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Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway has proven to be a valuable tool for organizations in various departments, ensuring secure browsing of the …
Overview
What is Forcepoint SWG?
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…
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Mac OS Endpoint Installation | Forcepoint Web Security Cloud
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Product Details
- About
- Competitors
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What is Forcepoint SWG?
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).
Forcepoint SWG Features
- Supported: Shadow IT discovery and risk ranking
- Supported: Cloud Application Control and full CASB upgrade
- Supported: Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
- Supported: Cloud Sandbox
Forcepoint SWG Video
Forcepoint Web Security Cloud Features
Forcepoint SWG Competitors
Forcepoint SWG Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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).
Zscaler Internet Access and Netskope Public Cloud Security are common alternatives for Forcepoint SWG.
The most common users of Forcepoint SWG are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Reviews and Ratings
(137)
Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway has proven to be a valuable tool for organizations in various departments, ensuring secure browsing of the internet and addressing a range of security concerns. Users have reported that the application effectively blocks malicious threats while allowing users to browse the internet, providing an effective layer of security. This has helped organizations protect their computers and laptops from potential threats, giving IT departments peace of mind.
Additionally, the software has been instrumental in managing productivity, as it enables different departments to access specific categories of websites and allows managers to review internet activity. HR teams have found value in the user site visit data managed by Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, which has proven helpful in certain cases. Moreover, the ability to quickly generate standard reports from the report catalog has made it easier for organizations to monitor web traffic and measure internet usage.
In public-sector organizations, the software ensures that users and staff are accessing websites aligned with mission goals. Libraries have leveraged its functionality to enable filtering of staff and patron internet usage, meeting requirements for CIPA compliance and qualifying for E-Rate funding.
Customers have also praised Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway's scalability and ease of deployment across multiple locations. The granular delegation of administration via active directory has allowed local departments to implement their own rule sets, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness.
Overall, customers have found this product to be a reliable solution for securing web traffic, preventing threats, managing productivity, and ensuring compliance with organizational policies.
Helpful and Clear Help Articles: Reviewers have praised the clear and helpful help articles provided by Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway. These articles were found to be a valuable resource in understanding and utilizing the software effectively, with some users mentioning that they served as a comprehensive reference point for various tasks and functionalities. The availability of these detailed and informative articles not only contributed to a smoother learning curve but also helped troubleshoot issues independently, reducing the reliance on customer service support.
Time-saving Feature: Users appreciate the time-saving aspect of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway's clear and easily accessible help articles. With these resources readily available, reviewers mentioned being able to find answers to their questions quickly, allowing them to continue working without interruptions. This feature has been particularly useful in minimizing downtime caused by seeking support from customer service or navigating complex user manuals.
Commitment to Customer Satisfaction: The inclusion of clear help articles demonstrates Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway's commitment to customer satisfaction. Reviewers highlighted how this comprehensive resource eliminates unnecessary back-and-forth communication with customer support, as it provides extensive information upfront. By offering detailed guidance through these articles, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway ensures users have access to reliable self-help options, enhancing overall user experience.
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Poor User Interface: Multiple users have expressed frustration with the confusing and non-user-friendly interface of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, making it difficult to navigate and causing difficulties during installation.
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Limited Configuration Options: Some users feel that the software lacks flexibility in defining usage, as the options for configuring policies and exceptions are limited compared to other available options in the market.
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Slow Support Response Times: Users have reported slower support response times compared to other vendors, with issues taking 3 to 5 days to resolve, indicating a need for more efficient and responsive customer support from Forcepoint.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 35)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
July 13, 2022
Protects the organization
Forcepoint Web Security is being used across the whole organization. It helps us solve problems if we need to restrict users from gaining access to the internet sites so that they don't click or browse sites that contain malicious links which would affect the entire organization. We use web security as a hybrid module [that] allows us to block access even when the user is outside of the organization.
- It can be integrated with the DLP module
- Hybrid capabilities
- Can be integrated with Forcepoint AMD for sandboxing
- Helps us to restrict access of unwanted sites
- The hybrid agent should get updated automatically
- Some sites are not proxy friendly, which causes issues
- Time taken for the policy to sync in cloud
December 15, 2021
WebSecurity
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
PIL is using Forcepoint Web Security throughout the whole organization; it addresses surf content filtering and prevents malicious infection.
- Hybrid mode deployment —cloud.
- Able enforce web content filtering at home.
- Implement for both office and remote users.
- In recent hybrid mode deployment, it was discovered that quota time was not able to apply for the remote user.
- The existing office encountered a challenge to deploying Forcepoint Web Security.
- To consider price competitive for global deployment.
November 30, 2021
Decent product with poor support
Used to help prevent users from accessing malicious sites and sites considered counterproductive to work.
- Quota Time.
- Somewhat easy redirection of web traffic.
- Enforcement is inconsistent at times.
