We performed a comparison between Cisco Web Security Appliance and Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: After analyzing user feedback, it appears that Cisco Web Security Appliance is the better choice when compared to Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway. Users appreciate its easy-to-use interface, scalability, and integration with Active Directory. They also value Cisco's SSL decryption and high-quality technical support. While Forcepoint has more advanced features like sandboxing and cloud-based enterprise DLP, it falls short in terms of technical support, interface simplicity, and overall security protection. Furthermore, Cisco's pricing is reasonable, making it a more attractive option for smaller networks.
"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 solution is stable."
"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 most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"Cisco is the best in giving technical support. There is no doubt about that."
"The most valuable feature is security."
"The product is stable."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance has very good security benefits for any company and is easy to integrate."
"The most valuable feature is that we can use it as a proxy."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance is user-friendly and easy to manage. It protects your environment while accessing the internet."
"The best feature of Cisco Web Security Appliance is its policy framing. It also has a good UI and it can handle traffic well. Cisco Web Security Appliance is a good product."
"It also allows you to decrypt SSL traffic, and that's a really important feature as well, which is something I also configured."
"The most valuable feature for me in Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is URL filtering, though all other features of the product are okay as well."
"Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway does most of its job well, but I especially like its data security feature."
"The most valuable feature is the categorization, where you can allow general access to an application but limit specific features."
"In terms of functionality, Forcepoint is the best web proxy available."
"It's stable and reliable."
"Ability to send decrypted traffic to other security solutions for inspection."
"Provides good visibility and good filtering features."
"Ease of updating the latest hotfixes and patches on the appliance."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"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"
"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."
"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."
"The solution needs to be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"The FTD 21 model's Firepower Threat Defense does not have the multi-instance feature for the virtualization with the physical equipment."
"I would like more automation."
"WSA is lacking firewall features."
"Technical support needs to be improved because they take a very long time and there is no communication or notification."
"The tool needs to provide logs. They need to improve firewall threat defense."
"The licensing model needs to be more flexible."
"The transparent proxy is quite difficult to enforce on smartphones and tablets."
"Security of browsing."
"Allow for faster exemption of websites or the ability to reclassify websites."
"Database synchronization failures"
"I am looking forward to the full integration of the endpoints that they offer for web security and DLP."
"The reporting must be improved."
"The performance issues in the product are an area of concern where improvements are required."
"An area for improvement would be the classification of websites - it can take a long time for new websites to be classified."
"The availability of clusters is limited, and the product is very unstable. The development team is slow as well."
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Cisco Web Security Appliance is ranked 9th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 29 reviews while Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is ranked 5th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 47 reviews. Cisco Web Security Appliance is rated 7.8, while Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco Web Security Appliance writes "Ensures security for remote workers". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway writes "Simple to set up, reliable, and offers great reporting". Cisco Web Security Appliance is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Zscaler Internet Access, Fortinet FortiProxy, Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway and Skyhigh Security, whereas Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Cisco Umbrella, Symantec Proxy, Fortinet FortiProxy and Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks. See our Cisco Web Security Appliance vs. Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway report.
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We monitor all Secure Web Gateways (SWG) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.