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Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise vs Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (7th)
Akamai Secure Internet Acc...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
19th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Domain Name System (DNS) Security (11th)
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.2%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is 1.4%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is 2.9%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
iboss3.2%
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway2.9%
Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise1.4%
Other92.5%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
Denis Burnaev - PeerSpot reviewer
Infrastructure Securiy & Cyber Engineer at El Al
Protects internet access through proxy while newer options offer more flexibility
Our organization does not utilize the internet access feature of Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise because our company routes internet traffic through our public ISPs rather than through Akamai. We use a firewall at the perimeter, which is a straightforward approach used by most companies. From my perspective, the internet access feature would not be the most accurate feature to review for our use case. From a financial standpoint, I do not believe Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is cost-effective when compared to other solutions available in the industry. More affordable and accessible solutions exist, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses. Competing SASE platforms from Check Point, Palo Alto, and Zscaler offer cheaper alternatives that are more readily deployed. While I cannot speak to all capabilities since we are not fully utilizing Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise, routing clients through Akamai as a proxy does provide enhanced security benefits. Organizations can mask their public IPs behind Akamai's infrastructure, which provides additional security. However, the market currently offers many excellent alternative solutions. We are using all the features of the SaaS offering for Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise. My overall rating for this product is seven out of ten.
reviewer1047669 - PeerSpot reviewer
PS & Technical Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Has faced usability challenges while managing integrated components
We are working with web gateway and full endpoint security. URL filter is a notable feature. While it is not specifically related to Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway alone, if you have the complete Forcepoint solution, it can integrate with other Forcepoint products, such as DLP solution and email gateway. The URL filter of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is good for web gateway. Clients and consumers do not prefer it because the interface is not good. When using FSM with DLP, web gateway, and email gateway, upgrades cannot be performed simultaneously since Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway might need an upgrade while email gateway does not, despite having the same manager controlling them. Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway works well with banking and small companies. Email gateway is less needed as everything is moving to the cloud.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"iboss is definitely very good in terms of service."
"The console is cloud-based, which is something I really appreciate."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"We chose iboss for both zero trust and proxy (SWG) because their SWG was superior."
"From a use-case scenario, what I like the most is the plug-in. I like the fact that we can do the filtering of these devices offsite independent of the network they are connected to, and we do not have to have traffic coming back inside our network."
"Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is a product which has very good features and capabilities."
"The threat intelligence feature is particularly valuable when used with another product of Akamai, as their researchers continuously update this threat feed database, making it an effective tool for defending against and blocking bad actors, public malicious IPs, harmful hashes, and malicious URLs."
"The best feature of Akamai SPS Threat Avert is that it's very user-friendly compared to other technologies."
"SSL Inspection ability to send decrypted traffic to other security solutions for inspection."
"For the most part, the solution, when set up correctly, works fine."
"We are happy with the solution for now."
"Email Sandbox, DLP and Proxy."
"The solution provided our organization with easy and secure internet access."
"The most valuable feature for me in Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is URL filtering, though all other features of the product are okay as well."
"Secure Web Gateway's most valuable features are firewall blocking and anti-malware scanning."
"The initial setup is easy. It's not difficult."
 

Cons

"iboss can be improved because the integration could be better; you need to import all the sites that you access today, and there are a few problems whenever you import thousands of websites, making the integration process messy for the users."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"I would rate iboss an eight out of ten because it provides strong cloud-based security threat protection, centralized policy management, and visibility into web traffic. I would give it a higher rating if automation, reporting, and troubleshooting capabilities could be improved further."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"I would like to see simpler dashboards, more detailed reporting, and faster performance in iboss."
"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"Akamai SPS Threat Avert's pricing could be improved because it's a very expensive enterprise solution."
"From a financial standpoint, I do not believe Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is cost-effective when compared to other solutions available in the industry."
"Their support response time needs improvement. They take on average one week to respond, which is not satisfactory given how critical applications are to the organization."
"To access the root of the product for troubleshooting you must have a data engineer. This is the big issue with Forcepoint. The support community is not good."
"Security of browsing."
"Support by vendor is low-medium. You need to rely on yourself or your integrator."
"The biggest issue that hampered Forcepoint was the lack of development and good consistent support."
"Reports in the sand-boxing, ease of deployment of sensors to ready to go server with one click of a button."
"Sometimes attacks or a new ransomware gets through."
"A room for improvement in Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is the support it offers; it's very bad."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"Provided the features Akamai SPS Threat Avert provides, it is bound to be expensive."
"Forcepoint's pricing is moderate."
"Expensive, but with a good reseller you can get a very good price."
"The price of this product should be reduced to make it more competitive."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"The licensing is not expensive."
"The cost for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is lower than that for Zscaler and Netskope. It could be around $4 per user annually."
"Overall, I am not aware of the option to pay for one time use of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway."
"Compared to the other products in the market, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway can be a cost-effective tool."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise16
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
iboss could be improved by making the dashboard more user-friendly, providing more detailed real-time alerts, and imp...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
iboss is primarily used for cloud security, helping to protect users when they access websites and cloud applications...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
The pricing and licensing for iboss were reasonable for the security features. The setup costs were manageable, thoug...
What needs improvement with Akamai SPS Threat Avert?
Since Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is not being used in our campus environment, as our users do not route...
What is your primary use case for Akamai SPS Threat Avert?
Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is designed to protect users' access to the internet.
What advice do you have for others considering Akamai SPS Threat Avert?
Our organization does not utilize the internet access feature of Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise because our...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
I would rate pricing for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway a two out of ten. It's really expensive.
What needs improvement with Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is not endpoint security. If we have a chance to change, we would change it because it ...
What is your primary use case for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
We have no big project, but we are trying to sell it in the market here. We are working with Forcepoint because there...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Akamai Enterprise Threat Protector, Akamai ETP, Akamai SPS Threat Avert
Forcepoint SWG, Websense Web Security, Forcepoint TRITON
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.
MCNC, Educational Testing Service
Adventist Health, Alphawest, Amadori, Anoka County, Compartamos Banco, Davies Turner, EverBank, iGATE, Karlstad Municipality, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Scavolini, Smurfit Kappa, Toyota
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise vs. Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.