Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway vs Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Lookout
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
24th
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Data Protection (7th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (12th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (18th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (43rd), Mobile Threat Defense (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (13th), ZTNA (10th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (18th)
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (2nd)
Prisma Access by Palo Alto ...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (3rd), Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (4th), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of Lookout is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is 4.6%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is 10.2%, up from 7.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
Unique Categories:
Mobile Data Protection
7.1%
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
0.8%
Internet Security
8.9%
Web Content Filtering
5.3%
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
6.6%
 

Featured Reviews

AP
May 23, 2023
User-focused design makes it easy to understand, and operations running in background provide peace of mind
In any of the discussions that we've had with their technical teams, they have been very knowledgeable and helpful in certain aspects. They have a lot of partnerships, from what we can tell, and that does start to make the waters a little bit murky. They have third parties that provide functionality and there is a concern that we're going to be bounced around between five different groups to get help for a problem. If you describe it incorrectly, all of a sudden you're with a group that can't help you and they have to forward you to another group. They have been very responsive and super helpful when it comes to any of the issues we've identified. Still, that concern about being bounced around between multiple partners detracts from the overall experience.
Shipra Gupta - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 3, 2022
Simple to set up, reliable, and offers great reporting
On the DLP, we are on version 8.9.1, and on the Web Gateway, we are on version 8.5.4. We are using both on-premises and cloud deployments. We are integrators. I am mainly dealing in Forcepoint, including Forcepoint Web Gateway, Forcepoint DLP, and a little bit of Forcepoint Email as well. The presales part of the onboarding process has to be very, very proper. Whatever requirements the users are looking for, that should be put on paper, however. Otherwise, if they're expecting something else and the solution is providing something else, this sometimes creates an issue at a later date. Clients need to know what they are getting into. I’d rate the solution eight out of ten.
Nikolay Dimitrov - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2022
Supports auto-scaling for mobile users and provides the ability to create custom threat signatures
It can be improved if some customers want to use Prisma Access only for web traffic. Currently, it is a bit limited. Zscaler works better for web traffic. Zscaler's agent application on your computer can configure the proxy settings automatically, whereas Palo Alto's GlobalProtect agent is only a VPN solution. You can't use it also as a secure gateway agent to force the computer to have the settings to send the data to Prisma Access. They suggest using other techniques to force the computer to use Prisma Access for a secure web gateway solution. So, Zscaler is more like a secure web gateway, and Prisma Access is more like a full VPN solution. I see the limitations of both vendors. Palo Alto needs to improve the GlobalProtect agent to work as a secure web gateway agent, not only as a VPN agent because some companies would want only a secure gateway. They wouldn't want a full VPN. So, Palo Alto has to make the VPN agent work as a secure web gateway agent for those customers who want only the secure web gateway solution. Other vendors' agents, including ForcePoint which I don't like at all, can do that. One feature that I find missing in Prisma Access, as well as Palo Alto firewalls, is that they can't insert the 644 header. I want to be able to see the IP address of the users basically. My understanding is that almost no firewall can do this. It is not only Palo Alto, but it would be good to have this feature. The only vendor that I know can insert it is FortiGate, but with them, many other things don't work.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"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."
"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 solution is stable."
"The policies are category-based, so knowledge of another content URL is not compulsory."
"Provides good visibility and good filtering features."
"The tool categorizes the user profiles which is very comfortable."
"The most valuable feature of Forcepoint Web Security is creating the easy to install further policies that are deployed through the Forcepoint security manual at some stage. Just drag and drop and the policies are there."
"One of the main features I have found the solution to be efficient."
"The most valuable feature is the categorization, where you can allow general access to an application but limit specific features."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to allow or block sites by category."
"Ease of updating the latest hotfixes and patches on the appliance."
"The most valuable feature of Prisma Cloud-native, in my opinion, is that it assists in identifying, analyzing, and remediating vulnerabilities."
"The solution also provides traffic analysis, threat prevention, URL filtering, and segmentation. That combination is important because it enhances the protection and makes the traffic more secure. It also keeps things more up-to-date, enabling us to deal with more of the current threats."
"It's very stable. Sometimes after installing the boxes, we leave them for one or two years. We would just touch the box in the case of the customer needing new requirements or changes to the setup."
"It protects all app traffic so that users can gain access to all apps. Unlike other solutions that only work from ports 80 and 443, which are predominantly for web traffic, Prisma Access covers all protocols and works on all traffic patterns... The most sophisticated attacks can arise from sources that are not behind 80/443."
"Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is a seamless solution."
"A feature I've found very helpful is run time security because most of the products on the market will look at security during the build time, and they don't really look at what happens once you're going into production."
"I like it because it's very easy to use. You install the client and you have to know your gateway, but that's something we give to our users. Beyond that, it takes about three seconds to train them on how to use it. And it just works well. That's great for us because it means less administrative time."
"It's much faster and more secure than legacy solutions. It is also quite stable and scalable as well. We are able to see all the traffic in one place."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"The initial setup was complex."
"Sometimes attacks or a new ransomware gets through."
"The Sandbox solution should be integrated with the NIST to handle whatever new vulnerabilities or new sites are identified as potential threats."
"A feature we wish to see addressed in the next release of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway involves its administration."
"I'd like to see the solution improve the banded optimization to offer more bandwidth control, similar to what is on offer with Blue Coat."
"Database synchronization failures"
"Allow for faster exemption of websites or the ability to reclassify websites."
"In the on-premises version, I don't like the deployment and structuring of the device."
