Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense vs. Proofpoint Email Protection

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
Score 8.4 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
Proofpoint Email Protection
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Proofpoint Email Protection is available as an on-premise or cloud based solution and blocks unwanted, malicious and impostor emails with granular search capabilities and visibility into all messages. Outbound controls include encryption and data loss prevention, while continuity capabilities ensure business communications can continue as normal in the event of an email outage. With Proofpoint's Email Protection, you can protect your people, data, and brand from today’s threats…N/A
Pricing
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseProofpoint Email Protection
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseProofpoint Email Protection
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseProofpoint Email Protection
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseProofpoint Email Protection
Secure Email Gateway
Comparison of Secure Email Gateway features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense
8.4
19 Ratings
1% below category average
Proofpoint Email Protection
9.2
78 Ratings
9% above category average
Anti-malware8.117 Ratings10.076 Ratings
Customizability8.217 Ratings10.075 Ratings
Data Loss Protection8.215 Ratings8.748 Ratings
Threat Detection8.719 Ratings9.075 Ratings
Sandboxing8.116 Ratings9.257 Ratings
End-to-End Encryption8.416 Ratings9.358 Ratings
Management Tools8.719 Ratings8.074 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseProofpoint Email Protection
Small Businesses
Barracuda Essentials
Barracuda Essentials
Score 9.2 out of 10
Barracuda Essentials
Barracuda Essentials
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Barracuda Essentials
Barracuda Essentials
Score 9.2 out of 10
Barracuda Essentials
Barracuda Essentials
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Cloud Email Security
Cisco Cloud Email Security
Score 7.7 out of 10
Cisco Cloud Email Security
Cisco Cloud Email Security
Score 7.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseProofpoint Email Protection
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(19 ratings)
8.8
(95 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.2
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(5 ratings)
8.3
(2 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(6 ratings)
8.3
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseProofpoint Email Protection
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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Proofpoint
Well suited: Proofpoint does a pretty good job at protecting us from spam emails. I was able to block a lot of emails coming from SendGrid by blocking SendGrid emails with a custom spam filter. However, SendGrid has a lot of legit emails too so I was able to create another rule to allow those emails from certain people, then block the rest. That way business need was met but spam emails are blocked. Less Appropriate If you are trying to monitor internal to internal emails Proofpoint is probably a little over featured for that.
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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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Proofpoint
  • Spam - catches these emails before hitting the inbox.
  • Daily digest - provides users with a list of the emails that were blocked and allows them to choose to release them if they are legitimate emails.
  • Ensures that emails coming into our organization is safe for our users and verifies the email is coming from stated senders email server.
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Cons
Cisco
  • The creation of policies and order in which they are applied to incoming/outgoing email can sometimes be a little confusing.
  • Testing of rules and/or configuration settings are done live. Would be nice to have a way of testing a rule and/or configuration before going live if possible.
  • Searching and extracting emails with ease/simplicity for eDiscovery or security purposes would be an extra bonus.
  • Having an easier method for setting up and sending secure emails.
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Proofpoint
  • Proofpoint could offer more frequent training opportunities to customers at all levels of expertise.
  • Proofpoint can always continue to strive to keep its product a leader in the industry.
  • Proofpoint's support site could be overhauled to provide a more logical flow.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
Haven't found an alternative product with the same features or quality, I have been renewing Cisco Secure Email for over 8 years and i am overly satisfied with what is offered. I will definitely recommended it to my peers.
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Proofpoint
No answers on this topic
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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Proofpoint
Very robust and solid product in protecting our emails. The engineers who assisted with our implementation was very knowledgable and great to work with. Easy to use by end-users. Administration and management are also easy for IT. Great dashboard and reporting tools for business reviews.
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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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Proofpoint
There were no appliance errors or unplanned outages during five years of operation.
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Performance
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Proofpoint
Most important thing is the performance of processing mails. Even in a complex environment the system keeps performing on a very high Level.
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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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Proofpoint
We use ProofPoint support quite often to fix issues and assist with setting up features and rules. Each time we have created a ticket, they have been very helpful and respectful. Each ticket has been treated with the appropriate SLA time and attention. We also enjoy the regular check-ins from the engineers when tickets are open but we get busy with other tasks.
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Implementation Rating
Cisco
Implementation is straight forward and easy, advanced settings are super helpful especially scripting and custom filters, reporting is one of the coolest features to trace every step of sent/received emails. integration with internal email systems have never been easier, we are running Microsoft Exchange servers behind Cisco Secure Email with no problems.
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Proofpoint
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
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, hybrid deployment availability, and greater customization options available.
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Proofpoint
We previously used halon anti-spam, which lasted us well until our organization really started to grow and it was not able to keep up with the amount of mail we were receiving. The support is also nothing compared to Proofpoint's professional services offering. Halon was also not able to have the complex rules that Proofpoint can offer.
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Scalability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Proofpoint
You can add a lot of agents to your environment if you need them. And you can operate hardware appliances and virtual appliances in the same cluster.
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Although Microsoft offers security controls with Office 365, security with Cisco Secure Email for our business email and protection against some advanced malware has more robust security features, such as automatic mailbox remediation and email intelligence top threats.
  • I currently have security and advanced malware protection to Office 365.
  • Lately, Cisco Secure Email had an update which added two new features that allows us to prevent phishing emails and protects the company's domain.
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Proofpoint
  • Having easy-to-reach backups of all employee emails has made Proofpoint worth it by itself. That plus the countless times that spam/malicious emails did not make it through to the intended person that could have potentially cost the organization a lot of money.
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ScreenShots

Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense Screenshots

Screenshot of Impact Report showing efficacy metrics and ROI indicatorsScreenshot of Detailed view of phishing messagesScreenshot of Dashboard