Cisco, McAfee, Microsoft, Proofpoint, Symantec

Earlier within the week we noticed that the market for Secure Email Gateways (SEG) is a mature one with low digit progress anticipated yearly over the approaching years. We additionally noticed that it’s characterised by a transfer in direction of SaaS fashions with most distributors offering some type of service providing. It’s also dominated by 5 large distributors which were out there because the starting.

The findings locations Cisco, McAfee, Microsoft, Proofpoint and Symantec within the Chief’s quadrant of a Magic Quadrant that consists of 16 distributors in all.

SEG Distributors

However they don’t seem to be the one distributors that needs to be thought-about and Gartner makes the purpose that potential traders ought to think about the market globally earlier than making any resolution.

The market, Gartner says, is in a relentless state of flux that displays its maturity and has seen, for instance, the inclusion of SilverSky this yr, whereas Google was dropped.

This motion is just not due to any flaws detected within the merchandise within the 12 months because the final quadrant, however slightly due to modifications within the vendor outlook which implies it not suits into the strict standards that Gartner has drawn up for inclusion on this quadrant.

Google is a living proof. It was dropped this yr, as a result of it has withdrawn from the stand-alone SEG market and has migrated its remaining clients on this market to a model of enterprise Gmail, all of who will proceed to learn from SEG providers, however this time built-in into the e-mail utility itself.

There are additionally different distributors that didn’t make it into the MQ however which offer robust SEG choices all the identical. Within the case of Sendmail, for instance, you might have a vendor with a really robust, massive enterprise providing that doesn’t slot in with Gartner’s know-how standards.

Sendmail has a slightly distinctive product that permits enterprises to plug within the e-mail safety purposes that they need from different distributors and handle the general framework as soon as the enterprise has constructed the safety presence it needs utilizing these third-party parts collectively.

Different distributors like AppRiver, Axway, Eleven and Spamina give attention to a specific geographic or vertical market area of interest, Gartner says.

SEG MQ Standards

So what are the factors for inclusion? To be included within the MQ within the first place, distributors should reveal:

• That their resolution has its personal proprietary capabilities to dam undesirable e-mail site visitors.
• E-mail virus scanning
• That their product can present e-mail encryption by itself, or by third-party add-ons
• The flexibility to scan outbound e-mail for information breaches
• That’s has no less than 2000 direct enterprise clients and revenues of no less than US$ 10 million for e-mail safety merchandise.

On prime of that they need to additionally present that thteir enterprise is a viable enterprise now and is prone to be sooner or later in addition to an understanding and imaginative and prescient of the market that may carry it by the following yr.

SEG Chief’s Quadrant

To be included within the Chief’s Quadrant is harder once more. Distributors should present that they’re performing nicely and have a transparent forward-looking technique that features constructing new performance to hold that technique by. In addition they should be capable of reveal complete e-mail safety that offers them a excessive market share coupled with excessive buyer satisfaction. This yr the Leaders embody:

Cisco

In the mean time, Cisco dominates the marketplace for on-premises options appropriate for the mid-to-large enterprise sector. It presents three completely different deployment choices by {hardware} home equipment, managed home equipment and digital home equipment. Appropriate for corporations which are searching for best-of-breed performance.

Strengths: It’s simple to scale and operates from an easy-to-use interface that manages a system providing deep coverage management. It scans suspicious URLs by its Outbreak Filters and has additionally added capabilities to detect low-volume spam assaults.

It  has policy-based e-mail encryption and integrates simply with RSA’s Knowledge Loss Prevention (DLP) supervisor. It additionally advantages from Cisco’s put in base of community safety home equipment.

Cautions: Its give attention to massive enterprises means it doesn’t scale down nicely for SMBs whereas the administration interface may be complicated for inexperienced customers. Its hosted e-mail providers solely has 4 information facilities within the US and Europe and purchasers are unable to pick out the place their information ought to reside. Key administration is simply obtainable from a US information middle.

McAfee

Now a subsidiary of Intel, McAfee has a variety of endpoint safety merchandise. It consolidated its two on-premises gateway options in v7.0 just lately. It’s a sensible choice for built-in hybrid options that augments the safety of mailboxes,  and for these searching for an built-in suite of safety merchandise.

