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Cisco Secure Email vs Forcepoint Email Security [EOL] comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (1st), Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (1st)
Cisco Secure Email
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (3rd), Cisco Security Portfolio (8th)
Forcepoint Email Security [...
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
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.
Kunjal Haria - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable, easy to scale, and has anti-spam and anti-spyware features, but support needs to be faster and more knowledgeable
I've contacted Forcepoint Email Security support, but I'm not satisfied with the answer speed. It could be a lot faster. I also get more answers on the internet than from the technical support team, so Forcepoint Email Security needs more knowledgeable support. On a scale of one to five, my rating for the technical support of Forcepoint Email Security is three.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It also gives the vulnerability status according to the versions you have selected. Let's say you have Google Chrome. It mentions the versions it has, and it updates. Within two hours of an update, it is reflected in the dashboard. That's really nice to have."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution."
"It has significantly decreased my time to detection and response."
"The stability of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is fantastic."
"One of the best features of the tool is its capability to aggregate insights from different workloads, basically from the Office 365 and endpoints part."
"The most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance."
"The product's scalability is good."
"My experience deploying Microsoft Defender for Office 365 was seamless."
"Because we scan products, and there is a lot of critical data, security is very important in these cases."
"We like the in-built features, like the email filtering based on the IP and domain. Cisco has its own blacklisted domains and IPs, which is very good. This filters around 70 percent of emails from spam, and we are seeing fewer false positives with this."
"The filtering is definitely better at catching both spam and malicious messages, and there's a lot of extremely granular ability for setting up rules. You can do it the way you want to. The Microsoft solution tends to be pretty limited in how it allows some of that to be done."
"Spam controls are excellent because they are a powerful feature that operates almost effortlessly."
"Cisco Secure Email is part of Cisco's extensive efforts and investments in technology, especially in the realm of cyber security. The product is one among many security solutions offered by Cisco."
"The system provides our service desk with the means to troubleshoot email delivery issues with ease."
"The system enables end users to manage their own whitelists/blacklists."
"It provided a platform to sell a service to customers."
"I like how versatile the options are. For example, we can set it where we are able to access and browse Facebook but we are denied the ability to post photos. There is also that ability integrate with Office 365 - SharePoint app."
"Unlike other competitors, it doesn't cause any performance issues."
"It's easier to deploy than other options."
"The email and the web filter aspects of the solution are the most valuable features."
"It is good at data leakage prevention (DLP). You can create the data exfiltration profile while sending the emails, which is one of the key advantages of the solution."
"This is a reasonably stable solution."
"The filtering of the solution is very good. You can do URL filtering and, while you need a custom URL to filter under other solutions like Symantec, here the solution covers most categories and the database."
"The Forcepoint Email Security roadmap easily integrates with the data loss prevention (DLP) suite of Forcepoint. Therefore, the customer doesn't have to buy another solution for DLP."
 

