Darktrace vs. Proofpoint Email Protection

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Darktrace
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Darktrace AI interrupts in-progress cyber-attacks, including ransomware, email phishing, and threats to cloud environments. It's able to detect and establish baselines for your organization so it can make the distinction between what is and what isn't normal network activity for your organization. This allows it to tackle complex cyber-attacks as they happen and prevent future cyber-attacks from happening.N/A
Proofpoint Email Protection
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Proofpoint Email Protection is available as an on-premise or cloud based solution and blocks unwanted, malicious and impostor emails with granular search capabilities and visibility into all messages. Outbound controls include encryption and data loss prevention, while continuity capabilities ensure business communications can continue as normal in the event of an email outage. With Proofpoint's Email Protection, you can protect your people, data, and brand from today’s threats…N/A
Pricing
DarktraceProofpoint Email Protection
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DarktraceProofpoint Email Protection
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DarktraceProofpoint Email Protection
Considered Both Products
Darktrace
Chose Darktrace
Its capabilities to respond to a threat both manual than automated way makes Darktrace one of the best NDR in the market. The rules editor allows the right flexibility to build a set of rules sized for the infrastructure, while the third parties integrations and modules helps …
Chose Darktrace
Darktrace is better in terms of scalability, ease of integration, and ongoing support
Chose Darktrace
The product's capacity to provide insights into network traffic is impressive. The organisation was able to find any malware harming the devices with their assistance. We really value network monitoring and self-learning monitoring tools.
Chose Darktrace
We looked into several competitors and are still looking, due to the problems Darktrace has with false positives. Darktrace is attractive as their support is generally good, and working with the product is relatively easy.
Chose Darktrace
We have not evaluated others as they seem to be in their own class.
Chose Darktrace
The weekly reports was why we chose DarkTrace.
Chose Darktrace
We did NOT select Darktrace. OSSIM/AlienVault is a more mature product and it provided better intelligence and reporting. The end user interface is much easier to use - and you can tell built form engineers who have had to do the work. My suggestion for anyone considering …
Chose Darktrace
Darktrace does a very good job at complementing our other security tools by adding an additional level of automated security. It is important to point out that the automation is optional. We ran Darktrace in "manual" mode until we were comfortable enough to switch it to a …
Chose Darktrace
Darktrace allows you to get under the hood in a way that few other services of this type allow.
Proofpoint Email Protection
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
More flexibility to create rules and custom rules; in the on-premises version, these options grow up due to the possibility of access to the command line.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
Proofpoint Email Protection allows configuration and granularity that far exceeds those features we'd been able to use with the Barracuda Email Security Gateway product. In addition, the robust Proofpoint reporting features give us and our decision makers much improved detail …
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
Microsoft Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection needs to improve a lot to catch up to Proofpoint's abilities and features. We used ATP for a year but malicious emails were slipping through. Proofpoint was much more efficient in catching malicious emails. With ATP the …
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
As a previous Exchange administrator, ProofPoint allowed us to move many security-based mail flow rules into the system. This simplified our Exchange mail flow and allowed for more detailed and concise rules.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
We use Symantec DLP for our on-premise protection of endpoints and network traffic. We used to use it for email, but switched to Proofpoint due to the entire business deciding to move to it. We are just one of multiple teams using Proofpoint. I believe Proofpoint was decided …
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
It was only possible to select "Ironport Web Security Appliance" but this has nothing to do with emailing. Actually, we are using Cisco Ironport Email Security in another environment. The administration and management of Proofpoint Email Protection is way more straightforward …
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
I was not involved in the side by side with other products.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
I have used MessageLabs. Instead of relying on signatures and heuristics for spam detection effectiveness, Proofpoint's spam detection is based on machine learning technology and that is really helpful for overall protection.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
Works very well - probably much better in terms of feature set and customisability. The quality of message filtering is fantastic. But from an administrative perspective it is more difficult to manage than the others.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
At the time we selected Proofpoint, Mimecast did not offer comparable features. We are planning to evaluate Mimecast in the first quarter of 2020.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
We currently have Microsoft ATP turned on behind Proofpoint and Proofpoint's TAP. ATP almost never alerts us to any issues due to the filtering by Proofpoint.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
