Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention comparison

Forcepoint and McAfee are both solutions in the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) category. Forcepoint is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.1, while McAfee is ranked #24 with an average rating of 8.0. Additionally, 90% of Forcepoint users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 76% of McAfee users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention and Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention are competitive in the data loss prevention market. Forcepoint holds a slight advantage with a reputation for strong endpoint security and innovative features.

Features: McAfee Total Protection is known for its user-friendly administration and seamless integration with other McAfee solutions, supporting desktop virtualization and providing customizable DLP features. Forcepoint distinguishes itself with easy setup, advanced optical character recognition, and unique fingerprinting technology that facilitates effortless policy implementation.

Room for Improvement: McAfee is criticized for high resource usage, expensive licenses, and average customer support, with needed improvements in GUI and memory-based threat detection. Forcepoint, despite being more cost-effective, struggles with complex deployment and support responsiveness, with users seeking enhanced integration capabilities and better AI automation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: McAfee favors on-premises deployment, while Forcepoint provides flexible cloud options including hybrid solutions. McAfee's support is average, often requiring partner assistance, whereas Forcepoint has geographic support limitations, with both vendors facing deployment complexity.

Pricing and ROI: McAfee is perceived as expensive with complex licensing, although it offers a decent ROI. Forcepoint, while also costly, is praised for its transparency and competitive pricing, particularly with OEM integrations, offering a strong feature set for the price.

To learn more, read our detailed Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs. McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs. McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

April 2025

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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

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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Atul-Vats

Consultant at Tata Consultancy

Provides excellent endpoint security in a feature-rich, lightweight, handy, and easy-to-deploy tool

The deployment is straightforward once you understand the solution's architecture. A proper understanding of the different components of Forcepoint DLP is essential, as deploying an enterprise-level DLP could be confusing because the policy server is separate from the main engine sitting on the Triton server. Understanding the components of the enterprise DLP suite is the most critical element for a successful deployment. Still, I rate the solution seven out of ten in terms of ease of setup. The scale of the particular DLP deployment is also a factor; we had cases where the customer only required endpoint or network DLP, a relatively quick job that two staff can complete. A complete DLP suite, including email, web, and network DLP, plus data classification and labelling, would require four associates. Our most recent deployment was a complete enterprise DLP, which required four staff. The entire deployment took almost three months, including a one-month planning phase. During the planning phase, we prepared the documentation, designed the HLDs and LLDs, and high and low-level diagrams. Following acceptance from the customer, we started the implementation, which took roughly 50 to 60 days. The level of maintenance required depends on how many events per hour a particular tool is putting out. If a customer wants to check analytics or identify an email or data leak, that situation doesn't require much policy fine-tuning, and a single staff member could deal with it. The customer can also decide what coverage they want, which may be 24/7, an admin to monitor events only, or Monday-to-Friday support. The coverage determines how many engineers will be required. Another factor in maintenance requirements is the volume of events, as an extensive client could have more than 10,000 servers with many sensitive data in motion. The customer had 24,000 users for our last deployment, and there wasn't a dedicated team for the DLP. The engineering team took care of the network, endpoint, and data security together. There were ten of us on the team, with two engineers per shift for 24/7 coverage.

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VivekGupta7

DGM at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Versatile with good patching and a straightforward setup

There is some fine-tuning needed, even once you define something. We need to do a lot of configuration. It would be easier if they made the configuration simpler, especially in the beginning. They need to give the user more choices and provide more guidance to help avoid problems later on. We'd like some more built-in predictive analytics so we can be prepared for what might happen in the future. We did have some bandwidth issues during setup. If your update fails, you may have stability issues. We find it difficult to reach higher levels of support when we face larger issues.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."

"The tool is user-friendly."

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

More Cloudflare pros

"The solution’s content classification is the best."

"The most useful features of Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention are the transfer through Bluetooth can be blocked and the transfer to the cloud-based storage can be blocked. The features are wonderful."

"The most valuable feature of Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention is the OCR."

"With OCR and Risk Analysis, we are able to determine if anything sensitive is been shared. OCR helps us to safeguard those things and with risk ranking, we can determine which user is trying to violate policies multiple times even though they have been blocked to him or her."

"Stable and scalable solution for data protection. It offers good technical support, and has no major installation issues."

"Forcepoint enables you to clarify aspects of your data, including which data to protect for how long, what priority to assign to the data and the destinations. It's a comprehensive, dedicated solution. The interface is user-friendly and easy to manage. No other product will give you the same visibility and data classification functions as this tool."

"Scalability-wise, I rate this solution a nine out of ten."

"The most valuable feature is the endpoint DLP. It's specific to copying to the USB or copying to the internal storage in our office."

More Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention pros

"The ability to block all USBs from the McAfee portal has been great."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to control access to USB drives and other external devices."

"Enables customization of file types and for different scenarios."

"I am impressed with the tool's firewalls and web protection."

"What I like about McAfee Total Protection is that it's working. I also like that it doesn't require any specific knowledge to set up."

"The stability of the solution can be good. However, the configuration takes a long time for it to be done properly."

"You can manage your compliance in line with legislation such as GDPR and POPIA."

"McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention is a very stable product."

More McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention pros

Cons

"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."

"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."

"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

"The solution could be more user-friendly."

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."

"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."

More Cloudflare cons

"I can't push a report by a certain organizational entity or unit without a lot of work. The reporting could be better."

"The initial setup is a bit complex. You will need help from the peer support team in the configuration."

"We want to be able to do data classification better in the product and reduce false positives, especially on data loss prevention."

"One area that could be improved is the support. The current support is not very good. Because they don't come on time when a customer really needs it, they take a lot of time to troubleshoot anything."

