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Abnormal Security vs Cisco Secure Email comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (2nd), Microsoft Security Suite (10th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
Abnormal Security
Ranking in Email Security
3rd
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (2nd)
Cisco Secure Email
Ranking in Email Security
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 12.3%, down from 16.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Abnormal Security is 7.5%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Email is 6.2%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

Tolu Omolaja - PeerSpot reviewer
Great URL scanning and attachment scanning, but I would like more proactive threat analysis
The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning. URL scanning involves an automatic scan of links and emails. When a user clicks on a link within an email, the system promptly checks the link's safety. If the link is deemed safe, access is granted automatically. However, if it is flagged as unsafe, we receive feedback and notification to caution us about the potentially harmful link. At this point, we are presented with the option to proceed or return. I have personally witnessed the system identify a few unsafe links, making this the primary advantage of using the solution. The second crucial aspect is the scanning of attachments. When an email containing an attachment arrives, we receive a notification of the new email, along with information that the attachment is being scanned for threats. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind for our organization. While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers numerous features, these two stand out as particularly impressive and valuable to us.
ChrisBrown5 - PeerSpot reviewer
Automated threat detection that protects against corruption with minimal intervention
Abnormal Security is valuable because it features an automated scoring tool that doesn't require much intervention from our team. It enhances threat detection capabilities by making the process automated and is easy to scale to our entire environment. Additionally, it protects us from being business email compromised, which is invaluable for maintaining our security.
Kostas Karidas - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps prevent security breaches but fails to improve in the area of AI
I have not noticed any impressive advanced threat protection mechanisms in the tool. I don't know if there are any AI features in the product. I don't know if there is any other technology embedded in the solution. Cisco Secure Email successfully mitigated potential email threats. My company has seen plenty of scenarios where Cisco Secure Email successfully mitigated potential email threats, spam emails, and fraudulent domains. The product is good for dealing with spam emails, and it can take care of more than 100 spam emails per day. A huge number of spam emails are monitored with the help of Cisco Secure Email. I would not recommend the product to other businesses because you need to have some kind of expertise in configuring and knowing a bit about the tool's GUI. The tool also lacks in the area of AI mechanics. If I would like to have an overview and review another solution, I would go for another product other than Cisco Secure Email. I can definitely suggest others to look at the product and review it, but I would also recommend that they compare it with the other solutions in the market. I wouldn't prioritize Cisco Secure Email over other tools. Either the support partner of the product or I take care of the tool's maintenance phase by looking into the configurations and doing some fine-tuning. I rate the tool a seven to eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"My experience with customer support and technical support for Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has been excellent."
"Defender enables us to secure all 365-related activity from a single place. It gives us visibility into everything happening in Outlook, protecting us against phishing and other email-based threats. Defender helps us detect any suspicious behaviors."
"Since we have started using the solution, there have been fewer compromises."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps people to work remotely. It is a secure solution. We don't need to use our company's computers or get VPN connections to the networks. I can control how they share screens and what they send to the devices. It keeps our organizations confidential and sensitive information safe."
"The DLP feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is valuable, and we also use the DLP feature for email real-time detection."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is data backups that we can provide through ticket requests."
"The email protection is excellent, especially in terms of anti-phishing policies."
"Initial auto-remediation allows us to auto-remediate before the email lands in the end user's inbox for a split second."
"One of the things that I love about them is that the setup and installation are super easy. All you do is give them access to your Microsoft 365 tenant, and through APIs, they are able to do their work. They are doing all this through APIs, so you do not have to install the software and take a month to get it all set up to even see the value of the solution. You could be up and running in less than an hour."
"I like Abnormal's threat protection with auto-remediation, but I also love its abuse mailbox feature, which automatically responds to the end user. That feature has a super-valuable security component and helps improve the user experience."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"It does some really cool stuff that other tools aren't doing. We found it to be really effective, and the AI/ML functionality is really what differentiates them."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"What I like about Abnormal Security is that it notifies me if any of my partners or suppliers are experiencing a security breach by analyzing their database and identifying potential cyber threats."
"It protects us from being business email compromised, which is invaluable for maintaining our security."
"It does a great job of preventing spam, malware, and ransomware. I can only go by what people have told me and what I've seen, but I have not seen spam in a year and a half to two years in my own company mailbox. And there are not a lot of catches where it's catching something that should have gotten through, either."
"The most significant enhancement we've gained is in terms of security through the upgrade we received."
"It integrates with Active Directory and we can limit specific users to using specific applications."
"What I find the most valuable about Cisco Secure Email is that the logs are not that difficult to see even if you're not used to them. The logs are reasonably readable and diagnosing the problem is not too hard with them."
"The most valuable features are protection against ransomware and spam."
"It has an intuitive, clear graphical interface where you can deploy your policies and understand the overall flow. There are a lot of things that you cannot handle on the graphic interface, like message filters. For this, you need to go to a lower level where you have more power, like command line interface. So, this solution has the best of both worlds. There are not a lot of bells and whistles. It is more practical with access to most features that you can configure."
"Anti-Spam and Advanced Malware Protection are the most valuable features... and we also have the option to block Zero-day attacks."
"There are a lot of filters for scam emails and things like that work out of the box. You can also use the antivirus features. I like its features."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data."
"Microsoft needs to broaden its global support presence by establishing teams of subject-matter experts in all regions."