We had been using Proofpoint for a number of years but there were a few things PP was not doing so well. So we looked at Mimecast and was seriously considering moving to it, however, Mimecast has 1 fatal flaw they were not able to resolve to our satisfaction so we stuck with …
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
I thought that Proofpoint immediately showed improvements over these products and allowed us to become more "granular" than the mentioned products.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
Proofpoint is the leader of the pack when it comes to email security services. I have used a range of other providers in the space and Proofpoint is the best. It's ability to identify and block malicious email and threats sets it above all other competitors.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
I belong to a few tech user boards, and compared to Mimecast, Proofpoint's uptime over the past year has been much better.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
We evaluated a few other products and found Proofpoint to be the best fit for our organization.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
We used Barracuda at one point but the price was going up and the performance and features went down or went away all together. Proofpoint has definitely proven to be an amazing product.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
Proofpoint meets all the security requirements stipulated in the company's policies, has a good platform administration, is easy to implement, has very robust research tools, the reports help our security operations center, good support, flexibility of working in the cloud, and …
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
I would recommend Proofpoint over any other product in this space thanks to Proofpoint's amazing customer service and true-to-their-word email security spam and malware detection systems.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
We have used EOP (Exchange Online Protection) in the past and we also had a POC with Proofpoint which we were excited to use and the results were positive.

Before Proofpoint, we had many issues with imposters and TAP issues with EOP, which have been improved with Proofpoint. We …
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
Proofpoint stacks up well against competitors, but I'm choosing not to disclose who the platform replaced.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
I am not sure what else is out there so I can't really speak to how well it stacks up against others. I can say that it seems to be pretty good for us. It's robust and has good customization. It also has other systems within the Proofpoint family that it works with fairly well.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
It's definitely better and more robust and reliable than our previous solution (McAfee Email Gateway), but when compared to Mimecast they are pretty much on par. Both solutions offer a very good solution to email security.
Chose Proofpoint Email Protection
I have used Symantec Brightmail, Cisco Ironport, and Trend Micro Email Security.
We selected Trend's product due to the price, but it failed miserably at clustering and overall email delivery. Proofpoint came in second as it checked off a lot of the boxes that we required in …
Features
DarktraceProofpoint Email Protection
Secure Email Gateway
Comparison of Secure Email Gateway features of Product A and Product B
Darktrace
-
Ratings
Proofpoint Email Protection
8.0
Ratings
4% below category average
Anti-malware00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Customizability00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Data Loss Protection00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Threat Detection00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Sandboxing00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
End-to-End Encryption00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Management Tools00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
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DarktraceProofpoint Email Protection
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User Ratings
DarktraceProofpoint Email Protection
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.7
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.4
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
DarktraceProofpoint Email Protection
Likelihood to Recommend
Darktrace would be well suited to any environment really; the only constraint would be the budget. The cost scales on the number of devices to be monitored by the product, so it can be quite expensive in larger environments. Any company that would benefit from having 24/7 monitoring of their network would find that this product would suit that need perfectly. It can also create a number of reports, which is useful if you have any requirement to present periodic figures and statistics for your network. There are also additional features available and in development such as Antigena, which can be configured to allow potential threats to be automatically mitigated; it can block connections to a certain address, using certain ports, or it can enforce "normal behaviour" where it will only allow a machine to communicate in a way that Darktrace has observed before and considers normal. This has huge benefits particularly for 24/7 organisations where you don't have the ability to have someone monitoring the network personally at all times, as it could stop a malware outbreak in its tracks.
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Well suited: Proofpoint does a pretty good job at protecting us from spam emails. I was able to block a lot of emails coming from SendGrid by blocking SendGrid emails with a custom spam filter. However, SendGrid has a lot of legit emails too so I was able to create another rule to allow those emails from certain people, then block the rest. That way business need was met but spam emails are blocked. Less Appropriate If you are trying to monitor internal to internal emails Proofpoint is probably a little over featured for that.