Cons

"I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost."
"In the areas of improvement for Microsoft Defender for Office 365, the console is the biggest challenge for me."
"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."
"Configuring the default strategies and policies in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps generates a lot of noise and false positives."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"Microsoft could improve by offering recommendations for domain spoofing attacks, especially scenarios where DNS records like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are not properly published."
"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"Microsoft sometimes has downtime, and we'll get several incidents coming in back to back. We have a huge backlog of notifications, many of which may be false positives. However, there might be serious alerts, so we can't risk dismissing all of them at once."
"The user interface could be updated."
"The pricing needs to be reconsidered or enhanced."
"The solution does not have a strong outbound service. It should also integrate DLP."
"We cannot manage multiple devices from a single UI."
"The primary areas for improvement are the pricing and the complexity of deployment."
"Cisco Email Secure's pricing needs to be less. We have vendors who provide cheaper solutions with the same features."
"In some cases, detection is missed, leading to false positives where genuine emails are flagged as spam."
"The Forged Email Detection feature needs improvement, particularly with domain. The sensors are not that good and the rules sets are unclear."
"This solution could be improved by providing further functionality to reduce or to block ransom attacks, cross-site scripting and man-in-the-middle attacks."
"Customer support could be better."
"The reporting functionality needs to be improved, as it is not customizable."
"Technical support is lacking. It could be a lot better."
"Forcepoint is the best for DLP, but it is not better than other solutions in terms of phishing emails or threat protections on the email. It has less visibility over there. They might need to enhance these components because other solutions, such as Cisco Email Security and IronPort, have more advanced features. Forcepoint should focus more on threats and spam. They have a small database for spam. They must increase their solution's capability from this perspective."
"The solution could use better integration capabilities."
"I would like to see some improvement like cloud application and integration capabilities and the classification part is missing from the DLP."
"It's quite difficult to learn this solution, it's not an entry level product. If you are a skilled user you will think it's a very useful tool, but if you are not a skilled user, you'll think it is very difficult to learn."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing has become expensive."
"Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
"While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 necessitates pricier E3 or E5 subscriptions, the extensive functionality offered by these licenses across various Microsoft products justifies the investment."
"The product is expensive."
"For large enterprise organizations, they can definitely afford it, but for small and medium organizations, they might struggle to cover the expenses."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 comes with Microsoft Windows. It is free with the operating system."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is an add-on to the Office license. Many customers are purchasing this solution."
"Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive."
"There were no other costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing is good."
"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."
"It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing an eight or nine."
"It is a super big router that costs a few hundred thousand dollars."
"The product's price falls on the higher side when compared to the other products on the market."
"Pricing depends on your environment and which model you want to buy."
"It is a reasonably priced solution."
"There are three types of support licenses."
"Licensing is a yearly subscription that is based on the number of users."
"The licensing is user base (per user). The product is purchased mostly by medium to large companies. For smaller companies, we have other solutions because the pricing is not cheap."
"Its licensing is quite easy and straightforward. They have two or three suites, and the price is negotiable. It depends upon the size of the deal. They have multiple licenses. The standard is one, and then there are additional licenses that you can go for. There are three or four licensing models. You have the network suite, endpoint suite, email security, and the standard one."
"When compared to other email security solutions, the price is not cheap."
"My company pays for Forcepoint Email Security licensing annually."
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Answers from the Community

KK
Dec 12, 2022
Dec 12, 2022
Hi Kamal, Firstly, you would have to recognize that there is/are no fast and hard rules to choosing a final preferred product, what works well for company A may not work extensively well for company B. Reason being that: the efficiency of the Security capabilities provided by one tool can be amplified by another tool, particularly for secure email gateway. Hence, if you have an XDR that you in...
2 out of 7 answers
SimonClark - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 20, 2022
Top brands don't mean best or most cost-effective. My advice is to look a bit further before you make a decision. Evidence suggests that most top brands are pretty good at detecting and blocking malicious attachments, best case letting through 1%, but can be worse than 50% when it comes to detecting malicious links in the text of the email.  There are numerous less well-known vendors with lower-cost AI-based solutions that have a far better success rate, also providing employees the ability to report on suspect emails which auto-removes them from other staff members' inboxes until they have been properly assessed. Some will provide a visual risk score to the recipient to give them advance warning to be more cautious. Combining this kind of capability with staff awareness products keeps your vendor list lower and further improves efficiency. For around £2 GBP per user per month (less than $3) we provide different vendors depending upon the customer's environment but provided as a managed service. This allows our customers to outsource some of the monitoring and day-to-day management, spread the cost on a monthly basis, and flex how many licences they need on a monthly basis too i.e. if you drop 20 users don't pay for them but if you increase by 20 you don't need complex co-termination and pro rata discussions.
DM
Jun 21, 2022
I only can recommend Cisco because it´s the only one with which I'd worked enough. I think it is powerful enough and has a lot of possibilities. In addition, to a great support team. 
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
30%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
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 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 ...
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Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
Cisco Email Security, IronPort, Cisco Email Security, ESA, Email Security Appliances
Websense Email Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
SUNY Old Westbury, CoxHealth, City of Fullerton, Indra
Alphawest, Amadori, AudioNova, Betsson, Confartigianato Vicenza, Davies Turner, iGATE, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Landa Digital Printing, Northern California Bank, Scavolini, Toyota
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Proofpoint, Cisco and others in Email Security. Updated: May 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.