"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's Mac functionality requires improvement to deliver the same level of protection found on Windows devices."
"Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization."
"Microsoft security solutions work as expected. They are constantly updating the solutions to make them better. At the same time, the changes can impact a customer's environment, and we need to adjust settings. Sometimes we aren't aware of the changes, and nothing is pushed from the backend automatically."
"It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers."
"We need a separate license and we don't know how to get the license that is required."
"Abnormal should add more automatic reports. I have an open request to our account team for more notification and report types that can be sent automatically. For example, they have an awesome report that gets sent weekly, and I also want them monthly, so I don't need to do so much adding up when my director wants numbers over time."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"The ideal scenario would be for Abnormal Security to work in tandem with Microsoft to analyze incoming emails."
"The biggest pain point for us is the lack of support for on-premise email systems."
"I, as such, do not have anything that I do not like or would like to add, but you could argue that because they are doing it API-based, there is a chance that something could slip through temporarily before they are able to pull it out. In theory, it could happen just because of the nature of the system. They are not in line with the delivery of the mail. They are kind of asynchronous, which is a pro as well as a con. If it is synchronous, then I know it would always stop them, but because it is asynchronous, things could get through temporarily or because of some system issues on the Microsoft side or their side. It is the nature of the beast, but it is a little bit of a con."
"There could be more selectable options and more granular selections available."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"One feature I'd love to see is outbound scanning."
"I am not satisfied with the solution's reporting and logging."
"The user interface needs massive improvement. While the device works fine and it's not complicated to write policies, renaming menu items and showing policy flow in conjunction with the application could help."
"The area of license renewal should be improved. We normally renew our license every year. There is a feature called smart licensing, and I switched from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode because of what I thought smart licensing does. I thought it would make licensing renewal seamless and very swift, but ever since I've switched to smart licensing, each time I want to renew my license, it is a whole lot of headache. The process is not smooth, and I had to keep calling Cisco TAC to see how the issue can be resolved. At one point, I wanted to revert back to the legacy mode, but I can't revert. Once you switch from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode, you can't revert. They should improve on the visibility of the smart licensing mode so that it can indeed be smart and easier to use for the license renewal every year. That is one challenge."
"In some cases, detection is missed, leading to false positives where genuine emails are flagged as spam."
"Typically, in a phishing email, they try to use a name everybody's going to recognize, like the CEO's name or the CFO's name... With this appliance, the way it's designed at the moment, for us to really stop that with any level of confidence, we have to build a dictionary of all the names of the people we want it to check, and all the ways they could be spelled. My name would be in there as Phillip Collins, Phillip D. Collins, Phillip Dean Collins, Phil Collins, Phil D. Collins. There could be eight or 10 variations of my name that we'd have to put in the dictionary. There's no artificial intelligence to say "Phil Collins" could be all these other things, and to stop phishing from coming through in that way."
"The tool's pricing can be improved."
"Licensing is quite complicated for a number of customers, including ourselves."
"Many smaller businesses opt for more cost-effective solutions, such as Gmail or Hotmail accounts, instead of investing in Cisco Secure Email, given its higher cost."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"The pricing has become expensive."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"The product is expensive."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
"It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license."
"I was working in the government and it was too expensive for us to use our Microsoft products."
"The license is based on the user count, so the number of users that have an email address in the organization."
"The pricing appears fair, and they demonstrate a genuine willingness to work with us on it."
"Abnormal Security, on the other hand, provides the same level of functionality for just over $60,000 – that's half the price!"
"Overall, we'd certainly prefer lower pricing, but Abnormal Security doesn't seem unreasonable compared to similar offerings in the market."
"Cisco Secure Email is expensive, but we get what we pay for."
"It is a super big router that costs a few hundred thousand dollars."
"As per market availability, this solution is more expensive than other vendors."
"We were using Proofpoint and then we switched to Cisco... reportability was one of the main reasons we switched, but the biggest one was cost. If you can get an equivalent functionality for a better price it's wise to do so. That's what our primary decision came down to: We could get equivalent functionality at a lower price point."
"The solution is expensive."
"Cisco Secure Email and the support are priced well. It's not cheap, but there are other solutions that offer less and cost so much. For example, Microsoft is more expensive than Cisco."
"At times, we feel the pricing is a bit too high, but then, there is also room for discounts. We enjoy a lot of discounts, and that is why we are still with them. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Licensing costs depend on how many users there are. It could range between $5 and $7 per month, per user."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Educational Organization
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of variou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Microsoft is quite affordable with a lot of features available for any size organization.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Microsoft could improve by offering recommendations for domain spoofing attacks, especially scenarios where DNS recor...
What do you like most about Abnormal Security?
The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Abnormal Security?
I find the pricing to be favorable, but I did not disclose the exact cost.
What needs improvement with Abnormal Security?
There could be more selectable options and more granular selections available.
What do you like most about Cisco Secure Email?
Cisco Secure Email is a budget-friendly solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Email?
The pricing structure is good as it is user-based or email client-based, which is positive for clients.
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Email?
The user interface of the Email Security Gateway ( /products/security-gateway-reviews ) should be improved. It would ...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
No data available
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Foot Lcoker, Xerox, Liberty Mutual, Mattel, Boston Scientific
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Find out what your peers are saying about Abnormal Security vs. Cisco Secure Email and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.