Strengths: McAfee’s E-mail Safety native DLP capabilities is likely one of the strongest and customers the talents of its stand-alone, enterprise-class, content material conscious DLP providing. Fundamental encryption strategies are simply supported as is the safe switch of huge recordsdata.

It has a SaaS providing with a transparent, Net-based interface that’s simple to make use of and is hosted in 7 international places with the opportunity of locking messages into particular geographies. Its Content Security Suite bundles safe e-mail, Net and DLP in a mixed package deal.

Cautions: It has not considerably expanded its market share within the enterprise SEG market lately and buyer satisfaction is decrease than common, Gartner says. A number of clients additionally reported the necessity for improved incident reporting. It solely presents hosted mail in one of many 7 geographies it has a knowledge middle in.

Microsoft

Having consolidated all its anti-spam capabilities into its SaaS-based Exchange Online, Microsoft’s dominance within the e-mail market makes it’s a strategic supplier of SEG options. It’s also making large strides in increasing and enhancing the service.

Strengths: It’s able to tighter integration of its SEG features with Change/Outlook than its opponents are. Change On-line Safety (EOP) mirrors e-mail throughout a number of information facilities for redundancy and helps in-geography e-mail processing for each the US and Europe.

EOP additionally presents hosted encryption based mostly on Voltage Safety know-how. Its Lively Listing Rights Administration providers have been added for end-to-end e-mail providers with a hosted equal on the Azure cloud.

Cautions: It doesn’t have the most effective performance in the marketplace and has been sluggish to supply enhancements. Gartner says it expects enchancment, nevertheless, when it embraces a cloud-first agile growth mannequin. EOP doesn’t permit end-user particular black lists. The Change Hosted Encryption resolution is just not built-in with the administration console and lacks self-service configuration. As ever with Micrsoft, licensing may be troublesome.

Proofpoint

By way of innovation, Proofpoint continues to guide the market with a singular focus on email security points. It has one of many highest progress charges within the MQ. Its flagship product Proofpoint Enterprise, is accessible as a hosted service, on-premises, or as digital (VMware) home equipment and software program. It could possibly additionally come as a hybrid mixture of those variations.

Strengths: Spam and malware detection have at all times been a powerful level for Proofpoint and is likely one of the few corporations that publishes its effectiveness frequently. It continues to put money into new know-how for spam and spear phishing detection.

Its Net-based administration console is likely one of the finest out there with the power to customise the dashboards for every administrator. DLP options are very robust and embody quite a few prebuilt insurance policies, dictionaries, quantity identifiers, and built-in policy-based encryption. It has SaaS information facilities within the US, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands.

Cautions: The devoted give attention to e-mail is a weak spot in addition to a energy. Whereas it continues to outline best-of-breed performance in a mature market, for a lot of clients this could simply be overkill. It’s nonetheless lacking an advert hoc reporting functionality. It has a company focus and worth vary that makes it unsuitable for small corporations.

Symantec

As one of many largest SEG distributors in the marketplace, Symantec continues to develop quicker than the market itself. It has a variety of choices that embody {hardware} home equipment, SaaS and digital home equipment. The Messaging Gateway (SMG) and the Symantec E-mail Safety cloud service will match most organizations.

Strengths: It has a really massive and complicated malware workforce that has entry to a considerable amount of information from its widespread buyer base. It presents complicated, content material filtering insurance policies whereas its cloud providing now supplies outbound spam scanning for all clients.

It’s a chief within the DLP market and makes use of the identical inspection engine in its SEG resolution. It has additionally improved the synchronization of its SMG quarantine administration.

Cautions: It has not been aggressive in releasing new product options and the on-premises gateway is the not probably the most polished resolution for very massive enterprises. The on-premises resolution has additionally not launch any particular superior focused menace options like time-of-click URL filtering or digital sandboxing. There isn’t any administration interface that may combine on-premises and repair choices for hybrid deployments.

That is only a transient overview of the details within the Leaders Quadrant. There’s much more right here and value a search for these contemplating investing.

Title picture courtesy of Jakub Krechowicz (Shutterstock)