Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (formerly Microsoft Defender ATP) is a holistic, cloud delivered endpoint security solution that includes risk-based vulnerability management and assessment, attack surface reduction, behavioral based and cloud-powered next generation protection, endpoint detection and response (EDR), automatic investigation and remediation, managed hunting services, rich APIs, and unified security management.
$2.50
per user/per month
Mimecast Advanced Email Security
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
The Mimecast Secure Email Gateway is a messaging security option with anti-spam / anti-malware, data loss prevention, large file send, and other features, from UK company Mimecast.
Because of its integration with Windows, it is very easy to deploy and manage. Any IT department should be able to leverage the software and interface. The admin portal provides weighted recommendations that comprise the Secure Store, offering admins, security teams, and business owners valuable insights into their security footprint without requiring a strong security background. The software would be ideal for small and mid-sized businesses that cannot dedicate resources to security. Larger enterprises would also benefit, but may require the enhanced license.
Mimecast's advanced email security remains the number one security tool available for any organization. You will be ahead of the game before anything gets in and users start clicking. Users are often the ones who can disclose sensitive data and compromise the organization and its brand.
One, it's crazy lightweight, so compared to some of the competitors that we also have used with our security services, it's really lightweight and so I don't have a lot of overhead on the system that it's running on.
Simplicity: Once set up, Mimecast Advanced Email Security is easy to use, intuitive, and simple. This reduces onboarding time with new employees.
Robust Audit Trail: Being able to see what happened with specific emails, why things happened, and who was responsible for them helps to reduce troubleshooting time as well as improving overall email observability.
Clean Interface: Mimecast Advanced Email Security is a Swiss-Army-Knife of email security. There are many different configurations and complex rules that can be implemented. To make this manageable Mimecast Advanced Email Security has implemented a simple and clean UI. Being able to favorite commonly used features makes a huge difference in usability.
Simple SSO Integration: This seems like a no-brainer, but its odd to see how many SaaS products either don't support SSO, or make it so complicated and convoluted that setup and maintenance becomes a fully time job.
So the fact that Defender for Endpoint still works with signatures is actually, I don't know, a little difficult for us because, I mean, since Microsoft trusts those signatures, you can easily inject code. And we've done it many times. To show that you can inject code through vulnerabilities like CV 2013, 99, and 33 but still keep the signature. So because of the trust of those signatures, the malware just kind of slides into the environment without Defender knowing. That's the first part. The second part is that the behavioral analysis is not precisely its Prime. It's not Defender's best capability for endpoints. So, Defender does not identify all behaviors considered by other EDRs in the market.
I would like to see some additional improvement around the attachment protection, specifically what may be getting caught and what types of files are attempting to be delivered via email by impersonators.
The Targeted Threat Protection is a great product, and I wish there was a dashboard for this service where we could easily see the types of emails and/or links that have been caught as part of the protection module that could be shared with executives.
Finally, I feel that the phishing protection is great and honestly don't believe there should be much improvement needed there.
Cost add-ons for Security features is nickel and diming the process to keep pace with cybercrime. Limited Education budgets require us to be more pro-active in finding cost-effective measures to protect our devices, staff and students. Defender is a strong, well-featured product that is pricing itself out of the education market
There is no question as to the value of the product to the business and the disruption of changing vendors would not be worth any savings possibly achieved by switching.
It offers multiple security features and integrates well with Microsoft ecosystems. A workflow for threat detection, investigation, automated remediation, and a centralized dashboard is an added advantage. This application is mainly designed for experienced users; new users may feel challenged.
The console is nice, but it could use some improvements for day to day activities for Admins. I find I am jumping around all over to get what I need (always searching for the right area). Being able to customize a Dashboard or having a central typical activities dashboard will be helpful to save more time.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint chugs along just fine no matter what we throw at it and what systems it's running on. It doesn't take up a lot of resources either, so that's welcomed.
The first time I tried to onboard my macOS endpoints to MDE I struggled for quite a bit. I had to reach out to Microsoft's MDE support team. The tech was very helpful in walking me through the steps during a screen share session
When calling them you get best in the world customer services but as previously mentioned their online community and capabilities are a bit lacking. They want you to log into their portal to see updates on issues (vs. using a public facing service) and I rarely find the answers to my issues in electronic format. Their online presence is only helpful with the simplest of issues.
Deployment was handled by our team here and everything went pretty smoothly. We did have a few hiccups in our test group, but that only took a bit to get ironed out.
Cylance's policy is to block everything and requires an active person to monitor and unblock legitimate processes. As updates and software continue to evolve, it is a full-time job to be a Cylance administrator. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a set-and-forget solution that catches threats when they occur and leaves you to focus on your work unimpeded.
In my opinion, Mimecast Advanced Email Security outpaces Microsoft in terms of usability and reduction of spam and phishing emails. Mimecast Advanced Email Security was cheaper than Proofpoint, but I suspect Proofpoint is doing better on staying current with trends than Mimecast Advanced Email Security. I think Abnormal offers the best incoming email security, but does not offer outgoing email data loss prevention or encryption, which is a key use cast for us.
