Cisco Secure Web Appliance vs. Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Secure Web Appliance (formerly Cisco Web Security Appliance [WSA]), powered by Cisco Talos, protects by automatically blocking risky sites and testing unknown sites before allowing users to link to them, helping with compliance. It is available models S690, S390, and S190.N/A
Forcepoint SWG
Score 6.2 out of 10
N/A
The Forcepoint ONE Secure Web Gateway (SWG) is one of the three foundational gateways of the Forcepoint ONE all-in-one cloud platform. Forcepoint ONE SWG monitors and controlsany interaction with any website, including blocking access to websites based on category and risk score, blocking download of malware, blocking upload of sensitive data to personal filesharing accounts, detecting shadow IT, and optionally providingRemote Browser Isolation (RBI) with Content Disarm andReconstruction (CDR).N/A
Pricing
Cisco Secure Web ApplianceForcepoint Secure Web Gateway
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Secure Web ApplianceForcepoint SWG
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Secure Web ApplianceForcepoint Secure Web Gateway
Considered Both Products
Cisco Secure Web Appliance

No answer on this topic

Forcepoint SWG
Chose Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway
We have used many content filter devices in the past. None of them seemed to cover (at least at the time) the sheer amount of features that Forcepoint has for us. The cost of Forcepoint seems to be (again, at this time) under the cost of all the competitors we have installed or …
Chose Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway
When we had Barracuda it was not capable of SSL inspection. IronPort has some more granular aspects that I liked. What really sold me on Forcepoint was the single pane of glass for web, email and DLP.
Chose Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway
Forcepoint Content Gateway was surperb in every way over Cisco Web Security Appliance and provided better protection with better customization.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Cisco Secure Web ApplianceForcepoint Secure Web Gateway
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Check Point Quantum Security Gateway
Check Point Quantum Security Gateway
Score 9.1 out of 10
Check Point Quantum Security Gateway
Check Point Quantum Security Gateway
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Skyhigh Secure Web Gateway
Skyhigh Secure Web Gateway
Score 6.7 out of 10
Skyhigh Secure Web Gateway
Skyhigh Secure Web Gateway
Score 6.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Secure Web ApplianceForcepoint Secure Web Gateway
Likelihood to Recommend
6.6
(9 ratings)
7.6
(75 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
6.4
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Secure Web ApplianceForcepoint Secure Web Gateway
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
We have both scenarios where we can describe that. For example, in the HQ, where we have about 3,000 users, Cisco IronPort Web Security Appliance is the ideal solution, because we can consolidate all the Internet access, policies, rules, etc. in the same box. However, if you have small offices with a few users, it's hard to justify one big and expensive box that could cost more than the whole office infrastructure.
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Forcepoint
Over the years, [in our experience], the maintenance of the Forcepoint Web Security solution proved to be more cumbersome and troublesome with each version upgrade. In addition, it did not transition well to support the large increase of remote workers. We also experienced weird incompatibilities with the client. We have since replaced this solution with Zscaler Internet Access, a cloud-based secure web gateway solution with a client that behaves as expected, is more flexible, and requires significantly less administration.
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Pros
Cisco
  • SMA gave us central control over multiple servers, simplifying management.
  • Performance of the Appliance VM exceeded that of our old physical appliance-based solution.
  • Convenient licensing for virtualized environments that allows easy scaling.
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Forcepoint
  • It prevents users from accessing websites that may have recently been created for the purpose of distributing malware.
  • It prevents users from accidentally or intentionally accessing websites that are considered inappropriate for a work environment.
  • It allows us to create different policies for different teams in our organization.
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Cons
Cisco
  • I think that the interface could need updates to adapt it to a much more current system, achieve quick access to necessary tools and adapt the platform to a much more customizable and comfortable system to work with.
  • It is undoubtedly a platform that is worth having, however, the license costs could be better adjusted to small businesses so that it can be accessed more easily.
  • It could be a bit complex to use, the use of codes is quite extensive, it could be adjusted to something much more practical but just as efficient.
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Forcepoint
  • The user access logs contain a lot of useless information. I understand this is very hard to tackle as I've seen this across any product that logs web activity.
  • I would like to see more customization options of website block pages.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Forcepoint
It is very stable, the organisation has "locked in" the product and has no plans to change or try another product. We have already renewed our 2019-2020 licenses. It is user friendly and people catch on easily when they first use it. The only downtime is when we install Microsoft updates! It has excellent reporting which help in determining how the organisation's Internet is used and also during both internal and external IT audits.
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Usability
Cisco
Because it's one of those products you almost don't realize it exists from the end user. From the administrator perspective, you can do everything on its web interface and it's very intuitive to manage, once you know the concepts behind identities, acls, etc. Also, once you build the control structure, I mean, you link 'local' groups with your own Active Directory groups, as we did here, you don't need to be managing those things on the appliance itself.
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Forcepoint
Despite the intimidating Linux CLI when you use the appliance for troubleshooting, the web security usability compensates as most of the Administration of the system is done there. It is GUI based and has an easy to use UI where one can navigate around rather easily like getting reports, checking alerts, looking the whole setup under deployment to check if all services are running in one place though there are other parts to the system.
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Support Rating
Cisco
Our experience with Cisco's support was terrible. Other than the fact that they don't respond to service-related emails with urgency, they also keep on changing the policies that affected us. Recently, they came up with a new look for the same software, which was insanely slow. Renewal of keys for the old interface took months. Overall, the support was not very friendly from the users' point of view.
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Forcepoint
The is a quick first response to acknowledge your issue and the Engineers never take more than two hours to fix an issue and we hardly get issues looking at the fact that the system is pretty stable. There is also a robust Knowledge Base in the site for known problems.
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Implementation Rating
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Forcepoint
Research known issues with upgrading from the Support Knowledge base, this will enable you avoid road blocks along the way and reduce your dependence on Forcepoint Support
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Alternatives Considered
Cisco
At home I have a McAfee service that does similar tasks and helps manage the users of my internet. McAfee seems more user friendly and easier to set exceptions.
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Forcepoint
To be honest, once using Forcepoint for our Web Security, I have not wanted to look anywhere else. The dashboard gives me quick insight of threats, productivity, and bandwidth usage. Again, this is a layer in my security and it fills many holes. I feel safe and I do like I can just let it do its thing
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Security! Security! Security! We are financial company that work with very sensitive information. A lot of unsafe traffic was blocked on the Cisco IronPort WSA over years of using it. We did not earn on it but absolutely sure that we did not lose 'gazillion' of dollars being infected or scammed.
  • Easy to configure and use, no need to teach new personnel how work with this product (hopefully saving time = saving money).
  • Unfortunately the price of license subscription made financial managers push IT dept. to look for something cheaper.
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Forcepoint
  • Being a non-profit the cost is a bit higher than some competitors so our ROI takes a bit longer to recoup. I would really like to see better non-profit pricing.
  • The ease of doing a report on someone cuts down on the IT man-hours to do website tracking for managers as we can do it from a central point whereas in the past (prior to Forcepoint/Websense) we would have to ghost their machine to look for activity as well as their local servers.
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