We performed a comparison between Cisco Web Security Appliance and Symantec Proxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Web Security Appliance is the better choice when compared to Symantec Proxy. It has a user-friendly interface, strong features such as SSL decryption and Umbrella DNS security, and is reasonably priced. While Symantec Proxy has a strong URL database and granular policy creation, it is criticized for its difficult deployment, expensive pricing, and mixed reviews on customer support.
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"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."
"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."
"It's a scalable product."
"The tool has good Umbrella DNS security."
"The most valuable feature is that we can use it as a proxy."
"The setup was very easy and straightforward."
"Cisco is the best in giving technical support. There is no doubt about that."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance has very good security benefits for any company and is easy to integrate."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance is user-friendly and easy to manage. It protects your environment while accessing the internet."
"The solution is scalable."
"What I found most valuable in Symantec Proxy is that it doesn't have any limitations. It also has a simple configuration, with only one window pane, unlike Zscaler, which has multiple window panes. Deploying the agent is also more straightforward in Symantec Proxy."
"The initial setup of Symantec Proxy is easy."
"The tool's most valuable features are content-to-content filtration and SCCM protection."
"The CPL code is the best feature of the solution."
"The developer's assistance is valuable, enabling seamless integration which allows for a comprehensive view of categories, even if not certified by the link."
"The Symantec antivirus suite and the proxy component are the most valuable feature."
"The product is very good, and the URL filtering database is great."
"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."
"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"
"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."
"WSA is lacking firewall features."
"The GUI is not user-friendly, so it needs to improve or be simplified."
"They need a better graphical interface, and they need a better ISE mechanism."
"Technical support needs to be improved because they take a very long time and there is no communication or notification."
"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 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."
"The tool’s reporting features must be improved."
"The solution could improve by having better documentation."
"The traffic filtering could improve. Our firewall traffic is limited. Additionally, it would be helpful if there was a dashboard and reporting feature."
"The user interface could be improved, and the price could be lower as well."
"Prior to the Broadcom purchase, every appliance was application based, but now they have one ISG device and on top of it multiple applications are running. It has a single point of failure. If your device goes down, all of the applications would be down."
"One area for improvement in Symantec is the lack of a reporting server or dashboard integration with SIM."
"The initial setup is actually quite complex to install because our users don't have admin rights on the boxes and there's no remote install option by an administrator."
"Marketing needs improvement in Symantec Proxy, as it needs to catch up in sales here in the Asia Pacific region. Symantec Proxy licensing renewal also needs improvement."
Cisco Web Security Appliance is ranked 9th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 29 reviews while Symantec Proxy is ranked 14th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 18 reviews. Cisco Web Security Appliance is rated 7.8, while Symantec Proxy is rated 7.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Web Security Appliance writes "Ensures security for remote workers". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Symantec Proxy writes "A scalable enterprise-level tool with advanced features that provide accurate database categorization". Cisco Web Security Appliance is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Zscaler Internet Access, Fortinet FortiProxy, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway and Skyhigh Security, whereas Symantec Proxy is most compared with Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, Skyhigh Security, Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway, McAfee Web Gateway Cloud Service and Fortinet FortiProxy. See our Cisco Web Security Appliance vs. Symantec Proxy report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.
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