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Barracuda Web Security and Filtering vs Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

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)
7th
Ranking in Web Content Filtering
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (11th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th)
Barracuda Web Security and ...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
27th
Ranking in Web Content Filtering
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
8th
Ranking in Web Content Filtering
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda Web Security and Filtering is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is 4.6%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Wealie Antar - PeerSpot reviewer
It comes with useful policy creation features but needs to improve its outdated tech and poor support
Apart from that, considering other tier-one applications, like Next-Generation Firewall, they also have web security in-built within their appliances or applications. Barracuda is still lagging behind in features like that, so they need to update if they want to be in the top spot. Other features I'd like to see in Barracuda Features are ease-of-use for remote users. If you are a roaming user using an organization laptop, the organization has the right to apply the policy. When you are on-premises, you are opening the policy, not out-of-premises. The application that Barracuda Web Security Gateway provides is pretty clumsy and not very easy to work with, and they need to develop that. Either they provide a test platform that redirects the traffic or vice versa. Moreover, the database is pretty average. Barracuda needs to enhance the database to stop unsolicited traffic. Reporting also needs to be quicker than it is. Barracuda doesn't give you any flexibility to provide reports to higher management. Organizations like us need to do a lot of reporting. When we submit our quarterly report, other appliances allow us to customize or get the reports in a way Barracuda can't because it is rigid with its reporting. Barracuda needs to give users the flexibility to create their reports. The reports offered by the solution are just fine. Finally, acceleration. Right at this moment, most websites are dynamic. For example, organizational websites get updated once a month. If Barracuda can help reduce bandwidth usage and accelerate browsing performance by analyzing these sorts of sites and doing their catching technology work accordingly. Barracuda should also include DNSSEC, which offers strong protection for web security and is offered by competitors. Barracuda should also up their game for scanning and sandboxing. Likewise, their signatures need augmented intelligence or machine learning because you won't always be able to appraise things, and sometimes you have to go beyond that. You need to block it through its behavior.
AhmedHawana - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient user access control enhances productivity and browsing experience
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is mainly used to prevent employees from accessing certain sites and allow others to access specific websites. Based on Forcepoint's insights, we block some sites for classification purposes. It efficiently categorizes which sites should not be accessed during work hours. Additionally, Forcepoint does not affect traffic flow, ensuring a smooth browsing experience.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"The iboss system is highly reliable. The false positive rates are small compared to some other systems we've experienced through other partner agencies who use competing solutions."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."
"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."
"It is straightforward to deploy and manage."
"I have found the most valuable the ability to have insight into our web traffic and control its flow."
"The most valuable features are Barracuda's policies for filtering various websites according to the organization's policies and blocking traffic for any P2P application like torrents."
"Barracuda Web Security and Filtering efficiently blocks phishing emails and provides flexible policy settings."
"The ease of use. It's pretty easy to use and navigate the UI... to either block or whitelist a web address."
"The solution is very simple to use and implement."
"The support is fantastic."
"I like that it does a lot of malicious content and is easy to manage. There are a lot of checkboxes, and you can add your own URLs or get it preconfigured."
"Most valuable features are content filtering and monitoring."
"SWG allows me to track internet usage patterns, helping optimize bandwidth and understand how much time each employee spends online."
"Provides good visibility and good filtering features."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"The Forcepoint client software can be downloaded on a user's machine so that it can filter the sites from home or the office. That's one of the biggest features. We can use it for filtering our laptops for our users at any place."
"The policies are category-based, so knowledge of another content URL is not compulsory."
"It’s pretty stable after you get up and running."
"The tool categorizes the user profiles which is very comfortable."
 

