We compared Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway and Cisco Umbrella across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway provides category-based site blocking, making it easy to block specific types of websites. It also offers well-integrated web security, ensuring a seamless experience for users. Cisco Umbrella is highly regarded for its seamless integration with existing infrastructure, extensive range of security features, and ability to centrally manage security.
Room for Improvement: The Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway could improve in terms of accessibility, website classification, latency, and endpoint management. Cisco Umbrella could enhance security by adding a transferring proxy feature and improving its Linux agent for Linux-based companies.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is seen as complicated and time-consuming, requiring in-house expertise or vendor assistance. Customers have praised Cisco Umbrella's support, describing it as excellent and superior to the customer service of other vendors.
Service and Support: Forcepoint's customer service received mixed reviews, with some customers complaining about response time and issue resolution. Customers have praised Cisco Umbrella's support, describing it as excellent and superior to the customer service of other vendors.
Pricing: Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is considered reasonably priced but on the higher end. Some users mentioned extra expenses for reporting. The cost of Cisco Umbrella differs based on the specific needs and approach of the customer, with flexible pricing and transparent charges. It is seen as both reasonable and competitive by some, but a few perceive it as costly.
ROI: Forcepoint's ROI has been compared to an insurance policy. Users say they gain peace of mind from knowing that their security needs are covered. Cisco Umbrella has proven to be a valuable investment by addressing maintenance concerns, reducing expenses associated with hardware updates, and effectively thwarting threats.
Comparison Results: Users appreciate Cisco Umbrella for its easy setup, extensive security features, and ability to centrally manage security. Forcepoint offers more granular control and integration with other security products. Cisco Umbrella could improve its Linux agent, while Forcepoint could improve its accessibility, website classification, and support.
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"The solution is stable."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"By using Cisco Umbrella, you are sure of inspecting all the traffic. Whenever the user machine is connected to your network, it is inspected. That's the best thing. It means you are sure that nothing is being exported or imported without your choice. That is the best feature."
"The customer experience is very good, and the product improves security posture."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to detect if a URL has malware or is vulnerable."
"It has certainly saved us time. If we go and look at what's rejected on the requests from the hospital itself, it has saved about 5% or 6% time."
"It analyzes the domain security helps us implement the securest policy."
"Its simplicity is most valuable. I can install it and get it up and running, and it can be pervasive across my business within a business day. It is pretty simple and straightforward to install and configure. Its remit is reasonably clearly defined. When you look at solutions like Darktrace and Carbon Black, the mission objective isn't as clearly defined. Cisco Umbrella, Sophos Central, or some of the other solutions have a more standardized approach to antivirus, which includes enhanced response from the machine learning or deep learning perspective."
"Cisco Umbrella is such a solution and can be implemented very fast and easy. All that we must do is redirect the DNS registers in their routers, or the active directory service of the enterprise that are going to use in Umbrella services. If you buy the service now, in two hours you are protected by the service because it's very fast to put in service."
"Cisco's technical support is pretty good. When a solution is available, they will find it. On a scale from one to ten with ten being the best, I'd rate Cisco's technical support at nine."
"The GUI is quite nice."
"I have found the simplicity of the solution valuable. The dashboard and reports are good as well."
"Transparent Mode: Since we have multiple sites and roaming users, it has helped us in deploying the proxy to users without having to push any configurations to end users."
"The solution’s administration is easy."
"Real-time analytics."
"Most valuable features are content filtering and monitoring."
"It's stable and reliable."
"Giving visibility to people's actions in the network, while keeping attackers out: across data centers, offices, branches, and the cloud."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"If I want to see which users access a website, I need an Active Directory registered on Umbrella's cloud."
"It could be more secure. It would be better if they provided a transferring proxy as an add-on and more integration."
"The main issue that we have is with the final steps or the full integration and getting rid of Zscaler. The company still has to fall back to Zscaler when something in Umbrella is not working as expected, such as when we enable SSL inspection. When something is not working 100%, the company is falling back to Zscaler."
"I am unsure if Cisco Umbrella offers a Windows option for running the server."
"Its DNS service does not support IPv6 query."
"It would be useful if they had a malware protection engine running inside their own VM."
"We faced an issue regarding virtual appliances (VAs) during deployment. They could improve the quality and management of the virtual appliances offered right now. You can't see much because it is a Linux machine, and they have customized it. You don't have any route access to the machine, only seeing limited things in it. When we opened a ticket, they didn't know much about VAs themselves. So, that is where it is lacking right now. I know this will improve in the long run."
"It has happened in the past that Cisco Umbrella has denied us access to secure websites."
"In the on-premises version, I don't like the deployment and structuring of the device."
"A feature we wish to see addressed in the next release of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway involves its administration."
"The reporting must be improved."
"I am looking forward to the full integration of the endpoints that they offer for web security and DLP."
"The availability of clusters is limited, and the product is very unstable. The development team is slow as well."
"Database synchronization failures"
"The firewall doesn't have any features because some customers are requesting they will install the firewall without licensing. At this time we cannot go further without licensing. Licensing is a must with Forcepoint Web Security firewalls."
"We are using a V10000 G3 appliance. It is just a proxy. It is just HTTP, FTP, and HTTPS. Now, as our website has developed and we are using rich time-connectivity protocols, the proxy doesn't have the ability to work with these protocols. It would be nice if the UDP feature was there for it to filter UDP traffic. It needs firewall capabilities for UDP filtering. Its upgrades can be quite complex, and they don't always go as per the plan. Its reporting could be a bit more granular."
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Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews while Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is ranked 5th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 47 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway writes "Simple to set up, reliable, and offers great reporting". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, whereas Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Symantec Proxy, Fortinet FortiProxy, Fortinet FortiGate SWG and Cisco Web Security Appliance. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors and best Internet Security vendors.
We monitor all Secure Web Gateways (SWG) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.