- Seems to cause connection timeouts with certain websites.
- Very poor product support.
October 18, 2021
Meets requirements but in our experience does not lend itself well to remote workers
Forcepoint Web Security is used as the secure web gateway across our entire organization. It is used to provide access to the Internet securely, performing SSL inspection of websites, applying real-time web page analysis, and blocking access to dangerous sites. It is also used to enforce organizational policy with regard to what sites can and cannot be accessed, which is important for us as a public-sector organization.
- Forcepoint Web Security met our requirements for a scalable on-premises secure web gateway solution.
- Forcepoint Web Security met our requirements for providing flexible policy assignments for users.
- Our largest challenge with Forcepoint Web Security is the difficulty of performing version upgrades.
October 15, 2021
Forcepoint Web Security: Content security for SMB, which is good enough for even large enterprises
We had too many issues concerning employees' productivity, wasting precious bandwidth and time, and then above all, security concerns like malware entering into our infra from infected websites, phishing attacks, targeted attacks, or just about anything from the cyber threat perspective. We had a squid proxy, but it [could not] match up with the changing times. We started deploying [Forcepoint Web Security] location-wise and [could] cover 100,000 employees in around 1.5 years, including the roaming client. The ACE engine on which [Forcepoint Web Security] runs really helped us in identifying the real threats, and with their hybrid cloud, we were able to test the best of both cloud and on-premises models. We also started the SSL interception on the boxes, which worked fine but brought down the performance of the boxes significantly, and would suggest [doing] SSLi on [a] dedicated solution. The DLP integration also worked well for both network and endpoint. With SSLi, DLP really gave us [an] inside view of what data is getting exfiltrated.
- Full SASE suite for threat and data security
- Robust ACE engine
- DLP integration
- Sandboxing
- Control and visibility for non-web protocol
- Application visibility and CASB
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Earlier we were using the URL filtering from other Firewall vendors for our web security but we were so many challenges with that as it had so many categorization issues. Sports sites were getting blocked in the Movies category and some unwanted URLs were not getting blocked. Our users were facing many problems in their daily tasks. Then we decided to go ahead with Forcepoint Web Security and trust me it was life-changing decision for our infra. First, it got installed in our Data Center on-premises and their categorization is just perfect. After implementing it, we got our web security covered and users didn't face any issues after that.
- Categorization
- Real-time security updates for threat protection
- It has a centralized granular policy controls
- Content Filtering
- Customer Support
- Scalability and throughput
- Documentation availability
- Pricing should be bit lower
December 03, 2020
Excellent threat protection and Productivity monitoring with now in house overheads.
In use by the whole organization, provides extra layer of security also provides content blocking as well as time based access to certain sites to increase productivity.
- Blocks malicious sites.
- Allows restriction complete or by time to sites such as social media.
- Provides keyword content and category blocking of sites.
- Provides extensive reporting for browsing and security alerts.
- Ability to temporarily disable the proxy.
- More flexible client deployment options.
- Web chat support.
November 08, 2020
Forcepoint: Great results easily implemented.
We have Forcepoint web security deployed across the whole organization, worldwide with over 350 active endpoints. It provides a very effective defense against everything malicious the web has to offer. Also, it provides us with critical metrics of what types of sites users are visiting and for how long it also enables us to do content and keyword blocking of sites and time-based locking of common sites, eg. social media, this can be achieved very granularly via Active Directory integration.
- Blocks malicious and compromised websites.
- Provides a raft of customizable detailed metrics.
- Provides very easy to implement content filtering of which there is a lot of default framework ready to go.
- The endpoint software at times can be a little glitchy.
- Would be good to be able to temporarily disable the filter via the client for troubleshooting and admin purposes.
- Would be good to be able to manually set a Geo location for better response.
October 13, 2020
Forcepoint Web Security - The Only Choice
Used across the whole organization as the sole web filtering platform. Allows us the peace of mind in insuring that our users only access approved web categories and that they remain safe when browsing the internet whilst on the corporate network.<br>Forcepoint web filtering policies allow us the flexibility needed to tailor the end users experience according to company policy.<br>
- Web category filtering.
- Governance and compliance.
- Investigative reporting.
- Real time monitoring on the cloud platform would be good to have.
September 30, 2020
New and liking Forcepoint
In our company we have over 3,000 employees and due to current circumstances with Covid-19 most of our employees are working from home or remotely. We use Forcepoint to keep our users secure. We use Forcepoint Web Security across our whole organization. Forcepoint addresses the problem with the blocking of bad/unwanted websites that may have malicious software. I'm actually glad to have Forcepoint installed in our organization. It definitely helps me sleep better at night.
- Bock URL.
- Whitelist websites.
- Protect users from anywhere they are connected.
- Reporting.
- Executive summary.
- Notification to administrator.