Cons

"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."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"Fold that in with the risk intelligence they're getting from all of the different subscriptions they are a part of. Now, these security companies subscribe to things like emerging threats, databases, etc. You can fold all this intelligence to decide what's happening on an endpoint. I would love to see them start moving into that space. That would compete directly with Microsoft. Maybe that's why they haven't. Having that ability native within the solution would be great. The other area in which I would love to see improvement is more detailed descriptions of why they block websites."
"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."
"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"The solution’s customer support should be improved."
"Barracuda products are cheap."
"The price could be better."
"Considering other tier-one applications, like Next-Generation Firewall, they also have web security in-built within their appliances or applications. Barracuda is still lagging behind in features like that, so they need to update if they want to be in the top spot."
"This solution is substantially more expensive than the competitors out there, including Titan HQ or Limecast."
"They need to provide a Sandbox to safely examine phishing links within emails without infecting our network. Also, I would like more end-to-end email tracing for a clearer understanding of why an email was blocked or not blocked."
"Considering other tier-one applications, like Next-Generation Firewall, they also have web security in-built within their appliances or applications. Barracuda is still lagging behind in features like that, so they need to update if they want to be in the top spot."
"The AD agent is an issue which my customers and I have encountered. Sometimes it refuses to start and, only as time goes by, does it become apparent that things are not working the way they should."
"Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway needs to improve its scalability. We have also encountered less frequent performance issues."
"The product could improve its automation capabilities, improve integration with virtualization, and enhance its web filtering specifics."
"We have a lot of false positives, which is one area that can be improved."
"The performance issues in the product are an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The reporting could be improved."
"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."
"The solution has complexity with the databases, and we have to manually clear old data logs."
"We are using a V10000 G3 appliance. It is just a proxy. It is just HTTP, FTP, and HTTPS. Now, as our website has developed and we are using rich time-connectivity protocols, the proxy doesn't have the ability to work with these protocols. It would be nice if the UDP feature was there for it to filter UDP traffic. It needs firewall capabilities for UDP filtering. Its upgrades can be quite complex, and they don't always go as per the plan. Its reporting could be a bit more granular."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"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 a cost-effective solution."
"Barracuda products are cheap."
"The price could be better. Barracuda started adding more features at the end of 2022. There was no price increase if you bought the maintenance package before the end of 2022. If you signed a three-year contract, you are lucky because there won't be a price increase on those features. Their pricing has increased if you wanted to install all of their features. But they are segmenting. You can buy the whole group, or you can get pieces. But it's tedious. The cost is getting higher than it should."
"The pricing and licensing are comparatively reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The pricing depends upon the number of users."
"The solution is priced a little high compare to similar solutions."
"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."
"Forcepoint's pricing is moderate."
"It is quite expensive."
"The price of this product should be reduced to make it more competitive."
"The solution's price is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company Exxon...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
Previously when I used iboss, we did the POC for iboss for ExxonMobil. Four or five people wanted to move from our ol...
What do you like most about Barracuda Web Security Gateway?
The solution is very simple to use and implement.
What needs improvement with Barracuda Web Security Gateway?
They need to provide a Sandbox to safely examine phishing links within emails without infecting our network. Also, I ...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Security Gateway?
Mainly, I use it for blocking suspicious emails, such as malware or phishing emails, so they don't pass through our e...
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?
The price for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is normal, rated around five to six out of ten.
What needs improvement with Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway ( /products/forcepoint-secure-web-gateway-reviews ) could be improved by offering a Saa...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Barracuda Web Security Gateway, Barracuda Web Filter
Forcepoint SWG, Websense Web Security, Forcepoint TRITON
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Citizen Farmers Finance, Osoyoos Credit Union, Supreme Services, Camden County Technical Schools, Frederick County Schools, Pine Belt Mental Healthcare, Paulsboro Public Schools, Dysart Unified School District, St. Michael's Grammar School, Southfield Schools District, Total Threat Protection - Wade Ford, Alain Pinel Realtors, Southfield Public Schools, Major League Baseball (MLB)
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 Barracuda Web Security and Filtering vs. Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
858,469 professionals have used our research since 2012.