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Pros
  • Uses it Al model UEBA to detect anomalies in the behaviour of not only the users in a corporate network but also the routers, servers, and endpoints in that network.
  • Provides a visualisation of both egress and outbound network traffics flowing in and out of the organisation.
  • Darktrace comes with it autonomous AI model detection and responses capabilities.
  • Darktrace as an AI next generation NDR solution, prevents ,contains and quarantines malicious traffics from and into the corporate network.
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  • Spam - catches these emails before hitting the inbox.
  • Daily digest - provides users with a list of the emails that were blocked and allows them to choose to release them if they are legitimate emails.
  • Ensures that emails coming into our organization is safe for our users and verifies the email is coming from stated senders email server.
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Cons
  • The system has so many features and places to tweak we found it hard to tune for our use.
  • We met regularly with someone from Darktrace to assist us in processing the alerts
  • The process for mail scanning requires you to reroute mail traffic
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  • The pricing is high and there are many licenses for things I feel should be part of other products.
  • The UI is slightly dated and has a lot of room for improvement.
  • The separate products should have one pane of glass for administration. Currently, if you own several of the products it feels quite disjointed when using them.
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Likelihood to Renew
It's a powerfull product that help administrators to provide email security to our organization.
Good metrics about received emails that help us to determine in doubt case if the email is a false positive or it's malware.
They're improving the product releasing continuous updates and have mobile phone app to manage it.
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No answers on this topic
Usability
The Darktrace toolset is very expansive, allowing it to handle many different tasks, but this leads to a user interface that is sometimes not at all intuitive. Icons don't always make sense visually, and the associated tool tips do not always provide enough detail on what action the button performs
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Very robust and solid product in protecting our emails. The engineers who assisted with our implementation was very knowledgable and great to work with. Easy to use by end-users. Administration and management are also easy for IT. Great dashboard and reporting tools for business reviews.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
There were no appliance errors or unplanned outages during five years of operation.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
Most important thing is the performance of processing mails. Even in a complex environment the system keeps performing on a very high Level.
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Support Rating
Darktrace support is excellent in my experience. They send a competent engineer on-site to provide on-boarding training. They were also very responsive in responding to questions and concerns. Having an individual point of contact who is a competent network and security engineer is not a common experience, at least for me.
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We use ProofPoint support quite often to fix issues and assist with setting up features and rules. Each time we have created a ticket, they have been very helpful and respectful. Each ticket has been treated with the appropriate SLA time and attention. We also enjoy the regular check-ins from the engineers when tickets are open but we get busy with other tasks.
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Alternatives Considered
We did NOT select Darktrace. OSSIM/AlienVault is a more mature product and it provided better intelligence and reporting. The end user interface is much easier to use - and you can tell built form engineers who have had to do the work. My suggestion for anyone considering Darktrace, is to get the price upfront; do a 30/60 onsite trail; and do the same thing, at the same time, with AlienVault. AlientVault will win every time. I say that because that's exactly what I did.
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Proofpoint Email Protection allows configuration and granularity that far exceeds those features we'd been able to use with the Barracuda Email Security Gateway product. In addition, the robust Proofpoint reporting features give us and our decision makers much improved detail to make informed decisions about our security posture.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
You can add a lot of agents to your environment if you need them. And you can operate hardware appliances and virtual appliances in the same cluster.
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Return on Investment
  • One big positive is how it helps us with the security assessments that clients have done on us. They are looking to see if we know how we might have unusual/malicious traffic running on the network.
  • If you have a small network and only need 1 appliance, it can be a good ROI and peace of mind.
  • You could go down a hole in trying to spend time looking at all of your traffic with this software. You need to focus only on what it is showing as potential bad traffic.
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  • Having easy-to-reach backups of all employee emails has made Proofpoint worth it by itself. That plus the countless times that spam/malicious emails did not make it through to the intended person that could have potentially cost the organization a lot of money.
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