A solid product for Web Security
June 19, 2019
A solid product for Web Security
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Forcepoint Web Security
We used Forcepoint Web Security Cloud for our entire organization. The setup was essentially a proxy server in the cloud (previously we used a Websense/Forcepoint proxy appliance onsite). All web browsing from users' laptops were filtered in the cloud. This added a nice layer to our layers of defense strategy.
- Reporting was excellent. You could run a variety of canned reports or create your own.
- You could easily group users and apply different web filtering policies.
- Was cloud hosted so there was no onsite equipment to maintain. Only end-user software installs.
- Despite having excellent reporting, I could never get a report that tells me what the user either entered or clicked on. It was always tons of data/links that load with every page. So it's very difficult to see what a user did. Not sure any web filtering software can do this.
- The endpoint software install / uninstall was a bit challenging. It gets it's hooks in at the network level, so it drops the connection during installs.
- Didn't filter all traffic on our network. Maybe this was another component they have, but our installation was at the endpoint level. This left plenty of other devices to connect to whatever they wanted unfiltered.
- Had to create exceptions to bypass the proxy server for various applications. This is ok for a few things, but it got to be ridiculous. So many things were bypassing the proxy server that it felt like swiss cheese security.
- As a layer of our defense strategy, I think Forcepoint played a critical part. We didn't have any major malware issues while using it.
- It kept our users out of bad/unwanted sites.
- Gave big brother data to management via reports.
We utilized Forcepoint Web Security for years (15?) with great success. The product worked and kept our users/network safer. We recently switched to Webroot DNS Protection. Here's my thoughts on it versus Forecpoint:
- Webroot's install is extremely easy and light since we use their endpoint security product. Just enable it on their policy and it gets installed.
- I like that Webroot DNS Protection a DNS solution, so it covered our entire network, including guest networks. Everything is filtered by DNS. That wasn't the case with Forcepoint.
- Forcepoint's reporting is light-years better than Webroot.
- My bypass list using Webroot DNS Protection is almost nothing. That wasn't the case with Forcepoint. A lot of apps just didn't like a proxy.
- -Cost - Webroot DNS Protection was much cheaper.