Mimecast Email Security, Cloud Integrated Strikes the Right Balance for Small Businesses
 

Tech industry veterans have long talked about the “magic” of getting their products’ default settings right. Default settings are crucial because when you nail them, the product just works, out of the box, creating a great first impression on the customer, simplifying adoption, reducing customers’ support headaches, and making the product widely accessible to buyers with varying levels of technical expertise. Two recent adopters of Mimecast’s gateway-less Email Security, Cloud Integrated (CI) solution experienced such default magic, expressing surprise and delight at how instantly effective Email Security CI was, starting from day one of their free trials.

Even better: Both customers conveyed “best-of-both-worlds” admiration when they dug deeper, discovering they could reconfigure some settings to fine-tune Email Security CI to their specific requirements. 

Mimecast’s Email Security, Cloud Integrated vs. Microsoft Defender: ‘Night and Day’ 

The operations manager of a property management company on the U.S.’s West Coast had moved virtually all the firm’s technology infrastructure to the cloud — not only Microsoft 365, but also its cloud-based phones, too — shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic. “A little bit after COVID hit, phishing spam started getting out of control. And unfortunately, a lot of our employees were falling for them,” the operations manager said. 

He made a quick decision to adopt an email security product that was available then. But he was dissatisfied with its “slightly brutal set up” and ongoing administration experience, so he kept his eyes open for a replacement. Mimecast kept coming up in positive contexts on an IT forum where he sometimes looks to see if a consensus emerges among participants. When he learned about Email Security CI’s 30-day free trial, he jumped on it. 

“I got it plugged in and it instantly started working,” the operations manager said of Email Security CI. “The fact that Mimecast had a tool that essentially did all the configurations for me for Microsoft 365 was critical. It just took me about 30 minutes to grant permissions to give access, and that was the brunt of my work. And then, of course, configuring my allow list and block list, and getting the policy tweaked how I wanted it, which was all very straightforward.” 

“Looking at what Email Security [CI] blocked versus what Microsoft Defender was blocking, was night and day,” he said. When the free trial ended, he became a customer. 

The length of the trial was also crucial to the operations manager, giving him time to learn how to take full advantage of Email Security CI. “Once it’s out of the box and working, now I need options to improve the way it works. How easy is it to get it to work better? How easy is it to get it to work how I want it to? Those things can conflict with an easy out-of-the-box setup. It can be so easy that you get no options to improve it. And then sometimes, products can be so technical that you have to spend hours on end trying to tweak and set things up.” But with Email Security CI, “I found I had tools that let me filter and set up pretty specific policies that make it easier for me to manage the system.” 

The operations managers’ trial was not glitch-free, but when issues arose, Mimecast’s support team were able to quickly help. “My sales contact linked me up with support right away — as a free trial client, not somebody who was even paying them a dime yet — to troubleshoot my issue. Then it was fixed in a timely manner. That won me over pretty quickly,” he said.

VC Firm Saved From ‘Constant Assault of Garbage’

A Silicon Valley venture capital firm with a portfolio of more than a dozen startups decided enough was enough earlier this year: “Our email was being bombarded by a constant assault of garbage,” said the president and CEO. 

His description of the firm’s day-to-day activities shows why it’s a threat actor’s dream for business email compromise (BEC) attacks. “We’re capital allocators. We send a lot of wire transactions, we have a lot of DocuSign documents flow in, we get capital calls for certain investments. So, we just get hit daily with a barrage of phony requests for wires, or requests for signatures coming from spam, malware, etc. And the [Microsoft] 365 filtering tool isn’t effective for our purpose.” 

“I really needed to find a product that could assist with that. And it had to be a plug-and-play solution that I could easily integrate without having to do much work,” he said. Like the property management company, the VC learned about Email Security CI in an IT forum while researching available options. “I gave Mimecast Email Security, Cloud Integrated a try along with two other competitors, and the Mimecast product was by far superior. That was kind of what everyone was saying in the Reddit forums, as well,” he added. 

“It was super easy to get started. I [logged in] to Cloud Integrated, plugged in my [Microsoft] 365 email, and we were live. That sold it, because any kind of heavy lift on integration was not going to work for me. The fact that it worked right away was amazing.” 

The first thing the VC noticed was the modern, intuitive interface — especially compared to a major competitor he also tried out. “Their UI was terrible, it was difficult to integrate. Having to watch video tutorials on how to integrate [the competitor] was just a total pain. After a day, they were off our list,” he said. “It’s just amazing how much better the Mimecast UI is. It makes it so much easier for non-tech people like me.” When asked for specifics, the VC added: “When you log into the home page, you can easily see the detections and resolutions that Mimecast processed. You can’t easily do that with [the competitor]; at least, I couldn’t figure it out.” 

The VC also praised Email Security CI’s default settings and the ease with which he could make modifications. “Initially, I just used the default filtering but, over time, I’ve been setting a handful of custom rules,” he said. 

How does he measure ROI? “No more angry texts or emails from partners complaining about getting bombarded with spam. That’s the biggest reward right there, making sure our experience is seamless, and we’re not getting bombarded by phishing attempts.” 

The Bottom Line

For many small businesses using cloud platforms like Microsoft 365, Mimecast Email Security, Cloud Integrated is proving to be a must-have option to strengthen that platform’s built-in security. Email Security CI has superior cybersecurity efficacy and strikes the right balance of working instantly, out-of-the-box, yet enabling an administrator to customize policies and set specific filters that mold the system to meet their organization’s precise requirements. 

You can easily determine whether Email Security CI is right for you by taking a product tour or trying it for free for 30 days.