Blue Coat Advanced Web & Cloud Security [EOL] vs Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway comparison

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Broadcom and Forcepoint are both solutions in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category. Additionally, 66% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% of Forcepoint users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Blue Coat Advanced Web & Cloud Security [EOL] and Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Zscaler and others in Secure Web Gateways (SWG).

To learn more, read our detailed Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Report (Updated: October 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

October 2026

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Helped 920,769 peers since 2012

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

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula

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.

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Muhammad Bahgat

Senior IT Security at ALEXBANK

Easy to change categories and has many ways to filter

The categorize formula is very helpful. Previously, we used the Cisco solution, where we could not choose how sites are categorized. Blue Coat updated a lot of sites I categorized. There are other valuable features as well, such as block by location, block by IP, allow by IP, and block by user name, domain, or group domain.

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reviewer1047669

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."

"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."

"Its initial setup was straightforward."

"As I mentioned, the return on investment is significant, as it saved our office locations' bandwidth because when you are working remotely at home, your internet traffic routes directly to iboss and will not go to your office building, saving bandwidth bottlenecks and ensuring that issues with our building internet circuits will not impact your internet connectivity because you are directly going to the iboss data center."

"The console is cloud-based, which is something I really appreciate."

"Deploying iboss leads to good return on investment, estimated around 70% to 80%."

"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."

"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."

More iboss pros

"The categorize formula is very helpful. Previously, we used the Cisco solution, where we could not choose how sites are categorized. Blue Coat updated a lot of sites I categorized. There are other valuable features as well, such as block by location, block by IP, allow by IP, and block by user name, domain, or group domain."

"The solution is very stable, and in four years we have not seen any issues with the product."

"If you need web services, this product covers your needs."

"The content filters and SSL encryption are the most valuable features of this solution."

"I have found the web content filtering and malware filter the most valuable."

"The platform is fairly stable."

"They have well-integrated web security and have the enterprise DLP included in the cloud as well."

"Secure Web Gateway's most valuable features are firewall blocking and anti-malware scanning."

"Real-time analytics."

"The DLP functionality is very good, including features like OCR."

"It efficiently categorizes which sites should not be accessed during work hours."

"The functions of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway are most valuable due to Forcepoint's long-standing presence in the Web Security business, as it was formerly called Websense, which was in the market for almost 15 years."

More Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway pros

Cons

"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."

"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."

"Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You feel that you are running into that support wall."

"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."

"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."

"One thing I would like to see differently with their Zero Trust platform is that some of the AI aspects related to high-risk activities have more false positives."

"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."

"The reporting feature needs improvement."

More iboss cons

"The console visibility and the performance impact on the internet needs improvement."

"Every customer has to perform a manual backup, and automatic backing up is needed."

"Java does not completely work. We are dependent on Java and when the current console does not run with Java, it is a problem for us."

"I would rate this solution a three out of ten."

"The technical support needs to be improved."

"Reports in the sand-boxing, ease of deployment of sensors to ready to go server with one click of a button."

"In terms of the policy, the initial setup can be complex."

"There were several issues with the product. Version 8.4 can only be managed with a CLI, they removed the nice GUI interface from version 8.1; the load-balancing needs massive improvements and the incident lists do not sync between appliances, so they need to be manually edited for each one."

"I would suggest focusing on improving the GUI's stability, especially when implementing new filters or patches."

"Ease of use could be improved."

"The Sandbox solution should be integrated with the NIST to handle whatever new vulnerabilities or new sites are identified as potential threats."

"The biggest issue that hampered Forcepoint was the lack of development and good consistent support."

More Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 expensive compared to one of its competitors."

"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."

"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."

"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."

"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."

"The cost is much higher compared to other proxies."

"The solution's pricing is competitive."

"The solution is priced a little high compare to similar solutions."

"The price of this product should be reduced to make it more competitive."

"The price of this solution is reasonable."

"The pricing on Forcepoint Web Security is fair. Fair pricing at current market rates, if you are comparing with the competition."

"It is quite expensive."

"Overall, I am not aware of the option to pay for one time use of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway."

"Expensive, but with a good reseller you can get a very good price."

More Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

No data available

Outsourcing Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	15

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	29

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...

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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...

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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...

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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.

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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 ...

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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...