January 23, 2020
ForcePoint Web Security: Solid, but not great
We currently use ForcePoint Web Security across the entire organization. It serves the dual role of web filtering and data loss prevention.
- Allows content filtering.
- Guards against potential threats.
- Administrative overhead.
- Time to resolve issues with support.
January 22, 2020
Solid protection without babysitting!
We use Forcepoint Web Security to protect our users and devices while they are on-campus. To extend that protection and simplify management, we are currently in the process of switching to the cloud variant.
- Powerful
- Feature rich
- Complex Management
- Knowledge Base is hard to search
We are a partner company of Forcepoint and are supporting many clients across globe (mainly web, email and DLP).
- Forcepoint Category Database is always updated based on content available on the web rather than another competitor.
- Content scanning engine which provides real time content scanning/categorization is another feature to prevent malicious activity.
- I worked on versions 7.6, 8.2 and 8.5.3. But in latest version Forcepoint enables most features as default which which was optional in older versions.
January 22, 2020
Quick analysis and access list for the small/medium environment.
We use Forcepoint Web Security for web filtering only. We use it across our entire organization. This allows us to quickly set up standardized accesses to different levels of employees. With it's real-time monitoring features Forcepoint Web Security also allows us to easily identify sites that are being blocked and which ones are being allowed. Using that information, I can then evaluate user access and adjust it.
- The real-time monitoring tool allows for quick analysis of users traffic.
- Exceptions, makes allowing one-off accesses easy and allows for notes.
- Command-line functionality seems limited and not very user friendly.
- Online documentation to assist in solving errors quickly isn't easy to find what your looking for or isn't relevant to your problem.
January 17, 2020
May the Force(point) Be With You!
Forcepoint Web Security is being utilized in our environment as a proxy and content filter. We use this to filter website categories across the many groups we have in our organization. This includes protocol, file extension, and keyword filters. The software also gives us some solid alert data when employees encounter risks on websites that are not yet categorized.
- Dynamic threat recognition
- Diverse ways to deploy the product
- Reporting was an issue in the past. New report builder features have improved upon this
- Realtime Monitor works well but can sometimes become non-responsive
January 13, 2020
May the FORCEpoint Be With You!
Forcepoint is used across our organization. We have a large pool of users and Forcepoint is being used to filter web content to ensure security over the network.
- Security from viruses, malware, phishing
- Data loss prevention
- N/A
January 10, 2020
Forcepoint Web Security Review
We use Forcepoint Web Security to monitor web traffic across the majority of the organization. It allows us to view usage trends, block malicious sites, and track user behavior that may or may not be malicious. We use the agent-based version and its security has been extremely beneficial in a number of areas to improve visibility and investigate.
- Blocking unwanted websites
- Presentation of data for reports
- Product support after implementation
- Navigation of primary portal
January 10, 2020
Forcepoint Web Security is Great for Internet Content Filtering!
Forcepoint Web Security is used across our enterprise. We have different policies setup depending on the type of users we have (ie: regulated and unregulated) as well as which BU they belong to. The primary use for us is to block users from going to websites that either the company as a whole or the individual BUs don't deem appropriate.
- Blocking websites based on different BU requirements.
- Putting websites into categories depending on content.
- Forcepoint Web Security can have difficulty in determining the user who is browsing the internet and requires an app be run in order to make that determination. This app can fail and your users can still have issues. Hopefully they can figure out a way to move away from using this app.
- Forcepoint Web Security has to release a new version every time Chrome is updated. Unfortunately, this can mean that you cannot use the latest version of Chrome until Forcepoint is updated; this can take several days. If there is a zero-day vulnerability, this can lead to your company being exposed until the latest version is ready.
This is used across our whole organization. It's primary purpose is to restrict access to sites that are deemed not secure, whether that be determined by us or automatically by the product itself.
- Globally block a site for the whole organization.
- Restrict social media access to specific groups across the organization.
- 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.
December 21, 2019
Forcepoint Web Secruity that can be used by any and all
We are a non-profit that works with the local unemployment agency to assist the public with filing unemployment for their benefits. We also offer services, if they are eligible, for the opportunity for them to get retrained for a different job industry. This program allows us to make sure that users and staff are not going anywhere on the internet that does not align with our mission goals. Currently, this package is used agency-wide between all 6 of our locations and filters about 550 computers.
- This package is one of the few that offers a category, quota time, that allows us to limit certain categories and or websites for staff that would normally be blocked for customers and may not be something that is needed in their day to day job duties. We allow staff one hour a day, broken down into six 10 min increments, to visit sites for shopping, travel arrangement and other areas that are more of a personal need than a business need.
- Forcepoint has a wide selection of categories that can be enabled, quota timed or restricted at a top-level or you can go more granular and drill down to subcategories to allow for only partial access.
