SonicWall Web Content Filtering Client (CFC) vs. Symantec WebFilter / Intelligence Services

When the user is connecting to the internet and should not access some social media website or malware sites or unauthorized websites which may distract users and affect the productivity so to avoid any problems. It is a very simple setup. It is very easy to deploy, configure, and implement.

Incentivized

In a large environment, this is the perfect system. If you do not have constant changes, it easily becomes a system you drop in place and rarely have to think about. Our units have been rock solid and have never experienced any unexpected downtime, and upgrades are just a couple button clicks to deploy, or roll back. For small offices, with minimal traffic this may be using a sledgehammer to put in a push pin. It will work great, but the devices is likely over engineered for small offices (<50 people). That being said, price-wise it's still a great solution when compared to competing products and being from Symantec, you know it's going to be around and support for the long term.

Incentivized

• In built customized policies
• Control access to unsecure web content
• Application traffic analytics
• IP-based HTTPS content filtering

Incentivized

• Almost real time protection from all ongoing threats with their DLA inspection
• Great visibility into web filtering policies using the dashboards and reports
• No patching or downloads needed, immediate protection is provided as clients are always cloud connected

Incentivized

• Malware scanning
• Content Filtering Client for roaming devices
• Cost

Incentivized

• The admin interface would be better off not using Java
• Setting up SSL properly can be a bit challenging
• Could really use a better source for training, like a library of how-to videos

Incentivized

I really like the system, it's easy to use and mostly intuitive. I would have gone 10/10, but the management interface uses Java, and that seems to always make things a bit harder to start. Once everything is loaded and running, it's great - but it does require me to maintain a compatible version of Java on the machine I use to access the system, I'd be much happier with some kind of HTML5 interface. I also deducted 1 point for the functionality of the refer filter - it works as expected, but if the site isn't coded with the correct refer header, like Microsoft's site - then some page elements get stripped and pages only render about 98% correctly. I know that's not in Symantec's list of responsibilities, but having a filter that doesn't fully understand CDNs is worth the 1 point ding.

Incentivized

I've had exactly 1 problem in 8 years, I contacted support via the customer portal, less than an hour later I found myself in a screen share with a support tech who not only fixed my configuration error, but also took the time to ask about my usage and offered some great tips on changes. It was just one support incident, but I was impressed by the speed of response to a non-critical issue as well as the depth of product knowledge the support engineer had.

Incentivized

Easy to setup and more stable solution. User friendly interface. Scalable and also in terms of cost it seems to be affordable solution with the best in-class protection benefits and other on demand features like dynamically updated
rating architecture and high-performance web caching and
rating architecture

Incentivized

Symantec WebFilter / Intelligence Services solution was a simple 1U appliance that does everything we need, compared to the Forcepoint solution which required a virtual appliance, a database server, a log server, and a management server - the licensing costs alone make the Symantec WebFilter / Intelligence Services solution a clear winner. The Forcepoint solution is really good, it just requires such a big footprint without delivering much beyond what the Symantec WebFilter / Intelligence Services solution does with a single unit.

Incentivized

• Improves Productivity
• Ensures safe environment by allowing genuine traffic
• Continued productivity helps to regain ROI in more figures

Incentivized

• Boosts business productivity with having secured systems
• Globally available threat protection adhering to our own security policies
• User may sometime find it difficult to deal with - so there can be a feature to make it more user friendly in terms of user experience. That is a bit of negative we have seen.

Incentivized