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Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise vs Zscaler Internet Access comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (4th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), ZTNA as a Service (12th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th)
Akamai Secure Internet Acc...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
25th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Domain Name System (DNS) Security (8th)
Zscaler Internet Access
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
reviewer2159601 - PeerSpot reviewer
A user-friendly security SaaS provider with an easy setup
Akamai SPS Threat Avert is deployed on-cloud in our organization. Users should choose Akamai SPS Threat Avert based on their needs and the organization's capability. If it's a small-scale business, I would recommend exploring other solutions that will be fairly cheaper than Akamai SPS Threat Avert. However, if it's an enterprise business with a lot of transactions, security concerns, and compliance issues, I would advise them to go ahead with Akamai SPS Threat Avert. Although it's a good solution, Akamai SPS Threat Avert is expensive and best suited for enterprise-level businesses, not mid-level or low-level organizations. Overall, I rate Akamai SPS Threat Avert a nine out of ten.
ShanavasVK - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps maintain a consistent posture of internet security while getting rid of VPN and hovering into zero trust
There could be a better way for the tool to categorize the traffic. For example, the tool does exceptions and everything overall. If I want to give guest access or provide access to guest users or any other internet access and if it does not go through the SSL inspection because, in our company, we can't have the root certificate on a device that we don't manage, which can be called out as an exception or an exclusion, but that doesn't provide a proper reflection of the picture of what is happening in the environment. There are granularities bringing it down. The tool I used or still have is Zscaler Cloud Connector to protect the cloud environment, which can have a bit more user-friendly installation and setup, and it would help a lot. The deployment process of Zscaler Cloud Connector needs to be more user-friendly. Improvements are required in the exception category. For example, suppose I report on a monthly basis what the breaches and traffic violating the SSL inspection area are coming from. In that case, I may find that half of them may be coming through some guest network, meaning the tool doesn't differentiate between the guest or normal networks or the corporate networks. Having options to differentiate different networks would be ideal so that it can show a true picture of things to users, as half of the things in the tool are not in our control and are not of our concern.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"The iboss system is highly reliable. The false positive rates are small compared to some other systems we've experienced through other partner agencies who use competing solutions."
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."
"The best feature of Akamai SPS Threat Avert is that it's very user-friendly compared to other technologies."
"The URL filtering has been the most valuable feature."
"The scanning feature is impressive, because they do not introduce a big latency to the traffic."
"I would recommend Zscaler Internet Access due to its ease of use and deployment, with a user-friendly interface."
"The solution's most valuable features are its reliability and availability, measured by the number of ports it offers."
"The most valuable feature is bandwidth control."
"Zscaler offers a centralized DLP solution for web, endpoint, and email."
"The best thing about Zscaler Internet Access is the website filtering. In the UAE it's quite an important feature because most of the malware comes through the SQL injection and through downloads from websites. Zscaler helps protect against that."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine and a half out of ten...The setup phase was easy."
 

Cons

"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers. This type of encryption is tough for any appliance in a BYOD environment."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"Akamai SPS Threat Avert's pricing could be improved because it's a very expensive enterprise solution."
"Zscaler does not provide dedicated IPs to each customer. Hence, they share a pool of IPs provided by Zscaler. There is a chance of blacklisting these IPs. I also do not like the multi-management portal."
"I would like to see the ability to choose a pool of IPs for my company, set up rules based on them, and know that those IPs are not used by other companies."
"Zscaler Internet Access's troubleshooting is very limited, and their textbook logs need to be more informative."
"Zscaler Internet Access needs to integrate more ISPs. It is good to have more than three ISPs."
"One feature I am missing is the ability to connect automatically to internal monitoring systems."
"They should enhance the audit reporting feature."
"The tool should improve the predefined dictionaries."
"Sometimes, support isn't available."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Provided the features Akamai SPS Threat Avert provides, it is bound to be expensive."
"There are multiple bundles: enterprise, business, and transformation. Transformation includes all the features, but recently I've seen a few more line items that are additional costs. Overall, it's expensive."
"The solution is a little bit expensive. On a scale of one to five, I would rate it as a three."
"We have found the solution to be expensive."
"ZIA follows a subscription model pricing and charges you based on the number of users. I would say its price is good."
"Price-wise, the tool is reasonable compared to the other products in the market but it is not a very low-priced tool. The solution does provide value for money."
"​Be aware that you will need to invest some time and money to adapt your environment for Zscaler (traffic redirection, software deployment, authentication, etc).​"
"The pricing is an issue. It is expensive compared to other firewalls on the market."
"The pricing for Zscaler Internet Access could be made cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
6%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
I have the same complaint about them that I have about other software companies. Sometimes when you call in support, ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We are a PreK-12 public school district, and we use iboss to filter internet content for our students at home and sta...
What do you like most about Akamai SPS Threat Avert?
The best feature of Akamai SPS Threat Avert is that it's very user-friendly compared to other technologies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai SPS Threat Avert?
Provided the features Akamai SPS Threat Avert provides, it is bound to be expensive.
What needs improvement with Akamai SPS Threat Avert?
Akamai SPS Threat Avert's pricing could be improved because it's a very expensive enterprise solution. AWS and a lot ...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zs...
Which is better, Zscaler internet access or Netsckope CASB?
We researched Netskope but ultimately chose Zscaler. Netskope is a cloud access security broker that helps identify ...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Akamai Enterprise Threat Protector, Akamai ETP, Akamai SPS Threat Avert
ZIA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
MCNC, Educational Testing Service
Ulster-Greene ARC, BanRegio, HDFC, Ralcorp Holdings Inc., British American Tobacco, Med America Billing Services Inc., Lanco Group, Aquafil, Telefonica, Swisscom, Brigade Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks and others in Secure Web Gateways (SWG). Updated: December 2024.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.