Clearswift SECURE Email Gateway (SEG) vs. Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection (TAP)

The CS SEG appliances are running as virtual appliances by now. They do need not much power in the ESX environment. I recommend to use at least two peers running in a cluster. The cluster feature is working very well. The CS SEG can process a huge number of emails in a very short time frame.

Incentivized

Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection is a great security application for notifying our team about when our users click on malicious links. It provides a good explanation of the attack scenario, including the Sender, Subject, as well as other users that this attack has been sent to. It is also very useful in helping provide metrics on what types of attacks have been sent to the organization historically.

Incentivized

• CS SEG is fast in email processing
• Managing the quarantine is easy
• Display of the reasons why an email has been processed this is very detailed

Incentivized

• Impostor email detection is a fantastic feature and works very well.
• The sandbox feature helps to ensure confidence that their evaluation of the email threat is valid.
• Easy to use (and understand) dashboard make identifying and managing email threats a breeze.

Incentivized

• Improvement is needed in the area of AV/Antispam update processing (internally)
• Improvement is needed in the log file processing. Many log file entries are not understandable for an operator or administrator without special insider knowledge
• Clearswift has recently changed the support provider. Now there are no german supporters anymore.

Incentivized

• Their admin web GUI is cumbersome and unclear in many ways. The learning curve is steep so you have to stay up on things yourself whenever a new feature or service is added.
• They sometimes add a feature to their toolbox without informing their customers. This is true even when the feature added does not cost extra.

Incentivized

Not my decision, but I have made it very clear this product does not perform. I have emails from our users on how bad it is after switching to it.

Incentivized

The interface is simple to use but still contains the information needed to conduct thorough investigations. If you own licenses for other Proofpoint tools, Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection is easily accessible from those applications. The ability to sandbox URLs within the TAP interface is a great feature as well. The overall performance of the GUI is seamless, especially if enabled with your organization's SSO.

Incentivized

Generally have had good response and resolution time with knowledgeable technicians, and if needed the ticket is moved to someone with more expertise to better address the issue. Have used the ticketing portal, phone, as well as the beta chat feature (permanent please!)

Incentivized

Proofpoint managed the installation and made it very simple. We had a dedicated installation engineer who checked in on use periodically after go-live to ensure that there were no issue.

Incentivized

The Clearswift Secure Email Gateway (CS SEG) has very low license costs. A two peer cluster is enough to run a complete emailing gateway environment. Compared to the Proofpoint PPS the CS SEG does not need a management appliance. The CS SEG peers can manage the quarantine by themselves. This is easy to use and quite fast.

Incentivized

This is the first product of its kind that I've used personally. The last 3 companies that I worked for also used Proofpoint, which includes Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection, so I don't have a way to really compare it. I have seen that it is a leader in the industry.

Incentivized

• Since this CS SEG environment is operated for a customer, I cannot answer this question

Incentivized

• Saves IT time when an attack is successful and isn't reported in a timely manner or at all until damages are done. IT has to spend less time and effort because we are able to stop it before it spreads.
• Protecting business resources and assets is a huge positive impact. TAP allows us to better protect our business and information within.
• The only negative thing is that it doesn't automatically handle these attacks - but that is what TRAP is for! I wish Proofpoint bundled TAP and TRAP.

Incentivized