss prevention, large file send, and other features, from UK company Mimecast.
The imaging capability seems to be solid [with Acronis True Image], although I have not had to recover a drive yet so cannot compare. The logs tell me when it is (and isn't) working. The "Cloud Replication" that is supposed to simultaneously replicate the local backup image is perfectly awful and the months of tech support ended with them telling me I had a "VSS issue" on a brand new workstation and that I should just create a separate cloud image. After months of it taking 3-4 DAYS to run, IF it worked, and then failing altogether, I discontinued it. It was even logging (running?) under another separate critical files backup, and forced to use the same encryption password. Setting up a new one failed. The cloud backup of my critical files is still running at kb/sec speeds. The ransomware protection hasn't caught anything yet to my knowledge, and consumes a lot of resources. Changing the settings takes at least 10 minutes to log into the cloud. Cloud storage is tiny and a push to get you to pay more. Will not be renewing.
Employees generally ignore emails, just read the heading or subject, and immediately reply to emails just to save time. Because of that, they easily fall into the trap of hackers through spam or phishing emails, ultimately causing harm or loss to the company financially as well as degrading its reputation.
Mimecast Advanced Email Security scans email very well and protect the malicious one from reaching out to our end users.
Mimecast Advanced Email Security gateway policies are customizable and we can deploy them as per our need.
Mimecast Advanced Email Security has a queue to store suspicious files, if an email contains malicious files then Mimecast will deliver the email without that file and inform you to review it.
Some features have actually become more complicated over the years. One that comes to mind is creating a backup plan that can execute daily to an external USB media that is changed daily (older versions would back up to the, for example, "F" drive regardless of which drive was attached - newer versions identify each drive uniquely, and a backup task created with a given external drive will fail due to the lack of media presence if the drive is replaced).
Error messages could be less cryptic.
Support turnaround time and live assistance could be faster.
The Admin Management console is absurdly complicated. For every first time we wanted to setup we've had to call their support for assistance. Support is quick and fantastic but it's so difficult to do anything yourself. They seem to have gone out of their way to call features unique things instead of using standard language from other providers so you as an IT professional know what you're looking for to setup.
They have lots of KB articles, which their support will point you to. They are written on the most basic level and don't actually provide the help you need. For example, the KB page will tell you the list of options on the page... but not actually tell you what you do, why you might use them, or define their terminology.
Their email threat management system has several nice features. One of the features available is that it will rewrite links in emails so that users click the link and it sandboxes the link, testing it on their server space and the user sees it there. This means the actual link in the email gets changed to the address of one of their servers. As a law firm, the EXACT LINKS are important to maintain in our communications and editing actual data from our clients to point to a Mimecast server is an unacceptable practice. I wish they had an alternative that did not edit the link itself on the page.
The UI went through an update in 2023, but it is still a pain to navigate. It is slow, sluggish, and sometimes kicks us out while performing tasks. Even with everything being in one dashboard, it felt like traversing numerous sites to get to certain settings. The ability to favorite certain admin menu items was extremely beneficial, however. It did allow navigating a little faster.
Beyond a single instance, I haven't had to approach Acronis' support. I needed a new key following the death of my previous workstation, and they rapidly supplied it. I've heard from colleagues that they've quickly answered any questions that've been asked. If I need something, I'll generally frequent FAQ pages first, although Acronis actually has instructional videos to help users get started, which is forward-thinking. Great software that fills a vital niche for Windows systems.
When calling them you get best in the world customer services but as previously mentioned their online community and capabilities are a bit lacking. They want you to log into their portal to see updates on issues (vs. using a public facing service) and I rarely find the answers to my issues in electronic format. Their online presence is only helpful with the simplest of issues.
Acronis True Image is the perfect program when it comes to backing up data. It supports all kinds of backup like file and/or folder backup and has a better and easier to use interface than the 2 products. I also like that I have the option to backup data in local drives also instead of the cloud only. And lastly, it supports Partition backup also instead of only files and/or folders.
Previously we have only used the default on-premise exchange that comes with SBS. This was very simple and only provided basic filtering of spam and junk mail. We weren't able to filter impersonation mail or emails with malicious code
The Windows version is generally reliable and only ran into one issue thus far. Restores are easy and there are many features. On MacOS, it's a completely different story. There is significant resource leakage related to the updater app that can bog down part of a CPU core continuously until it is disabled. The mobile backup feature also needs to be disabled via UNIX command line or CPU usage will go up when a mobile device on the same network like an iPad or iPhone's screen is turned on.
Reasonably priced solution, even for a small business like ours.
It's hard to put a figure on our ROI - I would just say we feel like we've gotten our money's worth with the advanced email protection we receive. We have definitely avoided many potentially dangerous emails since we've implemented this solution.
