We performed a comparison between Cisco Web Security Appliance and Zscaler Internet Access based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Zscaler Internet Access is the preferred choice when compared to Cisco Web Security Appliance due to its advanced features such as cloud-native proxy architecture, cloud browser isolation, and advanced threat protection. Users found it easy to set up and configure, with a stable and scalable performance. While pricing, reporting functionality, and technical support can be improved, users consider Zscaler Internet Access as a reliable and cost-effective solution for remote users with a strong return on investment.
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"The solution is stable."
"The technical support is good. It is reactive and the documentation is very specific and very useful."
"The deployment process is very simple."
"What we liked best about it was the ability to apply policy to either a user ID or an IP-based network."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance has very good security benefits for any company and is easy to integrate."
"This appliance gives me good visibility in the userbase and their activities."
"The most valuable feature is security."
"The setup was very easy and straightforward."
"Cisco is the best in giving technical support. There is no doubt about that."
"One feature that is valuable to me from an implementation point of view is that it's very easy to implement."
"The users are at different locations, and Zscaler helps us to put the organization's central security controls on these roaming users."
"The protection is most valuable."
"After a proper implementation, the maintenance is very low."
"Overall, we're very happy with our product."
"One on the main benefits is protection all time from anywhere."
"We enjoy all of the proxy capabilities and the capability to integrate into the SIEM/SOC solution."
"The URL filtering has been the most valuable feature."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"We would like to see a security service head, where we can combine all the security into one solution."
"Customer support is good but could be improved."
"The transparent proxy is quite difficult to enforce on smartphones and tablets."
"The support for this solution could be improved. We have experienced issues with their SMARTnet support system."
"They need a better graphical interface, and they need a better ISE mechanism."
"The tool needs to improve cloud-based decryption."
"The solution could improve the graphical user interface. It is not up to the regular standard of what we would expect from Cisco. Additionally, they need to improve the categorization when blocking in the settings. The CLI could have a better view than the graphical user interface but I did not investigate further."
"The GUI is not user-friendly, so it needs to improve or be simplified."
"Currently, the solution's interface is not that user-friendly."
"I would like to see the ability to choose a pool of IPs for my company, set up rules based on them, and know that those IPs are not used by other companies."
"They should enhance the audit reporting feature."
"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."
"Sometimes it's not easy to use during large deployments of workstations."
"One thing that they could improve is the ability to import rules from other platforms."
"The price of the solution could be improved."
"Zscaler does not provide dedicated IPs to each customer. Hence, they share a pool of IPs provided by Zscaler. There is a chance of blacklisting these IPs. I also do not like the multi-management portal."
Cisco Web Security Appliance is ranked 9th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 29 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. Cisco Web Security Appliance is rated 7.8, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Web Security Appliance writes "Ensures security for remote workers". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". Cisco Web Security Appliance is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Fortinet FortiProxy, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway and Skyhigh Security, whereas Zscaler Internet Access is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and FortiSASE . See our Cisco Web Security Appliance vs. Zscaler Internet Access report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.
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