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Comparisons

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs iboss

Compared 10% of the time

Netskope vs iboss

Compared 8% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs iboss

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs iboss

Compared 6% of the time

FortiSASE vs iboss

Compared 5% of the time

More iboss Competitors

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Blue Coat Advanced Web & Cloud Security [EOL]

Compared 57% of the time

Netskope vs Blue Coat Advanced Web & Cloud Security [EOL]

Compared 15% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs Blue Coat Advanced Web & Cloud Security [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Blue Coat Advanced Web & Cloud Security [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

More Blue Coat Advanced Web & Cloud Security [EOL] Competitors

Fortinet FortiProxy vs Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway

Compared 8% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

Quad9 vs Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway

Compared 2% of the time

More Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

iboss

October 2026

Download iboss product report

Buyer's Guide

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

October 2026

Blue Coat Advanced Web & Cloud Security [EOL] report

Download Blue Coat Advanced Web & Cloud Security [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway

October 2026

Download Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway product report

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform

No data available

Forcepoint SWG, Websense Web Security, Forcepoint TRITON

Overview

iboss is the Zero Trust SASE platform that gives organizations complete visibility and governance over their AI, data, and applications through one unified platform, one console, one policy engine, and one data lake.

Your endpoints may already stop malware. Your data and application activity can still be invisible. iboss decrypts and understands every connection, then turns that signal into answers security leaders can act on.

The platform leads with three capabilities in this order: AI Security and Visibility, Data Security and Visibility, and App Visibility and Control. Zero Trust Network Access, VPN replacement, and SD-WAN sit underneath as the access fabric that carries those three. Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.

What are the most important features of Iboss?

- AI Security and Visibility: conversation capture, shadow-AI discovery, AI DLP, and agent governance across Claude, Co-Work, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok, and emerging services.

- Data Security and Visibility: full SSL/TLS decryption, deep content inspection, MIP label compliance, and one-click compliance reporting.

- App Visibility and Control: signatureless CASB, dual risk scoring, in-app controls, and SSPM for major SaaS.

- Containerized Zero Trust SASE: dedicated containers, isolated SSL keys, one console, one policy engine, one data lake.

- Access fabric: ZTNA, VPN replacement, and SD-WAN under the same platform.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

- Complete visibility over AI, data, and applications from one platform instead of separate point tools.

- Encrypted traffic is inspected by default so data decisions use content and context together.

- Shadow SaaS and new web tools appear as they are used, with enforceable controls in one console.

- Native data sovereignty through dedicated containers, in-region inspection, and per-customer SSL key custody.

- Scale proven in published materials: 10M+ users, 100+ countries, 150B+ transactions, 2.5B+ threats blocked.

Economic buyers are CISOs, CIOs, and VPs of Security. Champions include security architects, network and infrastructure leaders, SecOps, and GRC. Primary segments: enterprise and business, financial services, government (including FedRAMP Gov Cloud), healthcare, manufacturing, legal and professional services, retail and hospitality, and MSP/MSSP partners. Education, including K-12, is one vertical among these.

iboss

The Blue Coat proxy-based architecture serves as the foundation for the Advanced Web Security solutions, and is delivered as a cloud service, on-premise appliance or a hybrid of the two. They combine the critical security functions you need to safely adopt cloud and mobile technologies, while strengthening your security and compliance:

ProxySG (On-Premise Appliance)
Web Security Service (Cloud Service)
Mobile Device Security Service
Content Analysis
Malware Analysis

Broadcom

Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway ensures secure internet access with features like URL filtering and real-time analytics. It's known for robust security, scalability, and integration capabilities, making it ideal for managing web traffic and preventing data loss.

Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is designed to provide comprehensive protection for web traffic while enabling organizations to maintain security and productivity. By integrating well with Forcepoint offerings like DLP and CASB, it offers added functionality. The gateway equips users with tools such as SSL inspection and Shadow IT visibility. Despite its complex setup and challenges with updates, the platform is recognized for its flexibility, performance reliability, and ability to deliver granular policy control. Customers in demanding environments benefit from its extensive IP-based protection and robust report customization capabilities.

What are the standout features?

URL and Content Filtering: Blocks or allows access to websites based on predefined rules.
Real-time Analytics: Provides immediate insights into web traffic and user activity.
Report Customization: Allows tailoring of reports to meet specific needs.
SSL Inspection: Inspects encrypted traffic to ensure security without compromising privacy.
Shadow IT Visibility: Identifies and manages unauthorized applications used by employees.

What benefits can users expect?

Enhanced Security: Protects against advanced malware and data breaches.
Increased Productivity: Blocks undesired websites to keep users focused.
Scalability: Adapts to growing organizational needs efficiently.
Integration with DLP and CASB: Offers expanded protection capabilities.

Government agencies and professional services deploy Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway in on-premises and hybrid cloud setups for enhanced web security. By monitoring and controlling user activity, these entities maintain productivity and protect sensitive data. The gateway effectively manages internal and external web traffic, ensuring cyber threats are minimized. Specific industry needs are addressed with robust security frameworks tailored to maintain data integrity and efficiency.

Forcepoint

Sample Customers

Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.

Information Not Available

Adventist Health, Alphawest, Amadori, Anoka County, Compartamos Banco, Davies Turner, EverBank, iGATE, Karlstad Municipality, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Scavolini, Smurfit Kappa, Toyota

Buyer's Guide

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

October 2026

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