We performed a comparison between iboss and Zscaler Internet Access based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"The solution is stable."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"Tech support is good."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is SWG traffic."
"One feature that is valuable to me from an implementation point of view is that it's very easy to implement."
"Zscaler Internet Access's best feature is the granular policy controls."
"The scanning feature is impressive, because they do not introduce a big latency to the traffic."
"We don't have to buy equipment to use it. And when our engineers set it up on our side, we just configured a few settings and we were in."
"Zscaler covers all the features needed to replace a VPN or proxy solution. They are good. They've been on the market for 15 years now, so they are mature enough."
"In terms of management and visibility, there is a single panel where you can configure the policies for your entire organisation worldwide."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers. This type of encryption is tough for any appliance in a BYOD environment."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"The interface for administration could be better. They should upgrade the management portal."
"It needs better integration with other applications. It takes a fair amount of regular activity to apply the by-passes because it is very strict in its restrictions and frequently you have to go in and open things up to allow the workforce to work."
"The pricing is an issue. It is expensive if you have all of your users in the same location. It is expensive compared to other firewalls on the market."
"The reporting functionality could be a bit easier to use. There is a reporting function, but it's quite hard to do any good reporting, from a user-management perspective. For example, if a department manager wants to know how his department is using the web, there is a way to get the data, but it's quite cumbersome to get it and show it well. And that's true for comparing between departments."
"I would like to see more training and video documentation."
"The main issue with Zscaler Internet Access is proxy IP detection, which sometimes makes sites inaccessible."
"In terms of user experience, it could be better."
"Zscaler Internet Access's troubleshooting is very limited, and their textbook logs need to be more informative."
iboss is ranked 22nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 8 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. iboss is rated 8.4, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of iboss writes "Stable and quick to set up but needs more clear status information for end users". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". iboss is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, Fortinet FortiGate SWG and Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway, whereas Zscaler Internet Access is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and FortiSASE . See our Zscaler Internet Access vs. iboss report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.
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Bluecoat and Forcepoint offer credible solutions. Think through where your users are and what they connect to. A mobile workforce may need an agent and a cloud gateway (unless you force them back to base over VPN) but may give problems if connecting to sites that whitelist you by IP. And not all providers have good global breakout points. Be particularly careful if you work in China.
My recommendation is Cisco Meraki MX84 with advanced security license (its have two kind of license Advanced security and Enterprise licenses).
I recommend Fortigate
All FortiGate appliances are powered by the FortiOS™ operating system with the following features and benefits:
Features. Firewall, Virtual Private Networking (VPN), AntiVirus, Intrusion Prevention, Web Filtering, DLP, and anti-spam; AntiVirus /Antispyware
Answer is , it depends... If you do any web based business with Banks or Governments then get a hardware solution like Bluecoat or Fortinet because web based providers can not provide you with a static source IP and you will fail security checks. I've been involved in corporate moves to the "cloud" using Zscaler and both went very wrong, very fast, a year later and they still have monthly outages because of the "cloud" providing random source IP's. If this is for a public internet access outside of your corporate network then you should be fine otherwise I suggest hardware you control.
This is a "how long is a piece of string?" type question. As the other vendors have said it is hard to recommend something fully without knowing all the background. Your background did stipulate that you had multiple sites and you were growing. Having a traditional deployment scenario will mean that you need to have a "box" at each site and add more boxes as you add more sites. Going with a more modern solution like Zscaler will allow more rapid growth opportunities - just add users, no matter where they are - also this allows you to restrict with a single policy in the cloud rather than on each device.
AS others have said, be mindful of the proximity of the Zscaler because of latency, but they do have >100 POPS which you will probably find pretty local.
Overall, there is a lot more research you can do, but I'm leaning towards a cloud offering from the branches. You might consider an SD-WAN device at each branch that also has FW built in. This would give you connectivity resilience at a much lower price, but perhaps this is a debate for another day :-)
Cisco Meraki is an excellent solution in the cloud, has AMP included and can be integrated with Umbrella and Thread Grid.
We use Fortigates for web filtering and security. We are a global company with > 10,000 users.
This protects all users on our internal network. Remote users can use the Fortinet FortiClient for remote AV and web filtering protection.
We used Zscaler several years ago but we were unhappy with latency for complex websites and managing PAC files was difficult.
Since you are going for a web security. Zscalar web security solution will be my recommendation considering its robust features and vast threat intelligence base. It is best you go for the cloud solution since you are working across sites.