Item: Avanan
Rating: 10
Author: Nathaniel Roebuck

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Avanan is deployed for our entire business via our Office 365 tenant - this includes email traffic for our U.S. office(s), as well as our offices in Colombia.

We utilize Avanan to ensure we are catching and blocking all of the spam/scam/phishing emails that target our users.

Pros and Cons

The dashboard for Avanan makes all of the most important information easy to digest.
Alerting - specifically, the Geo-Location alerts allow us to see if a user has possibly been compromised.
The End-User Email Quarantine experience gives users the ability to request emails be released, which trains them to better spot legitimate emails.

Occasionally emails slip by and are blocked by Office 365 blacklisting/phishing/security. This causes our end-users to have two different "Release from Quarantine" emails/processes.
Creating rules can be a bit confusing, as the more information added to a rule, the more specific it becomes - while this is beneficial for blocking specific things, it can allow emails to get through the rules if it becomes too specific.
Navigating through some features can feel confusing if you don't regularly utilize the Avanan dashboard.

Return on Investment

Cost Reduction: Since implementing Avanan, we have had 0 incidents causing monetary losses due to phishing.
Risk Mitigation: Due to the reporting features, we are able to take pre-emptive actions when we see anomalies.
Efficiency Increases: With the ability for users to request the release of quarantined emails, we are able to train our staff using real-world examples of spam vs legitimate emails being quarantined.

Support Rating

Whenever issues arise when using Avanan that are the fault of the product, support is quick to respond and resolve the presented problem(s).

Key Insights

Do you think Avanan delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Avanan's feature set?

Yes

Did Avanan live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Avanan go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Avanan again?

Yes

Usability

Avanan allows as much or as little customization as needed while still providing excellent protection against common spam and phishing attacks. It has an excellent user experience from both an end-user and an administrator perspective, which is one of the primary issues when implementing new tools and software into an environment - Avanan was intuitive and required minimal training to actually use the software for our users.

Likelihood to Recommend

Avanan provides complete peace of mind regarding our email security. The ease of use in creating rules for blocking phishing/spam, as well as how easy it was to train End Users to submit quarantine release requests has made our email management as easy as checking a dashboard and pressing a few buttons.

If you're wanting to block phishing messages and have reporting to see what is being blocked at a quick glance, Avanan will function excellently.

Some Peace of Mind for Email Security

Overall Satisfaction with Avanan