Cisco Secure Web Appliance vs. Sophos Web Content Filtering

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

Before Sophos, I would receive scammers regarding tradeshow lists. People wanted me to pay for lists, but these people weren't actually from the tradeshows. I can now block those, and have received much fewer of those scams. I am also able to open emails within quarantine to view them before deleting, releasing, allowing, or blocking. I use this to my advantage, and am able to make better decisions on what to do with the emails.

Incentivized

• 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

• Sophos does an excellent job of category-based content filtering. It's easy to configure and flexible for many environments with the ability to tighten or loosen restrictions as requirements determing.
• Sophos' built-in capabilites can force safe search rules to protect against content work-arounds like Image search and search engines in general.
• The Sophos XTreme architecture also helps improve the overall performance of the Web Content Filtering solution. It is very quick and very transparent when in use on the network.

Incentivized

• 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

• It only allows UTF-8 encoded characters.
• It does not support metadata.
• It does not support comments in the custom filter file.

Incentivized

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

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

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

Sophos has been a much easier product to configure and eventually manage, with preset rules and policies to start off right out of the box, saving administrators time from adding every category and or site. However you can add/import all know good company sites (internal url's) as well as local sites for a safer settings. (know sites)

Incentivized

• 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

• Super positive impact, the Sandstorming Add On, it increases protection at it's maximum level (for new or existent/variant threats).
• Customers often have the need of a system capable of report everything that the network is being handed, Sophos Web Content Filtering achieves this.
• The ROI is very fast since top management quickly see results on filtering and reporting of what is really going on within their networks.

Incentivized