We performed a comparison between Cisco Web Security Appliance and Zscaler Internet Access based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Zscaler Internet Access is the preferred choice when compared to Cisco Web Security Appliance due to its advanced features such as cloud-native proxy architecture, cloud browser isolation, and advanced threat protection. Users found it easy to set up and configure, with a stable and scalable performance. While pricing, reporting functionality, and technical support can be improved, users consider Zscaler Internet Access as a reliable and cost-effective solution for remote users with a strong return on investment.
"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."
"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 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 integrates well with Cisco Email Security Appliance."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance can integrate with Active Directory, enabling us to manage all the end-users within AD. It's helpful for setting rules based on individual users and groups. For example, you can configure policies for inbound and outbound traffic."
"I would recommend this solution to others."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance is user-friendly and easy to manage. It protects your environment while accessing the internet."
"The most valuable feature is security."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It also allows you to decrypt SSL traffic, and that's a really important feature as well, which is something I also configured."
"In terms of management and visibility, there is a single panel where you can configure the policies for your entire organisation worldwide."
"The most valuable features of Zscaler Internet Access are it's on the cloud, high network performance, and the interception of users is very easy."
"Tech support is good."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"One feature that is valuable to me from an implementation point of view is that it's very easy to implement."
"The cloud proxy and integration are some of the key features. Since there is cloud waste, we can quickly provision it and start working on the configuration. On top of that, they have added a few more features. They have integrated CASB, and file sandboxing is part of it."
"Zscaler Internet Access protects using data loss prevention. If you have a CASB exposing your cloud out into the network, then Zscaler Internet Access will go ahead and control that unknown cloud application in the CASB, protecting it. There is also data detection with exact data match. This improves the data coming into your cloud so you are protecting it."
"Zscaler Web Security protects our users in remote locations from internet threats - even if they are not connected to our network."
"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 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"
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"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."
"Cisco lacks a GUI-based troubleshooting feature compared to products by other vendors."
"The support for this solution could be improved. We have experienced issues with their SMARTnet support system."
"Setting up Cisco Web Security Appliance is highly complex and it takes about a week. We have to connect it to the Active Directory and configure all the policies for end users. It takes a long time to configure rules for our company data like port forwarding and separating the public and local components."
"The tool needs to provide logs. They need to improve firewall threat defense."
"The one thing I don't like about Cisco is that they are very much fragmented in terms of providing the complete solution. They keep on breaking their different feature sets into different boxes."
"I would like more automation."
"The solution could improve the graphical user interface. It is not up to the regular standard of what we would expect from Cisco. Additionally, they need to improve the categorization when blocking in the settings. The CLI could have a better view than the graphical user interface but I did not investigate further."
"We would like to see a security service head, where we can combine all the security into one solution."
"The solution can be improved by advancing some of the newer technologies such as the DLP feature, and adding email security."
"What could be improved in Zscaler Internet Access is its price. It could be cheaper."
"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."
"I don't know whether it's Zscaler or not, however, sometimes I can't access my time management. I need to wait and try again a few hours later. Typically, if I let some time pass, I can access it again."
"Zscaler should provide adjacent services, which would be complementary to their current offering that could to be more pragmatic for a customer. For example, if you take Akamai, you get multiple sets of services, all depending on the customer and the strategy and the complexity and the problems. In some areas, they are more varied in terms of coverage."
"In terms of user experience, it could be better."
"When you have appliances, SSL inspection is always a headache due to poor performance and/or lack of ciphers implemented. "
"Zscaler Internet Access's troubleshooting is very limited, and their textbook logs need to be more informative."
Cisco Web Security Appliance is ranked 9th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 29 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. Cisco Web Security Appliance is rated 7.8, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Web Security Appliance writes "Ensures security for remote workers". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". Cisco Web Security Appliance is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Fortinet FortiProxy, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway and Symantec Proxy, 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 Cisco Web Security Appliance vs. Zscaler Internet Access report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.
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