Honest Review
June 13, 2014

Honest Review

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

7.8.2

Modules Used

  • Web, Email, and DLP

Overall Satisfaction with Websense

We use Websense for Internet traffic filtering, email spam filtering, and DLP. It is used in all offices of our company; from the headquarters in Chicago to a remote office in Hong Kong. It blocks spam and compromised and unproductive websites for our users. If we don't want sensitive data to leave the company, we can also fingerprint data to be used by the DLP endpoint.
  • Websense is an all-inclusive product that handles email, web, and DLP in one interface.
  • Websense has a lot of different options to implement their solutions from software to onsite appliance to the cloud.
  • I think the support is lacking at times or takes a long time to get a return call from a tech; I've been on hold for 5hrs at one time.
  • It would be nice if they explained in more detail the different filtering options they provide either online or by a sales person. Our rep wasn't very knowledgeable and steered us to a 3rd party vendor to help explain the software.
  • It would be nice if there was an all in one appliance that handled email and web.
  • I was hoping there was an endpoint client that doesn't filter web traffic when it's on a public network.
  • Since we don't have a failover solution in place, when our server goes down we lose the ability to filter.
  • The interaction with AD makes Websense easy and simple to create groups for filtering. You don't need to have a lot of rules for many different users.
  • Sometimes the negative factor is more about users reaching blocked sites that are needed for their job and IT having to take the time to research the site and figure out why it is blocked.
  • A positive impact is Websense blocks compromised web sites and sites that may contain malware. We haven't implemented the email appliance yet so I can't comment on it.
We've been using Websense for as long as I've been at Heitman. I had a talk with Mimecast about email filtering but it's hard to find someone that does web, email, and DLP together; it doesn't make sense to have 3 different vendors.
A lot of the rating is that after a few years of implementing Websense, it would be hard to rip it out and reinstall a new solution that includes all modules we use. Also, after finally getting to talk to engineers knowledgeable about the Websense solutions, we were finally able to build out the best possible solution for our company; I didn't feel like this was presented to us in the beginning. I am still a little disappointed we had to talk to a 3rd party vendor for this though.
Is there a failover solution in case the software\appliance fails? What private data gets sent to the cloud for the remote solution filtering? What data gets filtered? We're having issues with https filtering if we don't buy the appliance. What protocols can the software\appliance block? Does it have layer 7 blocking?