Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense vs. Microsoft 365

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense provides protection against email threats that compromise an organization’s brand and operations. Its advanced threat detection capabilities uncover known, emerging and targeted threats. And it expands the scope of organizations' defenses to detect dangerous threats and rapidly search for and remediate threats across security controls. Secure Email Threat Defense's Artificial Intelligence and machine…N/A
Microsoft 365
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) is a Microsoft Cloud subscription service that includes Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access). The software can be installed across multiple devices and ensures that users always have the most up-to-date version of the included Office applications.
$5
Per User Per Month
Pricing
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft 365
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Business Basic
$5.00
Per User Per Month
Individual
$5.84
*Per Month
Business - Apps
$8.25
Per User Per Month
Enterprise - F3
$10.00
Per User Per Month
Business Standard
$12.50
Per User Per Month
Business Premium
$20.00
Per User Per Month
Enterprise - E3
$32.00
Per User Per Month
Enterprise - E5
$57.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft 365
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details*When billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft 365
Considered Both Products
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Chose Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Cisco Email Security provides the first layer of defense against cyber threats and protects sensitive outbound data. It guards against spam, fraudulent senders, infected files whenever they become malicious and blocks risky URLs to prevent attacks. It also prevents data loss …
Chose Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
The security teams also evaluated similar offerings but went with Cisco Secure Email since this comes from a big name and they wanted to ensure complete compliance and protection assurance. The primary reasons for selecting Cisco Secure Email were integration with office 365, …
Chose Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
The services offered by ForeFront were basic, it's not quite comparable to Cisco Secure Email. The functions offered by Cisco are outstanding.
Microsoft 365