- It would be nice if the endpoint would allow admin users to temporarily bypass the restrictions. There are times when a user or group of users may only need to temporarily need access to websites and this feature would be nice instead of the admin having to unblock the website for the specified time period just to have to go back in and restrict it again.
- Some of the reporting options that allowed us to see minute by minute activity on a user would be nice to have back. We had it on the server-based version we were running but when we switched to cloud we have not been able to find it.
December 20, 2019
Use the Forcepoint
Forcepoint Web Security is used by my company to manage employee access to acceptable websites, reduce time spent on frivolous sites, and to manage some of the features that we want to permit within social media sites. It is also a defense-in-depth layer for malicious attacks that call out to the Internet to download scripts. We have also used it in security investigations for threat hunting, to search for unusual website access, as well as finding other outliers, like users hitting a certain site thousands of times over.
- Good dashboard overview
- Targeted policies on users, IPs, subnets
- Sometimes requires a logoff/logon to validate website access
- Occasional service restarts needed as a troubleshooting measure
December 20, 2019
Great for basic URL filtering--accurate, very few false positives. Cautious when a website is questionable, which is good.
Used by the entire company for offsite Internet access.
- Trouble tickets are responded to quickly and by knowledgeable staff
- Requests to re-categorize URLs are responded to quickly.
- Report formatting is bad. You have to choose PDF, which can result in 100+ pages/files, or you can choose Excel, for which the columns don't line up and are hard to filter.
- The different types of filtering (SSL bypass, Authentication bypass, Tunnel, Unfiltered Destination, etc.) are located in too many different places; having to go between our main console and content gateways and find the right categories is tedious.
November 04, 2019
Easy Protection with Forcepoint Web Security
It is used across the organisation. It addresses web security for our users and allows certain departments to be able to access certain categories of websites (e.g. PR has access to Facebook while others don't). It enables Internet usage and bandwidth usage to be measured easily and to keep track to see if any additional bandwidth for staff is needed.
- Check bandwidth usage, e.g "bandwidth vampires"
- Control internet access with policies
- Robust reporting!
- Easy to use interface and very user-friendly "User Administrative" interfaces
- Extremely stable and no sudden issues
- Complete Active Directory integration. Users have to be manually removed if they have been deleted on Active Directory, therefore you can have some users who still exist but have been deleted from Active Directory and consume licenses
- Some configurations are only available via Linux CLI which can be intimidating for Windows or "GUI users" on the appliance configurations
- There are three parts of the system and some people don't know that and that can be confusing, i.e. Web Security, Content Management Gateway and Appliance Management. It can be simplified to be one system or at least have it be more obvious that there are three "parts"
- Some sites struggle to be accessed and some have to be "bypassed" because of some known issues with the sites
August 21, 2019
Web Filtering Made Easy
We have been using Websense for years for web filtering in our offices and some remote locations, and recently upgraded to the Forcepoint Web Security product. It was really easy to implement and deploy and works as advertised. It addressed our concern of people accessing websites they shouldn't be accessing on their workstations and helps prevent malware/viruses at the same time.
- Easy to deploy.
- Support is great.
- Cost-effective solution.
- The GUI is a little confusing and could use some cleaning up.
- Updates are good generally, but there seem to be too many updates for this product.
- When uninstalling, it leaves the system proxy settings enabled, forcing a manual fix.
July 12, 2019
There are better alternatives in the current market
Forcepoint Web Security, Formerly Websense(used to be called WSG), is Forcepoint's solution for Web Proxy.
This is currently our Proxy solution in the company. We have hybrid deployment - meaning we have an agent on all of our endpoints to make sure that even when using outside the network, the web access will be controlled.
When using in the office, we have on-prem local proxies. The policies allow one to control access to categories/protocols. You can allow, block or limit and also control the ability to download files. There is also a built-in AV, which in my opinion doesn't do much. The new feature of Shadow IT can help you detect the usage of Shadow IT in your network.
This is currently our Proxy solution in the company. We have hybrid deployment - meaning we have an agent on all of our endpoints to make sure that even when using outside the network, the web access will be controlled.
When using in the office, we have on-prem local proxies. The policies allow one to control access to categories/protocols. You can allow, block or limit and also control the ability to download files. There is also a built-in AV, which in my opinion doesn't do much. The new feature of Shadow IT can help you detect the usage of Shadow IT in your network.
- The ability to set policies is very simple.
- Logging and monitoring are detailed and easy to run.
- Deploying new proxies are now much more simple with the proxy appliances. In the past, you had to install the OS and software.
- From time to time services stop working, so you need to manually restart them.
- Endpoint agents can cause problems in all kind of situations such as during a flight, hotel wifi, if the user is in China, some ISP's, etc.
- Some settings cannot be changed from the management server and you'll need to do them on each proxy server manually.
- Support in O365 apps does not always work and can cause issues. We had to configure some bypasses in order to solve them.