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Okta Workforce Identity vs Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform 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
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
12th
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), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (11th)
Okta Workforce Identity
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (4th), Authentication Systems (6th), Privileged Access Management (PAM) (7th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (2nd), Access Management (3rd)
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange...
Ranking in ZTNA as a Service
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (4th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (3rd), Application Control (3rd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (11th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the ZTNA as a Service category, the mindshare of iboss is 1.6%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Okta Workforce Identity is 1.7%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform is 18.0%, down from 24.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
ZTNA as a Service
 

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
Tor Nordhagen - PeerSpot reviewer
Extremely easy to work with, simple to set up, and reasonably priced
The drawback of this solution is that in our shops, many staff members sometimes have to be borrowed from one shop to another and the solution does not really support having multiple roles. The user experience we would like to have when a person works in shop A which pays their salary is that they should have access to pretty much everything. Maybe you have somebody who is a manager in that shop A, he should be able to order new wear, he should be able to change the pricing, he should be able to empty the cash registry, and ship it to the bank. But when for instance, in COVID, people had to fill in for people in shops where a lot of people were sick, then they had to actually use user accounts of people that work in shop B. If you were employed in shop A, you could not work in shop B without borrowing somebody else's user ID and password. Which is really bad. We haven't been able to work around that and Okta Workforce Identity does not have a solution for it. We are now piloting their identity governance solution. Obviously, it's easy to give somebody access, give them an account, and give them roles, but it's hard to maintain that. For example, if you moved from, say working in a shop to working in a warehouse. But why do you still have all this shop access? The solution has until now not had anything to really support the process of taking away access. But now we are in a better release program of Okta's identity governance solution. Although it's very basic, the solution has started on a journey, but identity governance is something that Okta Workforce Identity really needs to improve. The ability or the options in the solution for changing the look and feel are not good enough because in our partner portal, essentially what they have is an ugly admin interface. The admin interface is good enough for us technical people because that's all we need. We work with the product and we're able to see the data but when it comes to presenting the service portal, Okta Workforce Identity does not have any capabilities really for making it look pretty. To add branding and different graphical user interface elements than Okta basic for essentially delegated admin for the business-to-business portal is horrifying because you're essentially using the tech admin. The only option we had and used, was to take the tech admin console and strip it. so that a vendor that has some goods that are sold in the shops, when they want to add a user on their side, say a driver or a packer on their side who should know how much they've packed in a truck to come to our warehouse, then the user interface that this vendor is using, these functional people will then have to use an extremely basic user interface.
Sumit Bhanwala - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud-based platform simplifies device and data center management
I find it to be good. The solution is cloud-based with the latest inspection engines, which I find to be amazing. We are less dependent on data centers and device management, which reduces our efforts significantly. It improves our device management, data center management, and updating devices. We need fewer engineers for this management, and it reduces time and efforts for data center management, device upgrades, and IT support.

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."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"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."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"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."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"We face no challenges in integrating the product with our legacy systems."
"We find the solution to be stable."
"I find the provisioning features and the integration with other applications useful."
"A solution that's easy to use, stable, and reliable."
"The MFA part is the best. MFA provided most of the security that we were looking at with respect to the second level of authentication. Okta Workforce Identity provides a number of options with respect to multifactor authentication, such as the app, phone call, and text. These options provide different ways of logging in for users, and they were a lot more than what we needed. This is certainly a very good feature of Okta Workforce Identity."
"It's reliable and it does what it is advertised to do."
"First of all, the solution is very simple."
"Enabled MFA to access federated applications as well as increased user satisfaction through improved provisioning times and more reliable processes."
"The most valuable feature is the manageability of the micro tunnels."
"The most valuable features of Zscaler Private Access are its ability to integrate with multiple IDPs and application segmentation."
"The most valuable aspect of Zscaler Cloud DLP is its automatic DLP feature."
"I like its ease of use. It has a single pane of glass for the ZIA and ZPA pieces. It is very manageable. It is also very easy to deploy for secure access, and it gives half-decent coverage for visibility in terms of what the users use and what data is being proxied through the access gateway."
"The solution is cloud-based with the latest inspection engines, which I find to be amazing."
"The policies are very easy to implement."
"The most valuable feature of Zscaler Private Access is we do not have to connect to a VPN, it is seamless. It is more convenient for us because we use one agent to cover the internet and VPN access."
"The solution is cloud-based with the latest inspection engines, which I find to be amazing."
 

