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FortiSASE vs Zscaler Internet Access comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (12th), Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (4th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), ZTNA as a Service (12th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (11th)
FortiSASE
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (9th)
Zscaler Internet Access
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (2nd), Internet Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

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
Peter VanDorp - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved our operational efficiency because we manage one system now that manages all the sub-pieces to it
Deep packet inspection is easier to deploy in the FortiSASE environment. It's much simpler to configure one-touch deployment. It was considerably more convoluted to get that to work using FortiClient. All that processing horsepower is happening in Fortinet's cloud infrastructure, reducing the load on our local routers and on-prem FortiGate firewalls. There wasn't much of a learning curve because we are already a Fortinet organization. We still use all the same pieces, but the interface is slightly different. Still, I don't think the average user would have difficulty picking the solution up. They've got some excellent documentation and support to help you through any questions you may have. FortiSASE lets us manage everything from one web interface. That's the most significant benefit. We also use FortiManager, but it could only do so much when we only used on-prem systems. We still need to touch the EMS server and a few other interfaces to make all the pieces work. FortiSASE puts everything in one place. If something doesn't work, you've got support there to help you out. Previously, we had local support, but it's more complicated because you needed to explain your environment. The SASE environment is under their control, so they know what it looks like and what they're dealing with.
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

"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"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."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"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."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"Its function is related to the licensing framework."
"The product can scale."
"Deep packet inspection is easier to deploy in the FortiSASE environment. It's much simpler to configure one-touch deployment. It was considerably more convoluted to get that to work using FortiClient. All that processing horsepower is happening in Fortinet's cloud infrastructure, reducing the load on our local routers and on-prem FortiGate firewalls."
"I feel that it is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The integration with the company's existing security infrastructure enhanced our security posture since it was a straightforward process."
"It is easy to integrate with Fortinet."
"Overall, I'd rate the product eight out of ten."
"This advantage is having the ability to create an SPA unit of FortiGate."
"Zscaler Internet Access has helped us reduce the time that we spend managing security policies by about four hours a week. We can use this time to focus on other things, especially the IT team."
"All internet access flows through the Zscaler proxy, regardless of whether people are in office or remote. I have greater control site access and I minimize the number of compromises that we experience to almost none."
"The solution replaces multiple vendor technologies with one which makes it worth the cost."
"The solution is stable."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine and a half out of ten...The setup phase was easy."
"The solution’s customer service is good."
"The data loss prevention feature is the most valuable. It stops our users from inadvertently leaking our customers' data to the Internet or anywhere else it shouldn't go."
"I like the granularity of the control of all the traffic, including SSL inspection. I also like the fact that the user interface is intuitive. The latencies with Zscaler are minimal compared to those of any other competitor. Other competitors do not really have the global scale that Zscaler has and cannot promise low latencies."
 

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."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"Its pricing could be better."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You feel that you are running into that support wall."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"FortiSASE is a work in progress. One area where there is room for improvement is the ability to use FortiSASE on an endpoint that doesn't have the client on it. Other solutions do that by building a VPN tunnel from their on-prem router into the SASE environment. FortiSASE doesn't have that feature yet, but it is on the roadmap for Q3 of this year. I've seen it in their development environment."
"They are trying to improve the features of FortiSASE, however, many FortiSASE gates still cannot connect. While connectivity from outside to inside is okay, inside to outside is not."
"There are some issues at the agent level, and then we have to sign out and sign in."
"The GUI and connectivity, along with the support offered, are some of the areas of concern in the product where improvements are required."
"Stability issues persist."
"Some of the solution's back-end connectivity and visibility are not robust and could be improved."
"They need to have more concise or precise ways to come up with the return on investment for convincing or presenting this to customers."
"Improvements should focus on security. Although FortiCASB performs well in many areas, I believe its security aspects could be enhanced further."
"The pricing is an issue. It is expensive if you have all of your users in the same location. It is expensive compared to other firewalls on the market."
"Do not expect to pay for the service and start using it, like Gmail. Zscaler requires a proper implementation to be done to make it successful."
"There are a few features that are not compatible with the Azure cloud."
"Sometimes it's not easy to use during large deployments of workstations."
"I don't know whether it's Zscaler or not, however, sometimes I can't access my time management. I need to wait and try again a few hours later. Typically, if I let some time pass, I can access it again."
"The solution's technical support needs to be improved, especially by offering a better support structure for different geographical areas."
"Zscaler should provide adjacent services, which would be complementary to their current offering that could to be more pragmatic for a customer. For example, if you take Akamai, you get multiple sets of services, all depending on the customer and the strategy and the complexity and the problems. In some areas, they are more varied in terms of coverage."
"In terms of usage, here in the GCC, it's still growing a growing market, so the combination of DLP, data leak prevention, to a certain extent is fine. But what it requires is user-based access or role-based access. The solution needs to grow into that, which definitely takes time. There's not an easy way to integrate it, when you have a cloud-based solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"I rate the product's price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is high price, and ten is low price."
"I can only speak about the pricing for education users because we get discounts. Other users aren't going to get the same price, but FortiSASE is competitive with the other products out there. All the solutions came in at the same price, so it just came down to the product that works best for us."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"Roughly, we might spend $70,000 a month on the solution. We don't pay for anything beyond the standard licensing fee."
"The price is competitive. It's not cheap and it's not expensive."
"The pricing is fair based on its competitive market."
"We have found the solution to be expensive."
"Licenses are available on a per-host basis. Some features like sandboxing require an additional fee, but most standard features are included in the license."
"It is costlier than other solutions."
"The pricing for Zscaler Internet Access could be made cheaper."
"The solution is a little bit expensive. On a scale of one to five, I would rate it as a three."
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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
22%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
6%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 FortiSASE ?
The integration with the company's existing security infrastructure enhanced our security posture since it was a stra...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiSASE ?
I would rate setup cost as six out of ten. It depends on the region. For example, in Qatar, it’s expensive. Comparing...
What needs improvement with FortiSASE ?
In any scenario, there is usually room for development. Some enhancement would be beneficial.
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
No data available
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.
Information Not Available
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 FortiSASE vs. Zscaler Internet Access and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.