"When you automatically try to upgrade the agent it causes problems."

"I would like to see improvement in the reporting. We can only get one week's worth of data; we can't get more than that. Also, the reporting console is very slow, making it very frustrating to use."

"The post-optical character recognization feature could be improved because it only really works on documents with some length (at least three paragraphs)."

"The tool needs to integrate data classification."

More Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention cons

"The solution takes up too much CPU and memory."

"The support from McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention is good. However, if they provided 24 hours a day seven days a week support that would be a helpful addition."

"Our client is not very happy with the lack of support, the skills, and the effectiveness of the tool."

"McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention could improve by having artificial intelligence."

"In my experience, it's not really user-friendly for me, in terms of how I navigate with the ePolicy Orchestrator. They need to upgrade their management console."

"The product uses a lot of resources and because of this it is not always a good solution for every situation."

"The initial setup is very complex."

"The UI needs to be simplified."

More McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"The price is reasonable."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"They are flexible regarding the pricing and they have a good model for an OEM data classification tool... Forcepoint has been one of the most competitively priced products over the last few years."

"The pricing for Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention is more expensive than Symantec, but it's negotiable. It depends on how well you negotiate. The solution is worth the money, though, based on the services and facilities it provides to my company."

"The pricing is reasonable. That's why we went with Forcepoint. They were pretty competitive."

"Forcepoint has been very cost-effective because they gave us a good deal while procuring the DLP solution."

"It's not the cheapest solution but it's not the most expensive. It's a good price for a good product."

"The licensing is on an annual basis."

"Forcepoint DLP is a bit expensive."

"They have to look at a different pricing structure for small to medium-sized enterprises because the cost is too high."

More Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention pricing and cost advice

"The price of the solution could improve, it is expensive. We typically sell one and three-year licenses."

"The price of McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention is expensive. It is not the most expensive solution but it is typically 15 to 20 percent higher than other solutions. There is no additional cost to using McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention."

"McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention is expensive."

"The pricing seems expensive both for the license and the support."

"The price is high for this type of product."

"The price of the solution could improve."

"There is an annual license to use this solution."

"It's not a cheap option."

More McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Retailer

Real Estate/Law Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

What do you like most about Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention?

The technical support for the solution is very good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention?

The pricing is reasonable and medium, not very low, but fair for the product offered.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention?

I would recommend aligning OCR with endpoints. This is a highly demanded technology globally, especially for endpoint...

See all answers

What do you like most about McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention?

The tool focuses on endpoints rather than networks. Endpoints cover everything. It wouldn't be possible to steal conf...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention?

McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention?

The product’s pricing could be cheaper.

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention vs Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention

Compared 21% of the time

Symantec Data Loss Prevention vs Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention

Compared 11% of the time

Trellix DLP vs Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention

Compared 11% of the time

Digital Guardian vs Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention

Compared 10% of the time

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform vs Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention

Compared 6% of the time

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HP Wolf Security vs McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

Compared 81% of the time

Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention vs McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

Compared 5% of the time

Symantec Data Loss Prevention vs McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

Compared 3% of the time

Cisco Secure Endpoint vs McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

Compared 3% of the time

Trellix DLP vs McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

Compared 3% of the time

More McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention

May 2025

Download Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention product report

Buyer's Guide

McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

April 2025

McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention report

Download McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Forcepoint DLP, Forcepoint Data Security Suite, Websense Data Security Suite

McAfee Total Protection for Data, McAfee Total Protection for DLP, Total Protection for Data, Intel Security Total Protection for Data

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention offers comprehensive data protection with strong template support, seamless cloud integration, and detailed reporting. It ensures data security through extensive endpoint, network, and server-level controls.

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention is equipped with advanced fingerprinting technology, optical character recognition, and a large library of predefined rules. Organizations gain comprehensive data visibility and effective policy enforcement, supported by dynamic user behavior analysis and compliance capabilities. Its intuitive interface and flexible deployment options position it as a top choice for data security, although it could improve in communication reliability and language support. Complex reporting, machine learning integration, and cross-platform compatibility require enhancements.

What are the key features of Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention?

Fingerprinting Technology: Enables precise data tracking and protection.
Optical Character Recognition: Enhances identification of sensitive information in documents.
Built-in Rules and Classifications: Offers a vast library ready for immediate use.
Dynamic User Behavior Analysis: Provides insights for proactive security management.
Cloud Integration: Ensures seamless data protection across cloud environments.

What benefits and ROI insights should users consider?

Policy Enforcement: Robust mechanisms to ensure compliance and data protection.
Comprehensive Visibility: Offers detailed insights into data movements and security posture.
Efficient Management: Simplified controls for streamlined security operations.
Compliance Support: Assists in meeting standards like PCI DSS.

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention is utilized extensively in industries like finance and law to protect sensitive information from unauthorized transfers. It secures enterprise legal documents, financial assets, and personal data, employing features such as OCR to safeguard data across network, email, and cloud channels.

Forcepoint

McAfee Total Protection for Data solution suite protects your data using a combination of powerful encryption, access control, and user-behavior monitoring.

McAfee

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Alphawest, Betsson, Cellcom Israel Ltd., Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, Confartigianato Vicenza, EverBank, Finansbank, iGATE, Landa Digital Printing, Northern California Bank, Reliance Capital, Remosa, Toyota, Scavolini, Zim Integrated Shipping Services

Kleberg Bank

Buyer's Guide

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs. McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

April 2025

Free Report: Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs. McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention

Find out what your peers are saying about Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs. McAfee Total Protection for Data Loss Prevention and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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We monitor all Data Loss Prevention (DLP) 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.