Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Forcepoint SWG
Score 8.3 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
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (formerly Microsoft Cloud App Security) is a multimode cloud access security broker.N/A
Pricing
Forcepoint Secure Web GatewayMicrosoft Defender for Cloud Apps
Editions & Modules
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Forcepoint SWGMicrosoft Defender for Cloud Apps
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Forcepoint Secure Web GatewayMicrosoft Defender for Cloud Apps
Best Alternatives
Forcepoint Secure Web GatewayMicrosoft Defender for Cloud Apps
Small Businesses

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Medium-sized Companies
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.3 out of 10
Avanan
Avanan
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.3 out of 10
Avanan
Avanan
Score 9.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Forcepoint Secure Web GatewayMicrosoft Defender for Cloud Apps
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(76 ratings)
7.0
(11 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(3 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Forcepoint Secure Web GatewayMicrosoft Defender for Cloud Apps
Likelihood to Recommend
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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Microsoft
It is well suited if your team is working with Microsoft tools and Azure services. but if you are using other cloud service providers and don't want to spend efforts in learning integration with third-party software then this is not a great fit for you. overall we are very satisfied with the product. If your corporation with Microsoft tools then I would recommend it.
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Pros
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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Microsoft
  • Detect threats based on user activity logs.
  • Set manual and automatic alert remediation.
  • Implement activity policies.
  • Detect threats based on user activity logs.
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Cons
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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Microsoft
  • Cloud discovery throws away found services not found in the MCAS database of SaaS apps.
  • Many panes of glass required for a fully enabled implementation to administer, configure and utilize 100% of the product.
  • Room for improvement in the reporting realm - not enough records are visible and exportable for high record count policy reports.
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Likelihood to Renew
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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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Usability
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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Microsoft
The interface is pretty simple and easy to use; however, you will need to do a lot of investigative research on your own to get comfortable with it. Originally, many of the Microsoft security tools had their own seperate consoles. Overtime, they have blended into one interface which is the ideal state. In some cases it is clear Microsoft had to pick which console a certain feature or setting was going to reside in and this leads to some confusion. For example, DLP is managed through Defender for Cloud Apps but you will also need to jump into Purview. For things like reverse proxy on your M365 tenant, you will need to go into Azure and setup conditional access rules. Not a big problem and I can understand why the settings are located where they are but for someone just starting out with Defender for Cloud Apps, it will take some time to figure out.
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Support Rating
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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Microsoft
I have not utilized actual support but the Sales and Product teams have been super helpful in moving our implementation forward and showing us the best practices.
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Implementation Rating
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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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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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Microsoft
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps was chosen primarily due to its ability to work perfectly within our mostly M365 environment. Given that this was an added feature of our E5 license, we chose to dive into it and use it due to it's good visibility into user actions and the ability to tie all M365 actions together into one place. We did not see similar visibility with other tools that we vetted
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Return on Investment
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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Microsoft
  • Cloud App Security saves us thousands of dollars finding and rectifying apps security issues
  • Identity Security Posture helps the organization identity stay in shape, saving thousands of dollars on security consultations
  • The cost of suffering a breach cannot be quantified, CAS helps minimize the chances of the attackers succeeding, with excellent historical logging for most operations
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ScreenShots