Advanced Email Security

I have been using Mimecast Advanced Email Security for more than two and a half years.

As the name suggests, I use Mimecast Advanced Email Security for email security, protecting the corporate email communication from phishing, spam emails, malware, malicious URLs, malicious attachments, any impersonation attempts, or business email compromise. It provides an additional security layer around the organization's email environment and gives the security team better visibility and control over suspicious messages before they reach end users. It acts between the user and the email-sending server. In the cloud, it protects and stores all the emails. Before it reaches the user, it takes the action. That is the best and the main advantage of this tool.

For a client, they used to get more spam or phishing emails, so Mimecast Advanced Email Security used to categorize those emails before a SOC engineer even got to them. With more probability of an email being suspicious, it used to flag and bounce the email so that it wouldn't reach the user's inbox. That was a big help.

Most valuable in my day-to-day work, I would say, most of the work has been taken care of by Mimecast Advanced Email Security itself, so the SOC doesn't need to take care of each and everything. Day-to-day email protection covers a large portion of email that is based on attacks ultimately trying to get the user to click on the malicious link and credential harvesting attempts. Mimecast Advanced Email Security URL protection gives us an additional layer of defense by analyzing URLs and checking their destination when the user attempts to access it, rather than just relying on the reputation of the link when the email was originally received. From a security operation perspective, I find this particularly valuable because it helps with phishing investigations and reduces the chances of a user interacting with the malicious URLs.

In a positive sense, most of the email categorization when the email is received to the user inbox is done by Mimecast Advanced Email Security in a very dynamic way. The positive impact is mainly by reducing the number of malicious and suspicious emails that reach our end users. From a security perspective, it has helped us detect and block those phishing attempts, the malicious links, suspicious attachments, or impersonation emails. These are the biggest security issues, so it used to help us a lot. By that, half of the work would have been reduced, and the amount of manual investigation required for routine email checking and the team's effort was significantly decreased. Another benefit is the visibility it provides during investigations. When a suspicious email is reported, I can review the message details and security actions taken by Mimecast Advanced Email Security, which makes it easier to determine whether the email is malicious and what response is required.

When it comes to the categorization, previously I used to analyze each and every email that a user reports to my desk. Later, when I incorporated Mimecast Advanced Email Security as the email security tool, I just had a weekly task to do email analysis of which emails are flagged as phishing, and I used to block those domains. Most phishing emails are dynamically purged and bounced back so that they will directly move to the user's deleted folders rather than the inbox. This significantly reduces the chances of a user clicking the email link, making it a measurable improvement. The amount of manual effort required from the security team was greatly reduced as Mimecast Advanced Email Security blocked a significant number of malicious URLs, attachments, and impersonation attempts before they reached the user. For organizations looking for a benchmark figure, Mimecast has published customer case studies showing substantial improvements, with one customer reporting a 99% reduction in phishing and spam. Similarly, I have also seen more than 80-85% of my work reduced after integrating Mimecast Advanced Email Security.

Mainly in email categorization, I would say Mimecast Advanced Email Security uses a very definitive method in categorizing emails. Before using this tool, the help desk or security team spent a lot of time categorizing and reviewing each single email. After incorporating Mimecast Advanced Email Security, it reduced most of that time. Overall, it has reduced most of the manual work associated with email security. Initially, I had to review each and every email whenever it was received, but later I made it a weekly task so that I don't need to take care of each overlapping email in real-time.

The best features of Mimecast Advanced Email Security are strong phishing and spam filtering, URL malicious link protection, attachment inspection, impersonation and business email compromise protection, flexible email security policies, and good visibility into the email activity. Useful administration controls, integration with the Microsoft 365 environment, the ability to investigate, and remediate suspicious messages constitute additional valuable features.

Mimecast's multi-layer protection helps a lot for security teams when it comes to detection and categorization of emails. I assess its effectiveness by observing how efficiently it identifies suspicious sender domains, display names, impersonation, domain similarities, spoofing indicators, and social engineering patterns. This capability is particularly valuable for detecting higher-level impersonation attempts, those from a CEO or CFO, along with other business email compromise attempts that may not contain a malicious attachment or URL. For URL protection, I evaluate the number and type of malicious links blocked, including phishing URLs that may initially appear legitimate but become malicious later. The real-time scanning that occurs when a link is clicked is particularly useful for these scenarios. For attachment protection, I assess how efficiently the solution identifies potentially malicious files through malware scanning and sandbox analysis. I am also monitoring whether legitimate business attachments are being unnecessarily blocked or delayed. Overall, Mimecast's multi-layer detection is effective and reliable.