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."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"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 solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"Its pricing could be better."
"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."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"In some setup cases, there are issues with attributes not going in properly."
"Okta Workforce Identity can improve by having more features in governance."
"We experienced some technical glitches that need to be resolved."
"The solution can be quite expensive."
"There is a need for Okta to provide an end-to-end solution without needing a separate product like Zscaler for multifactor authentication."
"I would appreciate it if Okta Workforce Identity becomes more user-friendly. Its API technology is complicated. Certain applications may pose challenges in terms of integration, especially when they require IDP technologies that aren't easily codable. While I can't provide specific examples, some applications may not integrate with Okta Workforce Identity."
"Okta Workforce Identity could improve provisioning it can be made simpler."
"RESTful Web Service calls and their response seem a bit slow."
"The only issue with Zscaler Cloud DLP is that it only gives you DLP protection from web traffic, which is flowing out, while a full-blown DLP solution such as Forcepoint or Symantec gives you DLP coverage for multiple channels. Zscaler Cloud DLP doesn't give you coverage for email, fax, and USB channels, and this is the only challenge or room for improvement in the solution. It's just an extension on top of what you're buying on the proxy, so it's just an added layer, and it doesn't cover DLP on a very broad level. I'm unsure if Zcaler is in the business of competing with a full-blown DLP solution, and if there's a plan to expand the features of Zscaler Cloud DLP beyond the web channel because you'll have to deploy a full-blown agent for it. I'm unsure if this is on the cards because the solution is just an added layer that you get with your proxy. I've asked the Zcaler team whether there's a plan to go full DLP in the future, but I didn't get a positive response. There isn't any feature I'd like added to Zscaler Cloud DLP currently, because anything you could think of that should be in cloud or SaaS solutions is already there, except for machine learning, as it's the only functionality that seems to be lacking in the solution. Machine learning is an additional policy available in other DLP solutions in the market, but my team didn't find it in Zscaler Cloud DLP."
"Zscaler CASB breaks down at times."
"Zscaler CASB should include integrations with other SaaS applications."
"The connectivity monitoring part should be included in the core license without any extra charges."
"The product must allow users to check logs for an entire year in the local console."
"Conflicts arise if you do not have the same management teams on the product."
"Price-wise, it is a costly product and it should be reduced."
"The interface needs a bit of work."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"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."
"The cost per user for this solution is really high and could be reduced."
"The price of Okta Workforce Identity is competitively priced. We pay annually for the use of the solution."
"I believe it competes well. The pricing is pretty competitive. I know that Microsoft also provides something similar with its MFA and identity services."
"This solution is costly. Pricing is decent if you have less users, but it significantly goes up the more users you have, with its cost not justified."
"The price of the solution is good."
"Though I don't know about the licensing model of the product, I wouldn't be surprised if Okta offers a per user license subscription model."
"The licensing is per user per month and includes full technical support."
"It has a yearly subscription. As compared to its competitors, it is quite expensive. It also has a complex licensing model."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is an auto-renewal subscription service."
"There is definitely an ROI."
"Zscaler Cloud DLP is moderately priced. We pay around 2 million rupees per year."
"The product has reasonable pricing."
"It's an affordable solution"
"In terms of market positioning, I would describe Zscaler Private Access as offering optimal pricing. Based on our experience, Cato Networks tends to be slightly more expensive."
"The licensing model for Zscaler Cloud DLP allows you to only buy what you need. You don't need to buy it as a whole, so it's good."
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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
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
 

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 Okta Workforce Identity?
Okta has introduced the Universal Directory. It has custom attribute capability and user permissions to read/write on...
What needs improvement with Okta Workforce Identity?
We are facing one issue with Cypress test cases. Whenever I write Cypress test cases, we encounter problems with logg...
What is the better solution - Prisma Access or Zscaler Private Access?
We looked into Prisma Access before choosing Zscaler Private Access (ZPA). Palo Alto’s Prisma Access is a secure ac...
What do you like most about Zscaler SASE?
The most valuable features of Zscaler Private Access are reliability, scalability, and availability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zscaler SASE?
Zscaler SASE is quite expensive compared to other solutions. The price is not fixed and it does not include all of th...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
No data available
Zscaler SASE, Zscaler DLP, Zscaler CASB, Zscaler CSPM, Zscaler Browser Isolation, Zscaler Posture Control
 

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.
FedEx, Zoom, Takeda, Lululemon Athletica, GrunHub, jetBlue, McKensson, Bain & Company, Engie, Peloton, Sonos, T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard, MGM Resorts, Ally Financial, Priceline, Albertsons, Itercom, Classy, FICO, Kensho, Live Nation, Drata, Rotary, and others.
Siemens, AutoNation, GE, NOV
Find out what your peers are saying about Okta Workforce Identity vs. Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,765 professionals have used our research since 2012.