

Proofpoint Email Protection and Microsoft Defender for Office 365 are key players in the email security market. Proofpoint Email Protection may have the upper hand due to its robust anti-phishing capabilities and comprehensive protection.
Features: Proofpoint Email Protection is noted for its ability to block spam and phishing attacks, offers sandboxing, and has URL defense features. It also serves as a security gateway providing targeted attack protection. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 integrates seamlessly within the Microsoft ecosystem, offering real-time threat detection, strong anti-phishing capabilities, and security features across the Microsoft product suite.
Room for Improvement: Proofpoint Email Protection could improve its search capabilities, integration with complex environments, and enhance its administrative interface. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 can enhance scalability, technical support, and streamline its licensing models.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Proofpoint Email Protection is deployed largely as a public cloud solution and is known for its responsive technical support, although users face challenges in accessing technical portals. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers easy deployment through integration with Office 365 but has room for improvement in support quality, particularly in incident response.
Pricing and ROI: Proofpoint Email Protection is perceived as expensive, particularly for lower-tier markets, yet it is effective against phishing. Microsoft Defender for Office 365, although requiring additional budget for premium licenses, is part of the Office 365 bundle, offering complex value assessment. Both solutions show ROI through reduced spam and phishing incidents, with Microsoft's integration offering broader cost efficiency.
It has also decreased our time to detection and response by about 15 to 20 percent.
Overall, cost of owning and operating our system goes down.
It's hard to quantify the return on investment we've seen from Microsoft Defender for Office 365.
The ideal situation would be to have all these portals combined into one unified dashboard.
The time required for email investigations and responses has changed with Proofpoint Email Protection's visibility and automation.
If you implement these kinds of solutions in your security stack, the first beneficial thing will be that you will not suffer any malware, and you will not face attacks, which ultimately leads to financial benefit.
Over the past two years, there have been no critical problems.
we opened tickets, and they typically resolve them quickly.
With a subscription for Microsoft Defender for Office 365, it is an eight. Without it, it is a six.
I am familiar with the granular policy control feature of Proofpoint Email Protection, and I find their support excellent for modifying those policies.
I rate customer support a three out of ten mainly because of the phishing attacks that are getting through.
Sometimes I get some really great responses and analysts, but sometimes when their cloud services have a failure, they are slow to respond and tell me about it, though they have been improving.
We have never faced scalability problems, and Microsoft manages it effectively.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 scales transparently for us, as we grew from 1,000 users to 3,000 users, and we didn't notice much difference.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 scales with the growing needs of my company well.
Proofpoint is scalable for multi-site organizations with thousands of users.
Proofpoint Email Protection is a scalable solution that very much fits our capacity requirements.
Proofpoint Email Protection is quite scalable.
I would rate the stability of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 as 10 over 10 because it's highly available, it works, and it does the job it is meant to do.
I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues because of Defender.
The solution is stable, as we have been using it for the past two years.
It was very rock solid.
Sometimes, when creating connectors for implementing with Google Workspace, we encounter challenges because both Google Workspace and Proofpoint Email Protection do not have very good documentation on how to do this.
When evaluating the stability of Proofpoint Email Protection in regards to downtime, bugs, and glitches, it comes and goes in waves.
The main area for improvement is simplifying the implementation and rollout process.
Microsoft could improve by offering recommendations for domain spoofing attacks, especially scenarios where DNS records like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are not properly published.
There is a different console for different things; I just want one consolidated console.
The older legacy user interface just took a little to work with, and the new unified interface, as it was able to do more and more of the functionality of the old one, the product just got easier and easier to use.
Proofpoint could expand its phishing detection capabilities to improve its efficiency.
More security could be implemented.
We've likely saved 30% of costs.
Money-wise, it is a part of the Office 365 suite, making it slightly more expensive compared to Trend Micro.
Microsoft is quite affordable with a lot of features available for any size organization.
Customers pay around $90,000 yearly for a 1,000-user organization, with the subscription license being the main expense, apart from implementation fees.
Given my other experience with other vendors, I think they are a bit on the high end and a bit on the pricey end for the email security functionality that we were using.
Additional costs do come in, but it enhances security.
It ranks the threats and allows us to prioritize those hitting us the hardest, such as email threats.
It provides end-to-end visibility on email threats such as phishing, extending beyond Exchange Online Protection.
The value of the DLP feature is significant to us because we have internal data, sometimes sensitive, and the users may not always be aware of security and privacy, which might lead them to send out information mistakenly to external parties.
The main feature I find most effective is that Proofpoint Email Protection scans emails and quarantines the doubtful ones.
The most beneficial feature of Proofpoint Email Protection is mostly spam filtering; it was very efficient, and we were very happy with the functionality as only relevant emails were allowed for mailboxes.
I appreciate that it's the industry leader, and its firewalling is very easy to manage and implement.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Defender for Office 365 | 21.4% |
| Proofpoint Email Protection | 20.9% |
| Other | 57.7% |



| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 23 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 10 |
| Large Enterprise | 31 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 22 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 16 |
| Large Enterprise | 21 |
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect organizations against advanced threats in their email, collaboration, and productivity environments. It combines the power of Microsoft's threat intelligence, machine learning, and behavioral analytics to provide real-time protection against phishing, malware, ransomware, and other malicious attacks.
With Microsoft Defender for Office 365, organizations can safeguard their email communication by detecting and blocking malicious links, attachments, and unsafe email content. It employs advanced anti-phishing capabilities to identify and prevent sophisticated phishing attacks that attempt to steal sensitive information or compromise user credentials.
This solution also offers robust protection against malware and ransomware. It leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze email attachments and URLs in real-time, identifying and blocking malicious content before it reaches users' inboxes. Additionally, it provides advanced threat-hunting capabilities, allowing security teams to proactively investigate and respond to potential threats.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 goes beyond email protection and extends its security features to other collaboration tools like SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams. It scans files and documents stored in these platforms, ensuring that they are free from malware and other malicious content. It also provides visibility into user activities, helping organizations detect and mitigate insider threats.
Furthermore, this solution offers rich reporting and analytics capabilities, providing organizations with insights into their security posture and threat landscape. It enables security administrators to monitor and manage security incidents, track trends, and take proactive measures to enhance their overall security posture.
Proofpoint Email Protection provides powerful filtering against spam, phishing, and malware, leveraging effective threat detection and blocking capabilities. This solution integrates smoothly with platforms like Office 365, offering a user-friendly dashboard for seamless operations.
Proofpoint Email Protection focuses on email security, ensuring protection against phishing, malware, and spam. It includes features like URL scanning, anti-phishing, anti-virus protection, and sandboxing for comprehensive threat analysis. Its advanced analytics through TAP and TRAP, along with strong integration abilities, make it appealing for handling email threats. While scalability and ease of deployment are advantages, challenges such as integration in complex environments, the cost, and limited local support require attention. Enhancements in search functionality, email encryption, and improved phishing detection are also needed.
What are the key features of Proofpoint Email Protection?
What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?
Industries adopting Proofpoint Email Protection include finance, healthcare, and education sectors, which benefit from its robust email security measures. Educational institutions prioritize safe communication for staff and students, while healthcare organizations focus on protecting sensitive patient data. Financial services benefit from preventing data breaches and fraud through advanced threats management.
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