Regarding accuracy and reliability of output, since Mimecast Advanced Email Security reduces most of my tasks, I would say its performance is very good overall. In my day-to-day usage, its detection is effective at identifying suspicious emails, phishing attempts, or unusual communication patterns and other threats that may not be observed through traditional signature-based detection. The combination of multiple detection techniques is particularly useful because the system doesn't have to depend on a single indicator when determining whether an email is suspicious. From an analyst perspective, I also find the automated categorization and risk assessment useful for prioritizing reported emails, which helps reduce the time spent by the SOC team focusing on higher-risk incidents. Mimecast Advanced Email Security describes AI-based triage and prioritization of reported suspicious emails as part of its security operation capabilities. Overall, the accuracy is sufficient to be highly useful and very good for detection, prioritization, and categorization.

Some of the AI capabilities of Mimecast Advanced Email Security are very useful for detecting phishing and categorizing emails. What I appreciate is that the AI is primarily used to enhance security detection and administration rather than completely replacing human decision-making power. The platform utilizes AI and machine learning for areas such as anomaly detection, phishing, and business email compromise detection to identify unusual communication patterns and provide dashboards with graphs. From a governance perspective, Mimecast has established an AI governance framework that encompasses risk assessments, responsible AI practices, privacy considerations, and ongoing monitoring. The company is also ISO 27001 certified, which adds additional confidence that AI management and governance are treated as formal security and compliance requirements. However, I believe continued transparency around the AI decision-making process and data usage is essential. For security teams, it is very important to understand why an AI model classifies something as malicious and how customers' data is protected. Mimecast provides dedicated privacy and AI deployment information through its Trust Center.

Mimecast Advanced Email Security is one of the great email security tools, providing an additional layer of email security alongside Microsoft 365 rather than replacing existing Microsoft security controls. Microsoft 365 remains a core productivity and identity platform while Mimecast Advanced Email Security offers additional protection around the email attack surface. I find Mimecast Advanced Email Security to be highly effective for capabilities such as advanced email phishing detection and protection against malicious URLs and attachments. This layered approach is beneficial because threats sometimes require additional detection.

For improvement, I would say some of the catalogs, while navigating, were a little tricky. Before the portal update, there were challenges, but after they improved, I got the new portal. Still, there was a little confusion of navigating from one category to another, which was the main difficulty I faced. Other than that, Mimecast Advanced Email Security provides a lot of security controls and customization, which are very useful for a security team. However, the number of configuration options can make the platform somewhat complex for new administrators. A more streamlined interface with a clear explanation of why a particular policy or detection was triggered would make everyday use much easier. I would also like to see more customizable reports and dashboards. This was a major issue because I wanted reports and later had to raise a support case, which resulted in the support team providing the report and dashboard look only after the support case was raised. It was helpful, but it could have been presented in the portal beforehand to avoid any issues.

I have been working in my current field for more than three years.

In my opinion, Mimecast Advanced Email Security is very stable, reliable, and quite accurate. I would say not every tool can be completely perfect, but Mimecast does its job exceptionally well.

When it comes to scalability, Mimecast Advanced Email Security can handle the traffic for organizations of any size, whether they are hybrid, cloud-hosted, or on-premises, with hundreds to thousands or even hundreds of thousands of devices and users. This scalability makes it very easy to maintain consistent email security for any organization.

The customer support has been really great. I used to raise support cases with detailed descriptions and problem statements, and they resolve those cases very quickly.

For this customer, I did not use any previous solution before adopting Mimecast Advanced Email Security.

Initially, the deployment phase involved mostly the SOC workload. The main implementation involved higher management, such as managers and leads. My work primarily focused on email security analysis and the usage of the tool rather than implementation. What I recall is that it integrated well with Microsoft 365 and Office 365, so all emails and the entire domain were configured to manage allow lists, block lists, exceptions, and everything very smoothly.

In my opinion, Mimecast Advanced Email Security is a very good tool compared to other email security tools I have used for other clients. Therefore, I would say it offers a very good return on investment.

Before choosing Mimecast Advanced Email Security, I evaluated another Microsoft email security option along with this one. Based on the client's budget and their preferences, I ultimately decided to go with Mimecast Advanced Email Security.

Mimecast Advanced Email Security has provided me with significantly better results in terms of manual workflow that the security team used to spend evaluating emails. Emails serve as the first line of attack, with most business compromise emails or phishing campaigns executed by attackers. Consequently, managing these emails is paramount. I find that Mimecast Advanced Email Security effectively addresses the common attack techniques involving phishing emails, URL protection, attachment security, and spam filtering, providing better visibility into suspicious emails. The system's effectiveness heavily relies on how the policies are configured and how the tool is employed. Initial configuration and ongoing policy management can take some effort, and legitimate emails can occasionally be flagged, making it important to maintain a good balance between security and usability. Overall, I consider Mimecast Advanced Email Security to be a reliable and effective security solution, with the highest value for organizations that face significant phishing and email-based threats and are willing to invest time in proper configuration and monitoring.

