Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway vs. Microsoft Defender XDR

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Forcepoint SWG
Score 8.1 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 XDR
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft 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 Secure Web GatewayMicrosoft 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 Secure Web GatewayMicrosoft Defender XDR
Best Alternatives
Forcepoint Secure Web GatewayMicrosoft Defender XDR
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Bitdefender GravityZone
Bitdefender GravityZone
Score 8.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.2 out of 10
CrowdStrike Falcon
CrowdStrike Falcon
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.2 out of 10
CrowdStrike Falcon
CrowdStrike Falcon
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Forcepoint Secure Web GatewayMicrosoft Defender XDR
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(76 ratings)
8.6
(82 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(3 ratings)
7.7
(4 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(3 ratings)
9.0
(2 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)
User Testimonials
Forcepoint Secure Web GatewayMicrosoft 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.
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Microsoft
Microsoft Defender XDR is well suited for organizations already invested in the Microsoft Ecosystem - including Microsoft 365, Azure Ad and INTune. For example, in scenarios where you need to correlament the fishing attacks with the closing point behavior and identity agreement, Microsoft Defender XDR does a big task of sewing the timeline of a full attack simultaneously and even automatically removing.
This hybrid function is also ideal for the environment, where safety visibility in distance tools, cloud apps and email is important. Microsoft Defender XDR provides centralized insight and response in all these domains without the requirement of many devices.
However, it is less suitable in the atmosphere with diverse or non-microsoft infrastructure, such as an organization running a mixture of Linux server, Google work area or third-party EDR tools. Cross-platform support is still developing, and integration of the microsoft ecosystem often requires additional configurations or third-party connectors. For companies of that situation, Microsoft Defender XDR cannot give its full value from the XDR box.
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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
  • The software uses advanced AI and machine learning algorithms to monitor activities and detect any anomalies immediately, protecting our financial data.
  • Automated responses to known threats reduce the impact of possible incidents and improve our security posture.
  • Microsoft 365 Defender easily combines with other Microsoft 365 services and external security solutions, providing a complete and unified security solution.
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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.
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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.
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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
Overall the UI is modern and OK to use. Attack story is quite nice visual of incident. Advanced hunting supports autocomplete so that helps doing KQL-queries efficiently. The product is quite comprehensive and one can get lost in the vast UI. Learning curve is quite high and navigation is complex. As product also continues to evolve the UI might change somewhat.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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