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Netskope vs Zscaler Internet Access comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

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
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (10th), Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (3rd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), ZTNA as a Service (11th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th)
Netskope
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (4th)
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

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Oct 31, 2021
 

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
Valan Arasu - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good visibility, integrates well with other components, and enables organizations to protect their data
Netskope’s CASB provides good visibility of the applications being used. We can use Shadow IT based on the traffic. DLP and CASB are valuable features. The tool provides extensive DLP features. We can create any level of policies and protect our data on-premise or cloud. The tool integrates with all the components very well.
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 pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"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 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 easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"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 a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"The most valuable feature of Netskope is protection."
"It's one of the top-ranking solutions in the market, and it's very responsive. We are using Netskope, and Netskope provides a load of features for SQL, STP, and traffic control."
"I have found the most useful features to be the Web Secure Gateway, CASB, infrastructural service scanning, and Zero Trust."
"The solution provides information about third-party applications registered to our corporate email address and alerts us when users enroll in other applications using their work email."
"Netskope is highly scalable and has supported our organization's growth without any challenges."
"The initial setup is straightforward"
"The feature that I like best is the GUI."
"The tool provides extensive DLP features."
"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."
"​After a proper implementation, the maintenance is very low.​"
"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 solution has reduced cyberattacks."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to drop packets."
"The solution’s customer service is good."
"It is easy to set up the solution."
"I would recommend Zscaler Internet Access due to its ease of use and deployment, with a user-friendly interface."
 

Cons

"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"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."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"Netskope CASB can improve by working more similarly to a VPN technology instead of a proxy. They then could have visibility on the endpoint device. Most clients have some tools where they check the endpoint health or other things, such as the security posture, or if they want to access the resources. For example, if they should have antivirus running, this kind of posture check should be available but it is missing."
"It needed some fine-tuning on core business sites that we used, which were sensitive to what we term a man-in-the-middle certificate by design. Some sites were not tolerant because they presented as potentially malicious. So, we just had to make some tweaks so that it would bypass or interpret it."
"The threat protection features must be improved."
"The CSPM model needs to improve."
"They lack a cloud security posture management solution."
"Third party integration with other cloud applications could be improved. Sometimes the API won't be working, but Netskope is taking it seriously. They accept all the feature requests, and they are trying to provide whatever we ask from them."
"Deployment and policy tweaking were two areas where improvement needs to be made."
"Setting up policies is something that we having been doing, and if the vendor were to provide example use cases that included different implementation options then it would be very useful for us."
"Zscaler needs to add client-to-client communication. It's always client-to-server communication. The cloud and branch connectors could be improved because we're still dependent on traditional firewalls. They should eliminate this. They should also provide WAN devices should to compete with the SD-WAN solutions also."
"​When you have appliances, SSL inspection is always a headache due to poor performance and/or lack of ciphers implemented. ​"
"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."
"The interface for administration could be better. They should upgrade the management portal."
"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."
"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."
"One thing that needs to be improved is their presence in China. I'm not sure if that's a Zscaler thing or if it's a problem with all vendors in this space, but it would be nice to have better coverage in China. This concern is a common one for vendors across the board when dealing with the Chinese market."
"Zscale is providing a proxy IP, and most government sites will block traffic from a proxy. Also, we see some performance issues on the cloud side during DC failover."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"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."
"They should work on licensing costs."
"I would rate the pricing nine out of ten."
"The price of the solution is fair but it depends on your use case."
"The pricing is very flexible."
"I rate the product's price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is low price."
"It is an expensive solution."
"Netskope's pricing is reasonable compared to Microsoft."
"The pricing is competitive."
"We have found the solution to be expensive."
"The tool is moderately priced."
"​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 for Zscaler Internet Access could be made cheaper."
"Our monthly fee is around R3000."
"It is a few pounds per user per month."
"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."
"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
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
5%
Educational Organization
24%
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about Netskope CASB?
The product's analytics part is pretty fine.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Netskope CASB?
Netskope is cost-effective compared to similar solutions like Zscaler.
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zscaler Internet Access?
Although Zscaler Internet Access is recognized as an expensive solution, with a cost-effectiveness rating of seven ou...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Netskope CASB
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.
NetApp, Genomic Health, Caterpillar, Apollo, Pandora, Continental Resources, Fractal, infinera, Tesla
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 Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Zscaler and others in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB). Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.