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 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 most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"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 also has high availability."
"Cisco regularly upgrades features for the customer's security requirements."
"The deployment process is very simple."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Web Security Appliance is the provided anti-malware functionality and URL categorization. I can block access to malicious websites. 99 percent of the cases are related to a malicious website. If I cannot browse those malicious websites, then we are 99 percent protected."
"The tool has good Umbrella DNS security."
"The product is stable."
"The technical support is good. It is reactive and the documentation is very specific and very useful."
"It enables us to manage bandwidth for users based on their privilege levels. For example, if a user wants to use a certain application or resource, we can provide access based on their privileges."
"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 product is very good, and the URL filtering database is great."
"The most valuable feature is the caching."
"The solution is scalable."
"The tool's most valuable features are content-to-content filtration and SCCM protection."
"We can address and rectify issues promptly, resulting in consistently positive outcomes."
"It's a stable solution."
"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."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"Cisco lacks a GUI-based troubleshooting feature compared to products by other vendors."
"If a user wants to use it for other devices like mobile or smartphones, this product isn't so reliable."
"The tool needs to improve cloud-based decryption."
"It should have a user-based quota, per-user quota, that can be defined on the appliance."
"This solution could be more secure."
"Technical support needs to be improved because they take a very long time and there is no communication or notification."
"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."
"The traffic filtering could improve. Our firewall traffic is limited. Additionally, it would be helpful if there was a dashboard and reporting feature."
"The solution could improve by having better documentation."
"Symantec Proxy needs to include content management capabilities."
"The tool’s reporting features must be improved."
"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."
"Improvements in log availability would greatly enhance its overall effectiveness."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"There are performance issues with all of the proxies."
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 user-friendly solution with good technical support". Cisco Web Security Appliance is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Zscaler Internet Access, Fortinet FortiProxy, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway and Check Point Web Gateway, whereas Symantec Proxy is most compared with Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, Skyhigh Security, Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway, Zscaler Internet Access and Fortinet FortiGate SWG. See our Cisco Web Security Appliance vs. Symantec Proxy report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.
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