Sophos Web Content Filtering vs. Zscaler Internet Access

Before Sophos, I would receive scammers regarding tradeshow lists. People wanted me to pay for lists, but these people weren't actually from the tradeshows. I can now block those, and have received much fewer of those scams. I am also able to open emails within quarantine to view them before deleting, releasing, allowing, or blocking. I use this to my advantage, and am able to make better decisions on what to do with the emails.

Incentivized

It's best suited for a distributed remote workforce, securing internet access for users from anywhere. Suitable for highly regulated industries, such as banking and Healthcare. Not a good fit for an organisation where most of its legacy is in an on-premises environment. Bandwidth-intensive industries like media/entertainment firms.

Incentivized

• Sophos does an excellent job of category-based content filtering. It's easy to configure and flexible for many environments with the ability to tighten or loosen restrictions as requirements determing.
• Sophos' built-in capabilites can force safe search rules to protect against content work-arounds like Image search and search engines in general.
• The Sophos XTreme architecture also helps improve the overall performance of the Web Content Filtering solution. It is very quick and very transparent when in use on the network.

Incentivized

• Single Pane of Glass Management - Everything is very easy to access and monitor the entire environment from an internet security perspective.
• Install Flexibility - We can and do install Zscaler Internet Access on both our client devices as well as our SD-WAN appliances and servers. This allows us to control internet security even on devices without an agent in our networks.

Incentivized

• It only allows UTF-8 encoded characters.
• It does not support metadata.
• It does not support comments in the custom filter file.

Incentivized

• The logs feel kind of lack luster
• When issues are arising with SSL Inspection, logs show everything working despite end user experience
• Could use some kind of global find functionality or something that would allow you to search the entire configuration for matching URLs and the like

Incentivized

While Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) delivers critical value in cloud security and RBI compliance, I rate renewal likelihood 7/10 due to evolving needs versus platform limitations. Below is my rationale:

Key Gaps:

1. Advanced Threat Costs:

ZIA’s add-ons (e.g., Advanced DLP, Sandboxing) incur 35%+ cost premiums – straining budgets as transaction volumes (UPI/iMobile) grow 50% YoY.

2. API Banking Scalability:

ZIA’s API rate limits throttle real-time policy sync during UPI peaks (10K+ TPS), forcing workarounds for finacle integrations.

3. RBI Future-Proofing:

Limited native support for upcoming digital rupee (CBDC) security rules requires custom development, increasing compliance overhead.

Incentivized

The application is easy to install and configure on all Windows devices. To troubleshoot any internet issue, we can easily collect all the relevant logs from Zscaler and check the exact issue. The only problem is with the uninstall, as a dedicated crew needs to provide the password.

Incentivized

There are often performance issues reported

Incentivized

Zscaler's ZIA support is quick and knowledgable. They respond within 1-2 hours of you submitting your ticket. They are very thorough and are typically ready to jump on a live troubleshooting session. Our ZIA platform and how we use is it unique so at times tickets can be open for weeks but we alway get quality support compared to other unrelated product support in our enterprise

Incentivized

Sophos has been a much easier product to configure and eventually manage, with preset rules and policies to start off right out of the box, saving administrators time from adding every category and or site. However you can add/import all know good company sites (internal url's) as well as local sites for a safer settings. (know sites)

Incentivized

Zscaler Intenet Access outperformed the competition due to its lightning-fast policy delivery and cross-compatibility. It is easy to track employee usage and block unnecessary websites, reducing company internet usage. Zscalar installed on every system increases cloud-based software bandwidth, decreasing user turnaround time and increasing efficiency.

Incentivized

• Super positive impact, the Sandstorming Add On, it increases protection at it's maximum level (for new or existent/variant threats).
• Customers often have the need of a system capable of report everything that the network is being handed, Sophos Web Content Filtering achieves this.
• The ROI is very fast since top management quickly see results on filtering and reporting of what is really going on within their networks.

Incentivized

• Has allowed us to remove other products that were suboptimal
• Saved us money overall by stacking it with other Zscaler products
• Created a more secure work environment for our users through intelligent internet policies that are not needlessly restrictive while still maintaining security best practices

Incentivized