I like how easy it is to manage the filtering software from the web portal. It's super straightforward to set up my networking equipment with clear instructions. I like that it automatically blocks threats without me having to do anything. It also lets me remotely manage both of our locations and networks from the same portal with the same policies. Very useful for saving time setting up content filtering.
Sophos Secure Web Gateway is great for almost any business that needs an easily-manageable proxy server. We're a medium-sized enterprise, but the product would work great for much larger companies as well. The only real limitations would be hardware resources, but it isn't that intensive. The administration of it is very intuitive, and it was quick to set up. Where it might not make sense is across multiple sites, unless all internet traffic is funneled through one place. It would be a bit complicated to maintain multiple setups.
Improved scalability: As an organization's needs grow and evolve, the software should be able to scale up and handle an increasing number of users and devices.
More granular controls: The ability to set more detailed and specific policies, such as the ability to block certain types of content for specific groups of users, would give organizations more flexibility and control over their internet usage.
Advanced threat protection: Increasing the software's ability to detect and protect against advanced threats such as zero-day exploits and APTs would provide a more comprehensive security solution.
Administrator Permissions: There's not enough granularity on the administrative side. We ran into an issue where we wanted to restrict junior admins from being able to see traffic per user. But in doing so, it also prevented them from adusting some other settings they had to have access to, like setting exceptions for sites.
CA Database: I occasionally run into issues where the list of certificate authorities in the appliance is not up to date, and I have to manually add a CA. These aren't rare, never-heard-of authorities, either, but they are usually subsidiaries of one of the major ones.
Feedback: Sometimes it takes some good detective skills to track down why a legitimate site isn't working. It's often because of content hosted elsewhere (images, for example), but the reports aren't always clear as to what actually gets blocked. It takes some trial and error sometimes to unblock something that should be okay for our business.
When compared to Kerio Control we found Central Management of filtering to be much easier, it also allowed us to apply filtering to remote devices like laptops and had better logging. We found DNSFilter to be much easier to deploy then Webroot DNS Protection because Webroot required the Anti Virus to be installed before deployment was even possible, and reporting features were very lacking.
Sophos Secure Web Gateway has flexible pricing and deployment options. It offers a huge range of categorization options and they also pull web categorization info from other services
We used to deploy Cisco Umbrella before switching to DNSFilter. I feel like you need an advanced degree to set up and manage Cisco Umbrella. Not the case with DNSFilter. You will save time and money by leveraging a very easy to use product.
We have not had a single instance of malware since installing Web Gateway. We have other ways to prevent infections and attacks, of course, so this is just one tool in the box, but we had a handful before this from people visiting sites they should not have. Web Gateway has prevented those, at least.
There was some pushback initially as users had to deal with some business sites not working (usually due to CA problems). After the initial growing pains, however, we've seen very few other problems.
The appliance updates itself, in the middle of the night, so that reduces some overhead and planned downtime.
