Avast Secure Web Gateway (SWG) vs. Cisco Secure Web Appliance

I have been using [Avast Secure Web Gateway (SWG)] for a very long
time in my organization, it is very easy to use with having the interface
created on a very advanced module. Designed with much-modernized UI and dashboard
is very pleasing to use and to have the best experience on it.

Incentivized

Based on the platforms I have evaluated, I think the WSA is a great fit for any organization that needs a proxy server that provides control over what web sites are accessed or when they can be accessed. I think it is probably overkill if you simply need a proxy server for bandwidth savings or because you need to proxy general Internet access without extensive filtering needs.

Incentivized

• I have been using this platform in my organization for securing the network for a very long time and I am satisfied with their services and features.
• It helps me in blocking web threats before coming on the network automatically which saves my network from potential attack.
• Completely functional UI with having all the features to have a fast and secure working environment.

Incentivized

• It does a great job of filtering emails based on IP reputation. This feature works particularly very well. Cisco has a vast database of IP reputation scores and therefore offers very few false positives and negatives.
• It checks each email thoroughly without any compromise of privacy. Any malicious link present in the body of the email makes its way to the quarantine. The IP reputation scores also help in this case.

Incentivized

• The major drawback of using Avast secure web gateway that it sometimes slows down the system in blocking web threats.
• Secondly, it is hard to set up the first time as it takes a lot of effort and time to completely integrate with the system to make it fully functional.
• Starting scanning the web application and organizing network in the background which talks a lot of memory and slows down the other processes.

Incentivized

• The categories provided are not as granular as some competitors, like Websense.
• Cisco does not have as many resources devoted to categorizing websites as some competitors, like Websense.
• New features require administrators to pay attention to updates. New features are disabled by default.

Incentivized

Because it's one of those products you almost don't realize it exists from the end user. From the administrator perspective, you can do everything on its web interface and it's very intuitive to manage, once you know the concepts behind identities, acls, etc. Also, once you build the control structure, I mean, you link 'local' groups with your own Active Directory groups, as we did here, you don't need to be managing those things on the appliance itself.

Incentivized

Our experience with Cisco's support was terrible. Other than the fact that they don't respond to service-related emails with urgency, they also keep on changing the policies that affected us. Recently, they came up with a new look for the same software, which was insanely slow. Renewal of keys for the old interface took months. Overall, the support was not very friendly from the users' point of view.

Incentivized

Considering we're with Cisco IronPort Web Security Appliances for the last 9 years, as I stated, we don't have too much experience with other producs. What I can say is that in the past, we evaluated Websense before it became Forcepoint and we also used MS ISA Server for webfilter. As you may imagine, IronPort is a very very superior product.

Incentivized

• I am facing a lot on my organization's websites that it shows a lot of ads on the screen which sometimes got a freeze on the page and takes the whole screen to play which is a lot of time-consuming and slows down the work.
• Avast Secure Web Gateway [(SWG)] is one of the best protection solutions available in the market to secure network traffic.

Incentivized

• Having a much safer work system has given us the guarantee and security of always staying out of danger.
• The prevention system is important for us and always keeping our devices, web and emails free of any malicious agent has allowed us an excellent workflow, without distractions or inconvenience in the development of projects.
• Thanks to the fact that we have kept our work system safe, we have saved ourselves a lot of inconvenience, time spent, avoiding equipment damage, payments to solve problems, among many other problems that thanks to Cisco Secure Web Appliance we have been able to solve.

Incentivized