Avast Secure Web Gateway (SWG) vs. pfSense

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

I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.

• 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

• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

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

• I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
• When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
• I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
• I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
• I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.

Incentivized

The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.

Incentivized

pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

Incentivized

Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.

• 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

• pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
• The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.

Incentivized