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Zscaler Internet Access vs iboss comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

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
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
12th
Ranking in Internet Security
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Filtering (4th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), ZTNA as a Service (12th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th)
Zscaler Internet Access
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
2nd
Ranking in Internet Security
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user822630 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 06, 2019
 

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
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

"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."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"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."
"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."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"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."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"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."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"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 solution is scalable and stable."
"I would recommend Zscaler Internet Access due to its ease of use and deployment, with a user-friendly interface."
"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."
"Zscaler covers all the features needed to replace a VPN or proxy solution. They are good. They've been on the market for 15 years now, so they are mature enough."
"The scanning feature is impressive, because they do not introduce a big latency to the traffic."
 

Cons

"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 reporting feature needs improvement. It doesn't give you the expected results. It is quite difficult to get the specific reports needed, and it is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"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."
"Its pricing could be better."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"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."
"They block Zscaler IPs when the traffic origin is from Zscaler IPs. They've been blocked by certain government organizations so the end users are not able to visit those websites unless we ask them to unblock those IP. This is a bit problematic."
"Zscaler should continue to make the user interface better. They should also improve the backup network and continue to expand it so that it can handle larger numbers of customers."
"In every cloud service in the world, you have multiple upstream internet providers to create diversity so that if one of your providers fails, your network just continues. In South Africa, there is only one upstream provider, and that's not right. That that's a problem."
"There are a few features that are not compatible with the Azure cloud."
"​When you have appliances, SSL inspection is always a headache due to poor performance and/or lack of ciphers implemented. ​"
"What could be improved in Zscaler Internet Access is its price. It could be cheaper."
"The tool should improve the predefined dictionaries."
"The reporting functionality could be a bit easier to use. There is a reporting function, but it's quite hard to do any good reporting, from a user-management perspective. For example, if a department manager wants to know how his department is using the web, there is a way to get the data, but it's quite cumbersome to get it and show it well. And that's true for comparing between departments."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"Roughly, we might spend $70,000 a month on the solution. We don't pay for anything beyond the standard licensing fee."
"If we need any extra features, the price will increase."
"Zscaler is transparent about its pricing model."
"The tool is moderately priced."
"The pricing is an issue. It is expensive compared to other firewalls on the market."
"It is quite expensive. It does its job, but it is quite expensive for what we need."
"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."
"​Be aware that you will need to invest some time and money to adapt your environment for Zscaler (traffic redirection, software deployment, authentication, etc).​"
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Answers from the Community

it_user822630 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 6, 2019
Mar 6, 2019
IT really depends on the type of business you had currently. These days almost all security vendors are offering Virtual Appliances so it's a preference based decision. Almost all vendors are offering basic features with some add-ons / additional features with differences among others competitors. Look at 1. FortiGate, 2. Cisco Meraki, 3. SOPHOS Products they all provide you flexibility to have...
2 out of 63 answers
it_user519153 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 28, 2018
There are several factors to consider: · In-house expertise to manage a physical firewall · Number of locations requiring a firewall · Current and planned linkage between office locations · Value of the information you want to protect I’m personally a fan of on-premise physical firewalls for high $ information to protect. However, if the $ risk is not particularly high, your in-house expertise to manage firewalls is low, and you have multiple locations to protect, I would recommend a security gateway service with VPN connections between your offices and the location of the security provider. I cannot recommend one supplier over another. If you choose to go with a physical firewall, Fortigate has a good reputation. Regards,
it_user351612 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 28, 2018
Depending what is your goal and where offices are based. When you want to protect your users in offices, then you would want to have kind of perimeter firewall (usually appliance) - standard (old) way. Fortinet is affordable and OK. When you wan't better check Palo Alto Networks. In case your offices are close (in milliseconds) to Zscaler cloud then you could also use this. Ask them to share information of their "cloud" locations and measure RTT from your offices. Note that all your traffic will go via Zscaler cloud (privacy, confidentiality). With Fortinet or similar appliance, you have possibilty to have VPN for your users with home office. Not sure when it's feasible with cloud solution from Zscaler. Like said really depends on where you are, what kind of business you are doing.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
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
 

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, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You fe...
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 staff member devices to ensure they do not access inappropriate sites.
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. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security functi...
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 and manage cloud applications, protecting your sensitive data from exfiltration....
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
ZIA
 

Learn More

 

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.
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 Zscaler Internet Access vs. iboss and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.