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 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."
"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 deployment process is very simple."
"What we liked best about it was the ability to apply policy to either a user ID or an IP-based network."
"The setup was very easy and straightforward."
"It integrates well with Cisco Email Security Appliance."
"The most valuable feature is that we can use it as a proxy."
"Cisco regularly upgrades features for the customer's security requirements."
"I would recommend this solution to others."
"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."
"Real-time analytics."
"Giving visibility to people's actions in the network, while keeping attackers out: across data centers, offices, branches, and the cloud."
"The antiviral sandboxing."
"The product's user management is an area where my company does not face any challenges."
"This is a highly detailed product with very good key features."
"It's stable and reliable."
"I like the product's scalability and stability."
"The critical role is web URL filtering."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Cisco lacks a GUI-based troubleshooting feature compared to products by other vendors."
"The transparent proxy is quite difficult to enforce on smartphones and tablets."
"The licensing model needs to be more flexible."
"We would like to see a security service head, where we can combine all the security into one solution."
"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."
"The tool needs to improve cloud-based decryption."
"The Sandbox solution should be integrated with the NIST to handle whatever new vulnerabilities or new sites are identified as potential threats."
"To access the root of the product for troubleshooting you must have a data engineer. This is the big issue with Forcepoint. The support community is not good."
"Database synchronization failures"
"The firewall doesn't have any features because some customers are requesting they will install the firewall without licensing. At this time we cannot go further without licensing. Licensing is a must with Forcepoint Web Security firewalls."
"It takes 20 to 30 minutes for policy replication."
"The product needs to have more mobility."
"I'd like to see the solution improve the banded optimization to offer more bandwidth control, similar to what is on offer with Blue Coat."
"The automation lifecycle, integration, and export functionality could all be improved."
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Cisco Web Security Appliance is ranked 10th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 29 reviews while Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is ranked 6th 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.
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We monitor all Secure Web Gateways (SWG) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.