Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Score 9.3 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 Exchange
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Exchange is a secure email / messaging gateway with file archiving and encryption / data loss capability, available as a hosted service (Exchange Online) or installed (Exchange Server).N/A
Smarsh
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
The Smarsh Enterprise Platform is a unified, cloud-native solution designed to future-proof enterprise communications data strategies. Its technologies include elastic compute, natural language processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft ExchangeSmarsh
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft ExchangeSmarsh
Free Trial
YesNoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft ExchangeSmarsh
Considered Multiple 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 …
Microsoft Exchange

No answer on this topic

Smarsh

No answer on this topic

Features
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft ExchangeSmarsh
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 Exchange
7.3
84 Ratings
14% below category average
Smarsh
-
Ratings
Anti-malware8.716 Ratings6.567 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability8.816 Ratings8.079 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Loss Protection8.215 Ratings8.368 Ratings00 Ratings
Threat Detection9.528 Ratings6.566 Ratings00 Ratings
Sandboxing8.115 Ratings7.444 Ratings00 Ratings
End-to-End Encryption8.816 Ratings6.767 Ratings00 Ratings
Management Tools8.827 Ratings8.080 Ratings00 Ratings
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Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft ExchangeSmarsh
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Enterprises
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Microsoft Exchange
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Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft ExchangeSmarsh
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(28 ratings)
9.0
(102 ratings)
7.5
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
8.1
(2 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(4 ratings)
8.5
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(5 ratings)
9.9
(12 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseMicrosoft ExchangeSmarsh
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
Creating and receiving emails is simple. Managing contacts is a nice feature, especially connecting to Active Directory. Calendar management is also helpful and sharing access to others' calendars for scheduling meetings is useful. And reserving resources such as rooms or equipment is also useful. Personal and shared mailboxes are good features, as well. Tasks are a little lacking, but other than that, the features are thorough.
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Smarsh
This appliance is well suited for organizations that have a need to monitor, moderate, or log social networking site use or the use of any website. It is a very solid tool for any information security department to have at their disposal.
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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
  • As we have a large user base of 11,000 users we use MailTips to avoid people getting confused with people with similar names in the organization.
  • The integration between Teams Meeting and Resource booking is generally very good. The Scheduling Assistance makes it easy to scan calendars and find free periods to provisionally scheduled events.
  • Marking yourself as Out of the Office and busy is easy, as is sharing your calendar within the team/organization or individuals.
  • Voicemail integration and the ability to receive missed chats in your inbox are highly used and useful.
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Smarsh
  • Discovery: It allows for easy discoveries by the compliance and cyber security departments.
  • Ethical walls: This keeps certain departments from talking to each other.
  • Very granular control. This is a big product meaning you can get very detailed with it.
  • Once it's configured and running, we hardly ever have any issues.
Read full review
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
  • The two main factors for the better reliability & Uptime of internally hosted Exchange Server depends on Exchange Server configuration and the level of investment the organization is willing to provide for hosting the Exchange Server On-Premise Environment. As the data is stored in the organization’s hardware, any disaster may lead to the loss of email and servers.
  • Losing data might affect business continuity and rebuilding it can be costly.
  • Security remains a major concern.
  • Security of data loss is main concern. To ensure that, organization needs to configure networks, systems and Exchange platform against possible threats.
  • Hardware and license costs are high.
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Smarsh
  • Its configuration options were very large and required a good deal of time to learn all of the various settings.
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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.
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Microsoft
Email and calendars in a business setting are requirements. And Microsoft continues to be the standard of business applications. Microsoft 365 makes Microsoft Exchange easy to use. Everything is in the cloud. Let Microsoft take care of the hardware, the software, and the security. You just enable your business users with the functionality they need.
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Smarsh
It's the only product at this time that meets all of our requirements.
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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
Microsoft Exchange has come a long way over the years and has nowhere near the technical overhead required for support as it did back in 2003/2007 and prior. The integrations with Teams, Defender, Sharepoint, Copilot and many other products make it a solid and well-rounded tool used for many day-to-day tasks.
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Smarsh
No answers on this topic
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
Exchange is setup with multiple servers behind load balancers to provide high availability.
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Smarsh
No answers on this topic
Performance
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
I would say it's the best email product I've experienced.
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Smarsh
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
We have a good enterprise agreement with Microsoft which affords us quick phone support. I have found the support staff knowledgeable and prompt with a solution when required. At times it may be difficult to schedule a call back, this is mainly due to our need for calls early in the morning which happens to be during a shift change at Microsoft support.
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Smarsh
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Cisco
The implementation went well, no issues or problems to report.
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Microsoft
Implementation/conversion can be quite complex and, unless you have certified Exchange administrators in-house, you should strongly consider a 3rd party consultant for this implementation.
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Smarsh
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
Microsoft Exchange Product The best cloud-based enterprise-grade archiving platform with a host of features that enable files to be securely archived and retrieved with advanced search options. This tool is very easy to use and has a User-friendly interface. It is a highly reliable platform that allows all employees to automatically store their data without any limitations. It offers a cost-effective solution with customized policy management. We are happy that the customer support team is always fast and concerned, and the product's uninterrupted service experience. It is very good that it stores data in real-time without losing it, even in the event of a disaster. The cost-effective solution and integration with other tools are seamless.
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Smarsh
This was the only appliance of its kind that I have used. Other devices have different capabilities for web filtering such as the checkpoint firewalls, but none of them offered the overall solution that was deployed with this product at that time.
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Scalability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
The only time Exchange has failed us is when we did something to cause the failure.
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Smarsh
No answers on this topic
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.
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Microsoft
  • It has been an important factor in allowing seamless communication with clients and scheduling business meetings, which in turn works in the company's favor.
  • Haven't noticed any negative impact Exchange has had on our ROI. The support team is also responsive and helpful.
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Smarsh
  • Faster investigative work has led to increased employee efficiency when working on security investigations.
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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