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Abnormal Security vs Varonis Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 2026

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

Cloudflare One
Sponsored
Ranking in Email Security
20th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (12th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (22nd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (12th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (8th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (13th), Access Management (12th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (8th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (9th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (2nd)
Abnormal Security
Ranking in Email Security
11th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (5th)
Varonis Platform
Ranking in Email Security
16th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (8th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (6th), Data Governance (5th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Compliance Management (7th), Ransomware Protection (7th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (6th), Insider Risk Management (1st), AI Security (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Email Security category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 1.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Abnormal Security is 3.6%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Varonis Platform is 1.0%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Email Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Abnormal Security3.6%
Varonis Platform1.0%
Cloudflare One1.7%
Other93.7%
Email Security
 

Featured Reviews

CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.
reviewer2251509 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Director, Information Technology at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
AI has helped classify threat types more accurately but product ownership can improve
Ease of use is important, and Abnormal Security's responsiveness and ability to deliver solutions when issues arise are crucial. However, there is always room for improvement, as achieving a perfect 10 means there is no more room for enhancement. For Abnormal Security, it's about leveraging AI even more, which they are already working on in their roadmap.
TarunKumar11 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Leadership Council at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Data governance has strengthened and automation now reduces risk and manual compliance work
Varonis Platform offers key features including data discovery, data classification, data analysis, governance, user and entity behavior analysis, also known as UEBA, which helps in ransomware detection, insider threat detection, and compliance reporting. It does a lot of automation from a remediation standpoint, as well as investigation and forensics. The number one feature that makes the biggest difference for my clients is visibility into unstructured data; that is the most difficult for organizations to achieve. They do not have a good understanding of where sensitive data resides, who has access to this data, whether this access is appropriate, and how data is being used. Varonis Platform provides visibility, governance, threat detection, and automated remediation around data. Varonis Platform is a great data discovery platform that provides visibility into sensitive data estimates and how it is being used. Clients have been able to reduce excessive permissions, strengthen their compliance posture, detect insider threats, and ransomware activity, which would otherwise be difficult and manual. Varonis Platform is deployed in my clients' organizations in a combination of all types. Many clients use Varonis Platform in a largely SaaS-based model since it is a data security platform consumed in this way, and many organizations still operate hybrid environments. As far as Varonis Platform is in a position to get the data source and identify systems, it can discover and classify more secure data. Deployment in most of our clients is cloud-based, connecting to Microsoft 365, AWS, or other SaaS applications such as Salesforce. In other environments, it is a hybrid deployment with SaaS and on-premises, including file servers, NAS devices, and AD servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature is rate limiting. If I'm expecting 500 visits per hour, Cloudflare will limit the requests if I suddenly get 50,000."
"Cloudflare Access is a stable solution."
"Clover is the best product globally."
"It's the endpoint exposition. We don't need to expose our VPN server to the internet and need a zero-test solution. I can apply some conditional access to the endpoint that's connecting to our network to check their security policies or the security condition of their workstation. Once the workstation is trying to connect to my internal network, then I would like to check the discrete condition of these endpoints that are trying to access my internal network. We created some conditional access. We have CrowdStrike, to check if the CrowdStrike is installed, to check if it's updated, and to check for Windows updates. We created some conditional policies to check it."
"Cloudflare One has assisted in securing my remote workforce through a SASE solution with Cloudflare One and the Workers part, although I am not currently using the Workers component."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution has different options that can be used to differentiate DDoS attacks."
"Using Cloudflare One makes my work quite easy because for DDoS protection, all I need to do is understand the OSI model and click; it makes it easier than trying to write a command line or use a Linux command."
"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."
"The features that appeal to me most are the combination of auto-remediation and Detection 360."
"I would recommend Abnormal Security."
"I have never encountered any stability issues with Abnormal."
"Their ability to take things out of the mailbox and catch things much faster than users is excellent."
"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."
"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."
"Ease of use is undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of Abnormal Security."
"The solution ensures that users have not accidentally shared sensitive information with the wrong people or too many people."
"The example I used with the hospital gives a very clear picture of the ROI."
"The 24/7 support is the most valuable feature, and they have been able to answer support questions pretty quickly."
"Overall, if you want to check your data from an initial point of view, Varonis Platform is the best use case you can consider."
"In my experience, the best features that Varonis Platform offers are data labeling, data classification, along with all the integrations and its easy-to-use platform."
"The solution's classification engine is highly configurable and efficient."
"Varonis Platform is transparent and captures everything in the environment without impacting the performance. The tool helps us unify data feeds into a single reporting system."
"Varonis Platform's visibility feature helped us improve our data governance as we created a process that involved data classification and discovery over sensitive content."
 

Cons

"The free plan has limitations. For example, I can only set up three rules, and the application firewall is unavailable."
"Cloudflare One is not very powerful, but for what we require, it is basic and sufficient."
"When there are any dynamic changes in complex applications, the tool takes a lot of time, making its analytics-related area a major matter of concern where improvements are needed."
"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."
"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."
"Feedback could be enhanced. While I work efficiently with Clover as a partner in Mexico City, sometimes the information and requests are easier to manage with more concrete solutions."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform needs to improve its documentation. It took time to do the implementation."
"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."
"For Abnormal Security as a product, I would say probably somewhere around a seven, as there are some other areas where they can improve to achieve a higher rating."
"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."
"When we're working on something as engineers, and we find an idea or a method of doing something that would be greatly improved by doing it another way, there should be an ability for me to click the ideas button, type in an idea that I have, and submit it to a product review team or developers to have them think through the process a little bit more."
"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."
"There could be more selectable options and more granular selections available."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the auto-remediation feature."
"There could be room for improvement in enhancing integration with other cybersecurity tools."
"The pricing for academic institutions and student mailboxes is challenging."
"For user-based reports, log on activity, and stuff like that, it doesn't seem to really be present like Log360."
"For unstructured data monitoring, it's one of the top ones, if not the top one, due to its usability."
"I'd like to see automatic updates for this solution. Currently, it's a manual process to update all the keywords."
"Be prepared that when you implement the product, you will have to tune it as you go."
"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."
"The product is very complicated."
"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."
"The licensing pricing model and module licensing can be complex for customers to understand."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"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."
"The pricing appears fair, and they demonstrate a genuine willingness to work with us on it."
"The license is based on the user count, so the number of users that have an email address in the organization."
"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."
"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."
"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."
"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."
"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
In my opinion, Cloudflare One can be improved mainly through compatibility, as the integration should be much simpler...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
Cloudflare One's primary use case for my organization is to protect servers and to provide remote access with the VPN...
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?
Ease of use is important, and Abnormal Security's responsiveness and ability to deliver solutions when issues arise a...
What is your primary use case for Abnormal Security?
The main use case for Abnormal Security is as a spam filter and for mail hygiene. This use case is for the finance in...
What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?
Varonis Platform could be improved because when I used it, we had a significant issue related to the large volume of ...
What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?
My main use case for Varonis Platform is to monitor access to sensitive data across file shares, Microsoft 365, and S...
What advice do you have for others considering Varonis Platform?
Varonis Platform receives a rating of seven out of ten. I chose seven out of ten because the user experience was easy...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
No data available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
Foot Lcoker, Xerox, Liberty Mutual, Mattel, Boston Scientific
Nottingham Building Society
Find out what your peers are saying about Abnormal Security vs. Varonis Platform and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.