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Cisco IronPort - save my time
August 11, 2017

Cisco IronPort - save my time

Valery Mezentsau | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco IronPort Web Security Appliance

We were using Cisco IronPort Web Security Appliance for years in our company. The product was used as a web filter across the whole organization (main and 4 branch offices). The Internet for all branches was routed to the main office over the MPLS tunnel. There was just one Cisco IronPort WSA covering all our web traffic.
  • Appliance working in a transparent mode without any additional software installed on the endpoints. High performance, easy integration with other network systems and servers. Customization of interaction with end users.
  • Possibility to configure filter policies based on subnet information and easy sync with AD users groups, once configured and no need to add or modify any settings within Cisco appliance. Everything manageable with regular AD stuff.
  • Timely updates, upgrades and high clarified support.
  • More flexible reporting.
  • Cloud solution to protect corporate laptops used out of corporate network.
  • More flexible DLP functionality.
  • Security! Security! Security! We are financial company that work with very sensitive information. A lot of unsafe traffic was blocked on the Cisco IronPort WSA over years of using it. We did not earn on it but absolutely sure that we did not lose 'gazillion' of dollars being infected or scammed.
  • Easy to configure and use, no need to teach new personnel how work with this product (hopefully saving time = saving money).
  • Unfortunately the price of license subscription made financial managers push IT dept. to look for something cheaper.
We used several other products (evaluation and production) in the past and are testing some of them now. According to my experience I can say that Cisco IronPort Web Security Appliance has a lot of positive moments. It doesn't mean that other products worse or do not have such functionality but me and my team found some points that realised better in Cisco solution. Here are some of them:
- Easy deployment, configuration and customization;
- Never had any issues with stability and services availability;
- Single solution to create comprehensive web protection solution.
For big enterprise companies it could be too difficult to find a better solution then Cisco WSA because of high performance, possibility to increase number of appliances, load balancing and real enterprise support, but for small and mid size companies that are not (or could be not) requiring 100% of up-time and performance there could be more cheaper (but still good enough) solutions with enough functionality.