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Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway vs. Microsoft Defender XDR

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Forcepoint SWG

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AThe 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 XDR

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft 365 Defender combines SIEM and XDR capabilities for Microsoft 365 environments, encompassing threat detection, post-breach detection, automated investigation, and response for endpoints. Additionally, it protects cloud apps, emails and documents, and employee identities.N/A
    Pricing
    Forcepoint SWGMicrosoft Defender XDR
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Forcepoint SWGMicrosoft Defender XDR
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    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 SWGMicrosoft Defender XDR
    Considered Both Products
    Forcepoint
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    70%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    99%
    Would buy again
    85 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    79 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    10 Answers
    99%
    Happy with the feature set
    85 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    86%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    58 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    78%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    66 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Forcepoint SWGMicrosoft Defender XDR
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
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    Score9.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    UniFi Cloud Gateways
    Score8.3 out of 10
    InsightIDR
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Skyhigh Secure Web Gateway
    Score8 out of 10
    Kaspersky EDR Optimum
    Score9.2 out of 10
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    User Ratings
    Forcepoint SWGMicrosoft Defender XDR
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (76 ratings)
    8.7
    (86 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    9.7
    (5 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    7.6
    (7 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Forcepoint SWGMicrosoft Defender XDR
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    In our experience, Microsoft Defender XDR has been fantastic for phishing and account compromise scenarios, Endpoint Security, Automated threat detection and response and just generally giving a great overview through their dashboard, meaning the IT team doesn't need to switch between multiple tools to understand the full scope of an incident. In mostly remote organization like ours, it really helps to keep on top of any potential threats that we don't have the opportunity to spot in person. While it works great for us in a mostly Microsoft 365 environment, I can see how it would be less appropriate in an organization that is less integrated in the Microsoft ecosystem or uses a large number of third party tools.
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • One of the greatest strength of Microsoft Defender XDR has the ability to convey alert and signal in the closing point, email, identity and cloud applications in an event. Instead of obtaining isolated alert from each tool, Microsoft Defender XDR consolidates them in a full attack story, which helps the security teams to understand the scope and impact of a danger very fast.
    • If a user clicks on the fishing link, Microsoft Defender XDR automatically can associate malicious emails with lateral movement efforts, suspected sine-in, and endpoint activity-to protect against hours of manual probes.
    • The defender uses AI-powered automation for investigating and treatment of Microsoft Defender XDR events. It can separate the infected closing points, can cancel the compromised tokens, or remove malicious email - without the need for human intervention.
    • When malware is detected on a device, the defender can separate the device, kill malicious processes, and automatically flag the same files throughout the environment, which can spread.
    • Because it is integrated deeply with Microsoft 365 defender, Entra ID (Azure Ad), Intune, and PurView, the defender provides native safety in the XDR Microsoft Stack. It simplifies deployment and maintenance, offering deep visibility in user activity and cloud data.
    Incentivized
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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
    • Enhanced False Positive Mitigation:
    • Improved algorithms to minimize false positives in threat detection, reducing the impact on security teams and preventing unnecessary investigations into non-threatening incidents.
    • Advanced User-Friendly Interface:
    • Streamlined and intuitive user interface for the centralized dashboard, making it more accessible for security professionals with varying levels of expertise.
    • Greater Third-Party Integration:
    • Increased compatibility and integration capabilities with a broader range of third-party security tools
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    We are pleased with the product and have no plans to look for alternatives. We are deeply invested in Microsoft ecosystem and Defender XDR provides seamless integration to other Microsoft products. For academic institution pricing is also quite affordable. In the contrary, we hope to extend the scope of the product for our entire environment.
    Incentivized
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    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
    Once configured, it's very usable for any security team or IT Analyst. It'll give you everything you need to know in a single consolidated dashboard, and while you can certainly dive deeper with a very feature rich platform, generally it's very usable. I gave it an 8 as some of the advanced features do have a very strong learning curve, while routine tasks are quite straightforward, some of the features such as threat hunting, custom detections and automated response workflows do have a bit of a learning curve and will require some research and experience to get to grips with
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    Reliability and Availability
    Forcepoint
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    In our experience there has been very little downtime for Microsot Defender XDR. For us there hasn’t been any single incident where we needed the product and it was not available.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Forcepoint
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Most of the time the product is as responsive as you might expect from cloud product. Occasionly the product is little slugish, this has been at most a slight irritation. Reports generate quickly ennough for our needs. We also not have found that Defender XDR slows down systems that it is integrated with
    Incentivized
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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
    Their support throughout our onboarding of the product was fabulous. They not only took the time to carefully explain to teams not as well equipped with the lingo but explained to the tech team how to teach the other teams to be successful. They never once seemed impatient or annoyed with basic questions and didn’t pretend to know something when they needed to research an answer
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    In-Person Training
    Forcepoint
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Good and hard to find someonme who can explain everything for you beside Microsoft they provide you everything you need.
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    Online Training
    Forcepoint
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Provides a good training for the Microsoft 365 Defender and has a good learning paths to learn and take the exams and get your Certifications.
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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
    seemless and almost transparent. can be deployed by script if needed so every endpoint on our system get's it. if you have intune it gets dumped on the the endpoint by policy so nothing escapes it
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    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
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    Our product in that area, for instance as a security platform and for us it is for the moment really bad point. We started to move in that direction that there is that disconnect from the client management. So if there is some action that needs to be executed detected by security team, there is not an easy way to make that available to the team that is responsible for managing the identities as users, as the devices
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Forcepoint
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Azure cloud provides techical power to scale the product for whole organization. From organizational point of view scaling Defender XDR for various IT teams needs good collaboration and clear norms that all teams must agree to and follow.
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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
    • Security incident cannot be measured, once you down you down, hence the security applications like this is just a must have
    • The subscription model will be cheaper and can be a good point if you want to free resources within the IT Team
    • The SaaS model, if measured correctly can and will reduce long term cost in Infrastructure and Man Power
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    ScreenShots

    Microsoft Defender XDR Screenshots

    Screenshot of AH Advanced ModeScreenshot of AH Guided modeScreenshot of CD exampleScreenshot of CD Supported actions