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.
"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 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."
"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 product is stable."
"The setup was very easy and straightforward."
"Cisco regularly upgrades features for the customer's security requirements."
"Since working with the tool, we have not found any threats in our organization."
"This solution offers categorization for YouTube and other specific applications from Facebook to WhatsApp, which can be controlled whether it's on mobile or PC."
"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 technical support is good. It is reactive and the documentation is very specific and very useful."
"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."
"There is no lag in service when accessing the internet."
"Whether you are in a hotel somewhere, or in Africa, it does not matter. You will get the Zscaler protection presence anywhere."
"The solution is stable."
"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 was straightforward. The biggest thing for us was to build our own policies. The deployment itself was only a few hours."
"The most valuable features I found in Zscaler Internet Access are the restriction of users for a particular URL, the security feature related to stopping DDoS, and the VPN."
"The solution has reduced cyberattacks."
"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."
"It should have a user-based quota, per-user quota, that can be defined on the appliance."
"The tool needs to provide logs. They need to improve firewall threat defense."
"The support for this solution could be improved. We have experienced issues with their SMARTnet support system."
"Technical support needs to be improved because they take a very long time and there is no communication or notification."
"Sometimes reporting is a little bit short."
"The solution is priced high."
"The licensing model needs to be more flexible."
"There are certain shortcomings related to the product's management capabilities, where improvements are required. The solution needs to provide better management of the category of web pages."
"Sometimes, support isn't available."
"They block Zscaler IPs when the traffic origin is from Zscaler IPs. They've been blocked by certain government organizations so the end users are not able to visit those websites unless we ask them to unblock those IP. This is a bit problematic."
"We'd like for them to include some sort of antivirus tool."
"Zscaler does not provide dedicated IPs to each customer. Hence, they share a pool of IPs provided by Zscaler. There is a chance of blacklisting these IPs. I also do not like the multi-management portal."
"The solution can be improved by advancing some of the newer technologies such as the DLP feature, and adding email security."
"I would like to see the ability to choose a pool of IPs for my company, set up rules based on them, and know that those IPs are not used by other companies."
"Technical support could be better."
"One thing that needs to be improved is their presence in China. I'm not sure if that's a Zscaler thing or if it's a problem with all vendors in this space, but it would be nice to have better coverage in China. This concern is a common one for vendors across the board when dealing with the Chinese market."
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 Skyhigh Security, 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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