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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) (11th), Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (3rd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), ZTNA as a Service (11th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (11th)
FortiSASE
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
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

"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"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."
"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."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"From a use-case scenario, what I like the most is the plug-in. I like the fact that we can do the filtering of these devices offsite independent of the network they are connected to, and we do not have to have traffic coming back inside our network."
"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"It's very stable."
"The solution is easy to deploy and simple to manage."
"This advantage is having the ability to create an SPA unit of FortiGate."
"The product can scale."
"It is highly scalable."
"FortiSASE can operate in a cloud environment with client certificates for authorizations and access control using features like PostCheck."
"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 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."
"The URL filtering has been the most valuable feature."
"For our needs, the cloud-native proxy architecture is a very good solution. We are moving away from on-prem appliances and moving more toward cloud-based solutions. Zscaler is a good fit for our strategy. This architecture helps with cyber threats because we inspect most of the traffic and we can see that a lot of threats are stopped directly in the secure web gateway."
"The most valuable feature is bandwidth control."
"The solution replaces multiple vendor technologies with one which makes it worth the cost."
"The users are at different locations, and Zscaler helps us to put the organization's central security controls on these roaming users."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"Fold that in with the risk intelligence they're getting from all of the different subscriptions they are a part of. Now, these security companies subscribe to things like emerging threats, databases, etc. You can fold all this intelligence to decide what's happening on an endpoint. I would love to see them start moving into that space. That would compete directly with Microsoft. Maybe that's why they haven't. Having that ability native within the solution would be great. The other area in which I would love to see improvement is more detailed descriptions of why they block websites."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"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."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"Improvements should focus on security."
"Some of the solution's back-end connectivity and visibility are not robust and could be improved."
"FortiSASE is an expensive product and the cost is indeed high."
"FortiSASE is an expensive product and the cost is indeed high."
"Stability issues persist."
"While stability is generally good, we faced some difficulties during updates."
"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."
"What could be improved in Zscaler Internet Access is its price. It could be cheaper."
"Sometimes, support isn't available."
"Cloud App’s database should be improved."
"​When you have appliances, SSL inspection is always a headache due to poor performance and/or lack of ciphers implemented. ​"
"I would like to see more training and video documentation."
"The solution's pricing is on the higher side. It would be better if it could be lower."
"One feature I am missing is the ability to connect automatically to internal monitoring systems."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"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."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"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."
"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 rate the product's price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"We pay around 6,500 INR per user per year, which is very expensive. I would rate Zscaler's pricing one out of five."
"​Be aware that you will need to invest some time and money to adapt your environment for Zscaler (traffic redirection, software deployment, authentication, etc).​"
"It is quite expensive. It does its job, but it is quite expensive for what we need."
"It is a few pounds per user per month."
"The solution is a little bit expensive. On a scale of one to five, I would rate it as a three."
"Roughly, we might spend $70,000 a month on the solution. We don't pay for anything beyond the standard licensing fee."
"We have found the solution to be expensive."
"The price is competitive. It's not cheap and it's not expensive."
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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
21%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
6%
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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 ?
The pricing for FortiCASB is competitive and not expensive. I rate the price as eight out of ten. There may be additi...
What needs improvement with FortiSASE ?
Improvements should focus on security. Although FortiCASB performs well in many areas, I believe its security aspects...
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.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.