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Cisco Secure Web Appliance vs. ContentProtect

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Secure Web Appliance

    Score8 out of 10
    N/ACisco 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

    ContentProtect

    Score3 out of 10
    N/AContentWatch in Salt Lake City, Utah offers ContentProtect, a web content filtering solution.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Secure Web ApplianceContentProtect
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Secure Web ApplianceContentProtect
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Secure Web ApplianceContentProtect
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Forcepoint SWG
    Score8 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Skyhigh Secure Web Gateway
    Score8 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Secure Web ApplianceContentProtect
    Likelihood to Recommend
    6.8
    (9 ratings)
    3.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.4
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Secure Web ApplianceContentProtect
    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.
    Incentivized
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    ContentWatch
    If you are looking for something relatively inexpensive to lock down specific computers, it would be a useful tool. If the computers themselves aren't too locked down, implementation and management shouldn't be too difficult.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    ContentWatch
    • The client is relatively light weight and doesn't impact other applications.
    • The client isn't easily bypassed, so the user's are kept under restrictions.
    • The configuration is relatively simple and easy to deploy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
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    ContentWatch
    • Our primary policy is a restricted list, so that does as advertised. We had one location that had blocks based on categories (adult, illegal, etc). We continually had issues with sites getting completely blocked due to unrelated content. For example, Yahoo had a beer ad on the page, alcohol was blocked, so Yahoo became blocked for the period of time that ad was displayed. We had this happen multiple times and eventually switched to a different solution at that location.
    • I've had issues with their cloud portal not working. I don't have to edit our configuration often, but on numerous occasions, i was unable to get the configuration page to load after login, sometimes for days. The platform just wasn't stable when I needed it to be.
    • We run many of our remote rooms as frozen (after logoff they reset to the image). This works fine most times, but when content protect needs a configuration change pushed down, someone needs to go 'thaw' the computers, download the updated configuration, and re-'freeze' the computer. It would be nice if that information was just dynamic from the cloud and didn't need to be pulled down.
    • The categorization used for policies is very limited and not flexible or easily customizable.
    • I could never get the usage reporting to work.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    ContentWatch
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Incentivized
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    ContentWatch
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Incentivized
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    ContentWatch
    At the time ContentProtect was selected, Forcepoint (Websense at the time) didn't have an inexpensive or cloud type product. The same can be said with Cisco, at that time. Recently, we have reevaluated and are going to be transitioning to Forcepoint's mobile client and removing ContentProtect from our environment. The cost is actually now less and we will be able to get both more dynamic control and also give us more detailed reporting on the traffic from clients.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    ContentWatch
    • It was a relatively inexpensive and simple solution when we needed one relatively quickly, which is a positive. The inexpensive price has kept it in the environment.
    • The lack of reliable reporting has lead to the need for an alternate monitoring solution in a few cases. Network level reporting was used, which is a separate expense, configuration.
    • Time has been lost waiting on the portal and then troubleshooting support tickets when sites that shouldn't have been blocked have been blocked. It has resulted in changes for locations that needed dynamic category filtering as opposed to a finite list.
    • The blocking of sites based on add traffic or sub-sites (rather than just blocking that content like other solutions) has resulted in downtime during classes when those sites were listed in the lesson plan and had previously worked.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots