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.
"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."
"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 solution is stable."
"The tool has good Umbrella DNS security."
"It also allows you to decrypt SSL traffic, and that's a really important feature as well, which is something I also configured."
"Since working with the tool, we have not found any threats in our organization."
"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."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the functions of proxy for the users who use the internet and the security it offers against the not-so-secure web pages."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance has very good security benefits for any company and is easy to integrate."
"The solution provides good web reputation and anti-malware protection."
"It integrates well with Cisco Email Security Appliance."
"It has got a really good URL categorization database. It is simple to set up. It is also easy to use and quite intuitive. It has got a nice utility for troubleshooting."
"The most valuable feature of Forcepoint Web Security is creating the easy to install further policies that are deployed through the Forcepoint security manual at some stage. Just drag and drop and the policies are there."
"For the most part, the solution, when set up correctly, works fine."
"I like the product's scalability and stability."
"I have found the simplicity of the solution valuable. The dashboard and reports are good as well."
"Provides good visibility and good filtering features."
"Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway does most of its job well, but I especially like its data security feature."
"The solution provided our organization with easy and secure internet access."
"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 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."
"Sometimes reporting is a little bit short."
"I would like more automation."
"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."
"The tool needs to provide logs. They need to improve firewall threat defense."
"Cisco lacks a GUI-based troubleshooting feature compared to products by other vendors."
"It should have a user-based quota, per-user quota, that can be defined on the appliance."
"The solution is priced high."
"As Cisco Web Security Appliance is eight years old, though it's simple to access its UI, the UI needs a little bit of updating. If it could be more interactive similar to the latest gen solutions, that would improve the product. Adding a few more integrations would also make Cisco Web Security Appliance better."
"It takes 20 to 30 minutes for policy replication."
"Sometimes attacks or a new ransomware gets through."
"We are using a V10000 G3 appliance. It is just a proxy. It is just HTTP, FTP, and HTTPS. Now, as our website has developed and we are using rich time-connectivity protocols, the proxy doesn't have the ability to work with these protocols. It would be nice if the UDP feature was there for it to filter UDP traffic. It needs firewall capabilities for UDP filtering. Its upgrades can be quite complex, and they don't always go as per the plan. Its reporting could be a bit more granular."
"The automation lifecycle, integration, and export functionality could all be improved."
"I am looking forward to the full integration of the endpoints that they offer for web security and DLP."
"The product needs to have more mobility."
"A feature we wish to see addressed in the next release of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway involves its administration."
"It's the support that's the problem because that's a different question from the product itself — it's the Achilles heel."
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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.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.
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