If you are exploring a good email security solution that can manage your emails with users of any size and offers a good return on investment, I recommend not simply viewing it as another spam filtering product or antivirus option. It addresses phishing, impersonation, malicious URLs, attachments, and any type of threat. I suggest running a controlled pilot to evaluate it and define clear success criteria, including examining the number and quality of threats detected, false positives, and user impact, along with the reduction in investigation time and manual effort. Considering all these factors, I believe Mimecast Advanced Email Security will be an excellent tool for organizations looking to invest in a solution that streamlines their manual tasks and enables properly configured email security policies. I would rate this product eight point five out of ten.

Mimecast Advanced Email Security is designed to safeguard email infrastructure and ensure spam protection, as well as to work as an anti-malware filter. It functions as a secure email gateway, anti-phishing product, impersonation protection, URL protection, attachment defense, spam protection, and also offers a Targeted Threat Protection module along with DLP scenarios, data loss prevention or data leak prevention, and an email continuity archiving solution, specifically addressing Business Email Compromise scenarios. All these modules I have worked with, and it provides multi-layer protection.

Mimecast Advanced Email Security has state-of-the-art features and is very sophisticated compared to other partners. It uses multi-layer protection instead of a single security engine, offering strong phishing protection, which is particularly useful for protecting against credential theft and fake logins or Business Email Compromise, CEO impersonation, and vendor impersonation. Additionally, the URL protection and attachment sandboxing ensure that emails are thoroughly validated before release, along with integration with Microsoft 365.

Mimecast Advanced Email Security email protection solution allows me to define granular level rules and filtering through multi-layer filters with specific conditions or regular expressions. This setup helps safeguard emails and enhances the filtering modules of our existing systems, such as those in Proofpoint, specifically for malware and phishing definitions. Consequently, content and connection filtering occur at Mimecast Advanced Email Security level, enabling attachment and URL defense.

As an area of improvement for Mimecast Advanced Email Security, I would like to see enhancements in capabilities to eliminate false positives even before emails hit the mailbox, leveraging AI functionalities. Also, I believe the platform should incorporate additional AI modules to make it a preferred choice for customers and end-users. Instead of reactive measures, it could proactively identify spam domains and prevent them from derailing mail flow.

I have been working with Mimecast Advanced Email Security for the last six years.

When it comes to stability and reliability, we have not faced any notable issues with Mimecast Advanced Email Security for our customers. It proves to be a reliable product that is stable and highly available in cloud instances.

Mimecast Advanced Email Security is indeed very scalable and easy to scale according to the growing needs of our organization. Scaling can occur based on workload analysis and audit reports that we perform, allowing for simple adjustments as necessary.

I evaluate customer service and tech support for Mimecast Advanced Email Security as fine. Based on service models and tiered support, I have no complaints. Additionally, the presence of a knowledge base provides readily available solutions, which mitigates support challenges.

When it comes to the initial setup process for Mimecast Advanced Email Security, we need to consider domain ownership, DNS, mail flow architecture, existing policies, and a validation testing area. When emails hit Mimecast Advanced Email Security secure gateway, they get scanned for AI and anti-phishing concerns before being sent to Microsoft Online or an on-premise solution. Therefore, it is vital to prepare prerequisites, including identifying the number of admins, detailing DNS records, listing all company domains, and understanding the current inbound-outbound mail flow.

I do not have specific insights about the pricing aspect or setup costs of Mimecast Advanced Email Security, but I understand it operates on a per-user basis and that there are licensing components based on certain categories and support models.

My advice for organizations considering Mimecast Advanced Email Security would involve focusing on its impersonation protection and threat auto-response modules, as they add significant value along with email protection.

With the existing compliance and regulatory requirements, I can fine-tune and align Mimecast Advanced Email Security policy engine with these patterns. This ensures seamless operation within our existing email gateway architecture.

Mimecast Advanced Email Security module has helped me remediate areas impacted by phishing attacks, particularly by creating email filtering rules and adding an additional security layer in front of Microsoft 365, functioning as an email gateway appliance with MX records pointed to Mimecast Advanced Email Security. It provides strong protection against Business Email Compromise and impersonation attacks, including CEO impersonation or financial account impersonation, as well as addressing imposter attacks like C-level and executive mail phishing. Additionally, it improves the archiving process and compliance capabilities, making it a complex hybrid environment which serves as a perfect third-party email solution. I rate this product highly for its comprehensive security features and reliable performance.