Cisco Mail Security - how is it?

[natsu]

Hi there,

We are sizing up O365 E5 v Mimecast v Cisco. We already own the E5 licenses so this is in the lead cost-wise. I've used Mimecast extensively and liked it, but found it to be a bit soft on occasion. I am in the dark about Cisco's offering.

Is there anyone out there currently using Cisco's mail security stuff, if so, how is it going for you & why did you choose it?

[Ken Stieers]

I've been using it since 2006, when it was Ironport. All on prem.

We have been pretty happy with it. I have been active in betas for the past decade, so my bugs get fixed...

1 outage in 15 years that was the motherboard box dying. We are now all vms.

[Jonatan Jonasson]

There's some nice info on Cisco Secure Email product page, including a link to a "Best practises for Microsoft 365 security" paper, that may get you started in comparing these solutions.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/email-security/index.html

One of the main differentiators between the "Secure Email Gateway" and "Cloud Mailbox Defense" is that the Cloud Mailbox Defense does not require changes to traffic flow (DNS MX records).
While you may lose some of the mail tracability by using O365 as the "first hop", your M365 admins may be a lot happier with any implementation that doesn't alter the mailfow. (My experience.)
So I would probably focus on the Cloud Mailbox Defense, and compare how easy/difficult it is to find/track email based on other data than just sender or recipient.
(Historically the native mail tracing within the O365 GUI has been somewhat limited.)