No answer on this topic

Features
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft 365
Secure Email Gateway
Comparison of Secure Email Gateway features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
8.7
28 Ratings
4% above category average
Microsoft 365
-
Ratings
Anti-malware8.716 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability8.816 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Loss Protection8.215 Ratings00 Ratings
Threat Detection9.528 Ratings00 Ratings
Sandboxing8.115 Ratings00 Ratings
End-to-End Encryption8.816 Ratings00 Ratings
Management Tools8.727 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft 365
Small Businesses
Zoho Mail
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Score 9.3 out of 10
Google Workspace
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Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Avanan
Avanan
Score 9.8 out of 10
Google Workspace
Google Workspace
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Avanan
Avanan
Score 9.8 out of 10
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft 365
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(27 ratings)
8.0
(241 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.0
(2 ratings)
9.5
(6 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(4 ratings)
7.8
(11 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(5 ratings)
8.9
(54 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft 365
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
I will certainly recommend Cisco Secure Email to my friends/colleagues, one look at the dashboard/statistics will actually convince any IT professional to use this product. We noticed an outstanding improvement in Email quality, most of the SPAM emails are caught, and our users have never been happier!
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Microsoft
Office everyday things since time immemorial. It's hard for Google Suite or any other to compete with Microsoft. They have everything, and it all works great, with incredible tools and capabilities. The new integrations work seamlessly most of the time, such as embedding a Power BI in a PPT. Expecting too much AI, like note taking, or LLM-based PPT, is not available in my tier at least, so depending on the budget, you won't get all you may expect from an AI leader. For diagramming and process maps, you're better off with other tools like those above.
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Pros
Cisco
  • Manages Junk Mail Well-We configured and tested our configuration to filter out the majority of junk mail hitting our inboxes.
  • Manages Graymail-We configured and tested our Cisco ETD for graymail filtering and reduced the amount of unwanted advertising and other legitimate emails.
  • Creating unique policies that were tailored to block or allow emails from certain senders.
  • Stopped malicious email traffic (e.g., malicious attachments and links) with rules for identifying and stripping potentially malicious attachments or links.
  • Allows easy configuration for other email security measures such as SPF, DMARC and DKIM.
  • Cisco engineers provide an annual free security health check. We took advantage of several security health checks where Cisco certified engineers go over the security setting of our Cisco ETD. We were provided a written report that highlighted strengths and weaknesses of our Cisco ETD setup.
  • Monitoring email traffic flow is almost overwhelming with the amount of information you can obtain from the portal. This gives valuable information to IT staff in terms of volume and type of emails the company is receiving.
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Microsoft
  • It allows us to keep our email organized. I like the fact that I can create folders in Outlook, and they replicate on my mail server.
  • Excellent for drafting and saving those documents as PDFs without needing PDF editing software.
  • Spreadsheets - what more is there to say?
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Cons
Cisco
  • The web interface is definitely dated
  • The software updates to the user interface and the documentation online are not congruent. Some docs are old and information is lacking to make changes
  • The email filtering and email search features are really dated. And other tools are more user friendly
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Microsoft
  • Microsoft 365 really needs to work on protection part. In complex environment it is not reliable as compared to its competitors like Proofpoint. There are many instances where it fails to perform effectively.
  • In SharePoint Online the versioning feature of the document needs to be improved by Microsoft. Sometimes when we have to roll back to the previous version it does not work as expected.
  • In Teams messaging and app permission policies can be improved. There are some settings where we have to add a lot of things manually.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
There is a 50/50 chance that we will renew. We are in the middle of moving from on-prem to the cloud so we may not need it once we are fully migrated.
Read full review
Microsoft
There are many features of Office that we cannot replicate in any other tool. Plus people know it already. It's not going away anytime soon.
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Usability
Cisco
Good interface, easy to use and set up. If there were any issues, there is very good documentation and videos that one can follow for additional setup and best practices. As typical with most Cisco solutions, there are more features than needed for our purposes but good to know they are there in case of future needs
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Microsoft
It being the default office suite means it's user experience and idioms are things that everyone is generally very used to and fluent with.
The sharing is relatively simple, being directly hooked into Entra AD, and expiry being a first class concern.
It's usability decreases at scale, with multiple people simultaneously making edits can make documents unusable.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense's availability is great and reliable when you need it most. We haven't had any noticeable outages or issues.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cisco
Cisco always provides good support for all of their solutions. As usual, Cisco support is top notch, from their initial sales teams to the post support, we have always felt comfortable with using Cisco solutions. Their documentation is also very good, frequent updates to the documents with feature enhancements and support notes. All around very good suppot
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Microsoft
Over the past 8 years of using Microsoft 365, I have noticed that they change vendors often. This always leads to a poor experience in the beginning, then levels out after some time for the company to get things worked out. As a customer, it is really frustrating because I don't have time when something isn't working to have them "look into my issue" and get back with me. They have even closed a ticket I specifically told them to keep open. Your applications are only as good as the support.
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Implementation Rating
Cisco
The implementation went well, no issues or problems to report.
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Microsoft
Everything works and I use it all the time.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
Cisco SETD, with a broad deployment and full integration with Microsoft 365 gives us a strong protection, especially where we can leverage its strengths: Microsoft‑365 integration, mailbox remediation, policy enforcement, and your visibility across Cisco tools.


Proofpoint is better around user awareness (warning tags etc.), and continuity/archiving. Considering that we have a full Cisco stack, choosing Proofpoint would come with higher cost, learning curve, possible redundancy of features, licensing complexity.
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Microsoft
Its very user-friendly, collaborative and efficient that boosts productivity using cloud tools. their security is strong and it provides data protection. There are regular updates that shields us from attackers too. It offers a wealth of learning resources, including tutorials, help articles and video guide to help users make the most of the application and personally upgrade their skills.
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Our email security has increased.
  • Users are now more confident about their email security.
  • Management of threat detection and prevention has become easier.
  • Finer controls on spam filtering gives customization capability.
  • GDPR compliance ensures peace of mind from a regulation point of view.
  • The quarantine feature has ensured that we do not lose important emails while they are being analyzed.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • It has helped keep the high-energy culture my company has since it allows easy communication and calls.
  • Positively impacts responses from clients, since we can see how many times they have been contacted. (the more someone is contacted, the less likely they are to respond. Microsoft helps make sure we all know who and who not to contact)
  • positively impacts my ability to focus, since you can mute notifications. Since I look at my computer all day, it is helpful to lock in and not get distracted by the many emails I receive a day. You can also change preferences, so emails with high urgency are still seen.
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ScreenShots

Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense Screenshots

Screenshot of an Impact Report showing efficacy metrics and ROI indicatorsScreenshot of a detailed view of phishing messagesScreenshot of the dashboard