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."
"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."
"Great for assisting with connections to networks or apps."
"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 solution provides good web reputation and anti-malware protection."
"The product is stable."
"The deployment process is very simple."
"The tool has good Umbrella DNS security."
"What we liked best about it was the ability to apply policy to either a user ID or an IP-based network."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The solution is scalable."
"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."
"The product is very good, and the URL filtering database is great."
"The most valuable feature is the caching."
"The CPL code is the best feature of the solution."
"Symantec Proxy’s technical support is very good."
"The tool's most valuable features are content-to-content filtration and SCCM protection."
"It is easy to use, and it is stable and scalable. You don't need a large team for deployment and maintenance."
"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."
"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."
"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 solution needs to be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"Sometimes reporting is a little bit short."
"The tool needs to improve cloud-based decryption."
"The solution is not very compatible with other products."
"WSA is lacking firewall features."
"We would like to see a security service head, where we can combine all the security into one solution."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"Support response time and case resolution could be improved."
"The solution could improve by having better documentation."
"Technical support is an area that requires some improvement."
"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."
"The solution is quite complex."
"There are performance issues with all of the proxies."
"Activating the SSL inspection is one of the challenges. We are currently moving to the O365 cloud, and one of the challenges is the performance when all of our users are connected to O365 by a proxy."
Cisco Web Security Appliance is ranked 10th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 29 reviews while Symantec Proxy is ranked 15th 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, McAfee Web Gateway Cloud Service and Cato SASE Cloud Platform. See our Cisco Web Security Appliance vs. Symantec Proxy report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.
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.