Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense vs. Sophos Email

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
Sophos Email
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Sophos Email is presented as Predictive Cloud Email Security Powered by Artificial Intelligence designed to block spam and malware, as well as protect employees and block phishing attempts.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseSophos Email
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseSophos Email
Free Trial
YesNo
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 DefenseSophos Email
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseSophos Email
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
Sophos Email
5.3
19 Ratings
46% below category average
Anti-malware8.117 Ratings3.719 Ratings
Customizability8.217 Ratings3.519 Ratings
Data Loss Protection8.215 Ratings7.516 Ratings
Threat Detection8.719 Ratings3.518 Ratings
Sandboxing8.116 Ratings7.614 Ratings
End-to-End Encryption8.416 Ratings7.816 Ratings
Management Tools8.719 Ratings3.419 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseSophos Email
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 DefenseSophos Email
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(19 ratings)
3.7
(22 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.2
(3 ratings)
1.1
(2 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(5 ratings)
8.2
(9 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(6 ratings)
2.9
(11 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)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Secure Email Threat DefenseSophos Email
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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Sophos
The Sophos email solution is a good fit for my organization which is a mid-size resort with 200 users. Sophos email has revealed unwanted emails that were getting through our built in Microsoft email security scanning and policies so having this extra layer was a no brainier. With that we were able to focus on the bad stuff and even tweak our products with this information from Sophos email.
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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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Sophos
  • We could customize it to have a certain level of workflow. We manage to enforce certain email (based on key-phrases) to be quarantined before send it to the recipient. And the email needs to be approved (manually) before being released.
  • For certain type (using regex) of email, we will encrypt it if it's sent outside our organization domain.
  • Scalable
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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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Sophos
  • I would love to see tips integrated into the user interface from the management side to allow for easier dissection of email headers. This would allow lower level admins that may work at smaller companies to better understand the information presented.
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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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Sophos
It was easy to use and easy to implement. You don't need previous knowledge on the products, after we got this up and running, it took us hours to put everything together. The transition was easy and seamless.
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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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Sophos
It's mostly great and for policies and features, it does everything we would ask it to and more. The only thing keeping it from being a 10 is the lack of granularity in the reporting, which is actually an issue within Sophos Central as a whole. The ability to drill down from dashboards into accurate, detailed data would be very helpful at times.
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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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Sophos
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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Sophos
Support is slow to respond. They call back outside of normal business hours despite clearly being advised when they should call. They try to BS you that the platform is working properly although there is hard evidence to the contrary. Once you get to senior level of support they agree that the product is incapable of performing properly in its current iteration.
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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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Sophos
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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Sophos
I have only tried Sophos Email, and I find it to be a very useful tool, as it protects against information leakage such as fraudulent emails, cloud sandboxing and quarantine, which are essential functions and the product works excellent.
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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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Sophos
  • Sophos Email has been protecting our users, including the administrative branch, who are the target of attacks most frequently.
  • Every month Sophos Email stops about 100,000 malicious emails. We calculate that if these attacks have saved the company time, it prevents us from having a lot of support staff to attend to the cases.
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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