Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Zscaler Internet Access is an internet tunnel that pairs with the network adapter to secure traffic between servers and workstations. It can refresh policies automatically and log intrusions but does not broadcast intrusions. Cloud-based Zscaler Internet Access is easy to deploy and scale, with no hardware or software needed. In a hybrid model, Zscaler Internet Access performs some security functions on-premises and others in the cloud, allowing organizations to keep infrastructure. There is a slight learning curve from VPN and appliance architecture to this paradigm.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Zscaler completely moved away from the traditional firewall setup to a hosted firewall solution. We don't have to worry about the hardware failing or maintaining it as part of our service plan compared to our on-premise firewall. Zscaler has a lot of data centres across the world where they are maintaining their solutions so mobile consultants will always be close to one of their data centres. Rolling out Zscaler solutions to our end customers' computers is actually pretty easy and hassle-free. As part of onboarding of new employees we can set up the Zscaler solution and push it to our end users' machines and get them connected to the cloud solutions. Zscaler does proper market research on the latest emerging threats and they keep their firewall patched and updated to the latest versions so the security team does not have to worry about keeping the firewall updated. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Chat or email support is not available. Only option is to either call them or raise a ticket by logging into their website. Pricing is not transparent and quote based. Access to websites is a little too slow with Zscaler monitoring on. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review Zscaler is a mandatory solution required by almost every large organization with a workforce working remotely or using cloud-based apps. Its deployment is relatively easy and it keeps on working in the background without actively bothering the user. Apart from a few weird messages which a user is unable to comprehend, Zscaler is able to provide fast and safe access to the internet and other external applications.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review I cannot give a fair rating for this as I have not had to contact Zscaler support. There was one time we had to contact them because we needed to check if they were having issues on their end. Our ISP was actually the problem but support seemed very friendly.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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
Read full review Zscaler Intenet Access proved to be superior and the difference for us was the speed of policy delivery since your policy is applied in a web console and is effective in a matter of seconds. Another point to congratulate the solution is its compatibility with different platforms (macOS, Linux, Windows, Android, and iOS).
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review ROI is there and it is safeguarding the data and user access to net. Being a cloud based can be scaled up when required. Third parties can be allowed based on the company IT policies (Clients or Vendors etc.) for business perspective. Read full review ScreenShots