Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway vs. Sophos Web Content Filtering

Over the years, [in our experience], the maintenance of the Forcepoint Web Security solution proved to be more cumbersome and troublesome with each version upgrade. In addition, it did not transition well to support the large increase of remote workers. We also experienced weird incompatibilities with the client. We have since replaced this solution with Zscaler Internet Access, a cloud-based secure web gateway solution with a client that behaves as expected, is more flexible, and requires significantly less administration.

Incentivized

Before Sophos, I would receive scammers regarding tradeshow lists. People wanted me to pay for lists, but these people weren't actually from the tradeshows. I can now block those, and have received much fewer of those scams. I am also able to open emails within quarantine to view them before deleting, releasing, allowing, or blocking. I use this to my advantage, and am able to make better decisions on what to do with the emails.

Incentivized

• This package is one of the few that offers a category, quota time, that allows us to limit certain categories and or websites for staff that would normally be blocked for customers and may not be something that is needed in their day to day job duties. We allow staff one hour a day, broken down into six 10 min increments, to visit sites for shopping, travel arrangement and other areas that are more of a personal need than a business need.
• Forcepoint has a wide selection of categories that can be enabled, quota timed or restricted at a top-level or you can go more granular and drill down to subcategories to allow for only partial access.

Incentivized

• Allowing options: I am able to choose from several different options (release, release and allow, delete, block, block and report to Spam)
• Warning labels: emails have labels at the top to define if an email is from a trusted sender or the email is from an external sender and may not be trusted. I can block those emails, if I choose to
• Quarantine emails: I appreciate the 2x daily emails detailing which emails have been quarantined, and if I would like to release them or delete them

Incentivized

• The user access logs contain a lot of useless information. I understand this is very hard to tackle as I've seen this across any product that logs web activity.
• I would like to see more customization options of website block pages.

Incentivized

• Initial Setup Guide could be more detailed
• WebGui Interface, needs some smoothness
• More simple models (in the hardware version) for smaller organizations to be able to implement this system

Incentivized

It is very stable, the organisation has "locked in" the product and has no plans to change or try another product. We have already renewed our 2019-2020 licenses. It is user friendly and people catch on easily when they first use it. The only downtime is when we install Microsoft updates! It has excellent reporting which help in determining how the organisation's Internet is used and also during both internal and external IT audits.

Incentivized

Despite the intimidating Linux CLI when you use the appliance for troubleshooting, the web security usability compensates as most of the Administration of the system is done there. It is GUI based and has an easy to use UI where one can navigate around rather easily like getting reports, checking alerts, looking the whole setup under deployment to check if all services are running in one place though there are other parts to the system.

Incentivized

The is a quick first response to acknowledge your issue and the Engineers never take more than two hours to fix an issue and we hardly get issues looking at the fact that the system is pretty stable. There is also a robust Knowledge Base in the site for known problems.

Incentivized

Research known issues with upgrading from the Support Knowledge base, this will enable you avoid road blocks along the way and reduce your dependence on Forcepoint Support

Incentivized

To be honest, once using Forcepoint for our Web Security, I have not wanted to look anywhere else. The dashboard gives me quick insight of threats, productivity, and bandwidth usage. Again, this is a layer in my security and it fills many holes. I feel safe and I do like I can just let it do its thing

Incentivized

Sophos competes well with other content filtering products. It's categorization is on par if not better than the competition. What stands out most for me is it's ability to integrate seamlessly with the Sophos XG and XDR and Endpoint solutions. Like most network security products, it's often best integration to stick with the same family and the Sophos solution is no different. Because of that, I feel the overall product offering from Sophos (outside of Content Filtering) is on-par with other solutions as well so it's a no-brainer if you use Sophos firewalls, Sophos Content Filtering is the best choice.

Incentivized

• We have had potential malware outbreaks prevented because of Forcepoint Web Security
• Questionable access of certain materials on the internet has been prevented because of our implementation
• The organization's network resources now have more bandwidth because of the restrictions the application provides

Incentivized

• Increased productivity of employees by not being distracted so much.
• Economic savings by preventing computers from being infected by viruses.
• Better use of company resources.

Incentivized