"I would like to see better pricing and an easier logging process. Also, if there was a way to log a global log, everything could go onto the system. It would be better if there was a third log, otherwise one would have to do everything manually."
"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required. The solution's price should be lowered."
"We are using the SaaS offering. We use our applications for microservices. We use Twistlock to scan containers, and it displays these results in Prisma, which is a good feature because we can see vulnerabilities with respect to these containers. We can see everything in a very detailed manner. However, when you have different environments for a single application, such as DEV, QA, PROD, and TEST, all these environments run multiple containers, which can lead to a very high number of containers. In such a scenario, it shows you the alerts for all those containers that have vulnerabilities. If you show the results of all the containers that share the same image, it is not going to add any value. Therefore, they should narrow down the alerts based on a container. It should show information for a single container. Otherwise, the person who is looking at the results gets the impression that he has to fix all these issues. This is something that they can improve."
"Its security is good. Everything is good, but the way the dashboard responds can be improved. It takes time to implement a policy. If you change only two or three lines and push the policy to make the change work, it takes 20 to 30 minutes even for a small change. That is something very irritating from the implementation perspective."
"They could add more flexibility and improve product performance."
"Palo Alto Prisma 10 came out over a year ago. Palo Alto added this identity management feature. The legacy way Palo Alto selected which user is sitting on an IP address it passes through has been clunky."
"One thing that would help is if we could get a guide. With Cisco, for example, you can just type the problem regarding your Cisco product and you will easily get your solution. In Palo Alto, however, it's not easy to find the solutions."
"It wasn't so satisfying to work with it. There is room for improvement in the policy management. It is difficult to cover the entire scenery through Palo Alto products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of feature performance versus cost, they're a good value."
"The pricing is fair; it's comparable to our previous solution, and we carried out multiple POCs and POVs (proof of value). The product is worth the money we pay for it."
"Lookout is definitely on the lower end when it comes to price point and that seems to be the only differentiator. The technology is in place in this space and it's really about who is coming in at the better price point now."
"The licensing costs are good. Prisma has much more options and support for security, but it has a higher cost. For example, Lookout costs 2/3rd of Prisma's licensing price."
"The pricing on Forcepoint Web Security is fair. Fair pricing at current market rates, if you are comparing with the competition."
"The licensing is not expensive."
"The solution is priced a little high compare to similar solutions."
"Expensive, but with a good reseller you can get a very good price."
"Overall, I am not aware of the option to pay for one time use of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway."
"The cost for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is lower than that for Zscaler and Netskope. It could be around $4 per user annually."
"It is quite expensive."
"The pricing for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is expensive. You pay per user and functionality. I'd rate it a four on a scale of one to ten."
"Prisma is in the middle of the road. It's not the most expensive, but it's not the cheapest. There aren't any additional costs, to my knowledge. I know they have some extra modules, but we didn't use them."
"As compared to other solutions, Prisma Access is much cheaper. It is probably 30% to 40% cheaper than other solutions, but I do not know the exact cost."
"Prisma Access is one of the best compared to other products on the market. The cost is favorable, and Palo Alto provides a simple architecture, so I recommend the solution to anyone using a different product. There are no hidden costs besides the license; what you see is what you get."
"It is a little expensive. Because it is one of the best in the market, it is a little bit more expensive than other vendors."
"I would advise choosing your options according to your company's needs. Just go for what you want and do not pay for anything extra in terms of licensing. You need to determine how much bandwidth is required in your company network, and according to that, you should pay for the license. The mobile user license is based on the number of users who are going to use the VPN solution. You need to determine how many mobile users you are going to have in your network, and you should pay according to that. There are no other costs in addition to licensing, but if you go for the consultant services of Palo Alto networks to deliver the solution for you, then you need to pay something extra. That is not a part of licensing."
"Based on what I have heard from others, it is a pricey solution as compared to its peers, but I am not sure. However, considering the features that it offers, it is a break-even point. You get whatever they are promising."
"Actually the solution is very expensive. I don't know the particulars since the purchasing team dealt with it."
"The pricing for this solution is on the higher end."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lookout?
The licensing costs are good. Prisma has much more options and support for security, but it has a higher cost. For ex...
What needs improvement with Lookout?
The solution could improve identity integration as well. Zero trust, it's a good start as a zero-trust solution. More...
What do you like most about Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
The product's user management is an area where my company does not face any challenges.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
Compared to the other products in the market, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway can be a cost-effective tool. My company ...
What needs improvement with Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
If there is a category of generative AI or GenAI, it is not a very detailed category, as there are many AI-based site...
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 Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks?
The most valuable features of the solution are in the areas of the secure remote access it provides while also being ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks?
Palo Alto products are expensive, but they offer efficient features. We have to pay additional costs for maintenance ...
 

Also Known As

CipherCloud
Forcepoint SWG, Websense Web Security, Forcepoint TRITON
Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access, Prisma Access, GlobalProtect, Palo Alto GlobalProtect Mobile Security Manager, Prisma SaaS by Palo Alto Networks, Prisma Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adventist Health, Alphawest, Amadori, Anoka County, Compartamos Banco, Davies Turner, EverBank, iGATE, Karlstad Municipality, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Scavolini, Smurfit Kappa, Toyota
Concord Hospital, State of Colorado, Essilor International, RheinLand Versicherungsgruppe, University of Westminster, Universidade Nove de Julho, SPAR Austria, CAME Group, ZipRealty, Greenhill & Co., IKT Agder, Aviva Stadium, Animal Logic, Management & Training Corporation, Brigham Young University Hawaii, School District of Chilliwack
Find out what your peers are saying about Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway vs. Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
787,779 professionals have used our research since 2012.