Cisco Secure Access vs CloudLock comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Cisco Secure Access and CloudLock are both solutions in the Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category. Cisco Secure Access is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.5, while CloudLock is ranked #23. Cisco Secure Access holds a 4.8% mindshare in CASB, compared to CloudLock’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco Secure Access users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of CloudLock users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Access and CloudLock based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Access vs. CloudLock Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Access vs. CloudLock

September 2026

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category, the mindshare of iboss is 4.5%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Access is 4.8%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudLock is 1.1%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Access	4.8%
iboss	4.5%
CloudLock	1.1%
Other	89.6%

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)

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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reviewer2788500

Network Operations Engineer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Secure access has unified zero trust and web protection while AI assistance automates tasks

From a feature perspective, I have not experienced any issues, drawbacks, or shortcomings. However, the cost of Cisco's products and licensing is high. My clients usually prefer cheaper options if possible. Mid-size or smaller businesses typically cannot afford Cisco Secure Access. Additionally, there is a steep learning curve, as it is very intensive. Someone with significant knowledge can work on it, but a new professional would have to spend considerable time to get accustomed to it. It is hard to find engineers who can work on it. Overall, we get what we pay for, as it is a pretty good feature and service. The pricing of Cisco's products and licensing is higher than competitors. If they could be more reasonable, that would help. The support offered for two years also has higher costs. Overall, the client's IT budget gets affected. It was challenging to learn because, as mentioned, it has a significant learning curve and requires considerable training to become proficient.

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reviewer779877

Senior Software Engineer with 501-1,000 employees

Screens sensitive data but it should be a bigger part of an end-user device

The only improvement is that it has to be a bigger part of an end-user device. It should look at how endpoints appear on the EDR rather than creating an API to integrate into the agent app which need additional development effort. We have to integrate the source code into the system endpoint and make it as part of the connected app.

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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

"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."

"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."

"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 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."

"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."

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

"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 students were always protected, and the content filtering worked very well, seeming to work better than other products we had tried previously."

More iboss pros

"If you have every solution with Cisco, you can see a very good ROI because you do not need to invest much on staffing for analyzing each and every console separately."

"The overall success of Cisco Secure Access has significantly improved my organization's security posture in terms of security and usability compared to the previous solution, which was fairly convoluted with several different hops required to log in every day from home."

"It's pretty streamlined. Everything you need to find is in the GUI interface, and if you have any trouble, it's easy to navigate and get around."

"The best features Cisco Secure Access offers include stability, and with 4,000 people using it and not many tickets, Cisco Secure Access has positively impacted my organization by providing stable VPN access to the data center, leading to measurable outcomes with fewer tickets."

"My boss loves Cisco Secure Access, as it finally gave him the ability to look at what people were doing and stop them from doing unwise things."

"Cisco Secure Access has had a positive impact on protecting our organization from threats such as phishing and ransomware."

"The benefits are that people just need to connect and they have their whole environment available for everybody, it feels the same as if they were in the office, plus they are safe against malware."

"What I like the most about Cisco Secure Access is that it is really easy to use and it is secure."

More Cisco Secure Access pros

"I like CloudLock because when data gets sent out, I do not want it to get out of the environment."

"It allows us to know where sensitive data is really stored and offers the ability to quarantine based on data types and sharing criteria."

"The solution is very stable and reliable."

"It is a good CASB solution for protection of collaboration of content."

"The cloud infrastructure is the solution's most valuable feature."

"I like CloudLock because when data gets sent out, I do not want it to get out of the environment. In today's world, a lot of users will remotely use the application. It screens all of the sensitive data. That data will really be as part of the environment that you do not want it to be part of. CloudLock is protection for sensitive data."

"CloudLock is a great solution if you use multiple cloud systems like Google, Salesforce, AWS, and so on, because you can scan all systems with one tool."

Cons

"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."

"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers. This type of encryption is tough for any appliance in a BYOD environment."

"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."

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

"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."

"The reporting feature needs improvement."

"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."

"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."

More iboss cons

"The worst part was the migration from Umbrella to Cisco Secure Access; we experienced some difficulties during that process."

"Cisco Secure Access can be improved by developing a portal to control all tools together, which is the feature I want most as we are on this journey and learning about it."

"I chose eight out of ten primarily due to only the PoP presence."

"There is one particular disadvantage of Cisco Secure Access, and the main thing is pricing."

"Most of the Cisco AI offerings are relatively new and do not have all the bells and whistles."

"Comparing Cisco Secure Access to something like Cloudflare One, in the future the cost can come down."

"This is my first time in healthcare after being in commercial space for a long time. It's always a challenge because we can't just turn stuff off as we could in the commercial space, since it may interfere with patient care. It takes longer to understand what's going on, so anything that could help give us a faster understanding of what's happening, why it's there, and if it's a risk to us would be helpful."

"The ease of managing Cisco Secure Access is quite challenging; it is not user-friendly, and we have to involve too much time to review the information available in the dashboard, which can be confusing."

More Cisco Secure Access cons

"The solution needs to have better integration capabilities. I have a lot of customers asking about how they can integrate it better."

"The only improvement is that it has to be a bigger part of an end-user device."

"Like all CASB products, this product also needs to expand its capabilities and features in order to increase scope of application."

"The only improvement is that it has to be a bigger part of an end-user device. It should look at how endpoints appear on the EDR rather than creating a separate agent. We have to integrate the source code into the system endpoint and make it an agent."

"As long as this issue exists, CloudLock or any other product is only a band-aid solution."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"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 not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."

"The pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Cisco Secure Access have been very competitive compared to other platforms. I believe that if Cisco continues to improve costs or offers something similar to a Cisco credit, it would attract more customers."

"For what you get, it's a fair price in comparison to other products."

"It is confusing. When you look at the prices, you have different licensing and years of licensing that you have to purchase. Additionally, it's unclear what service you get from those licenses regarding end-user support. We have a representative who has to walk me through it every time."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	28
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	41

No data available

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?

I think iboss could be improved by making reporting and dashboard customization more flexible, and simplifying troubl...

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What is your primary use case for iboss?

I use iboss as a cloud-based secure web gateway to provide secure internet access, web filtering, and protect remote ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?

My experience with iboss's pricing structure, setup cost, and licensing model has been positive, straightforward, and...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Access?

The pricing is not too bad because it's per headcount with Cisco Secure Access. You check how many clients you have. ...

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What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Access?

I am dealing with Cisco Secure Access products. As a consultant and reseller, I am using it myself with Cisco Secure ...

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What advice do you have for others considering Cisco Secure Access?

The AI element of Cisco Secure Access should have better guidance on the logs. To be honest, I can't think of anythin...

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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 8% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs iboss

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs iboss

Compared 3% of the time

More iboss Competitors

Cisco Umbrella vs Cisco Secure Access

Compared 11% of the time

FortiSASE vs Cisco Secure Access

Compared 8% of the time

Netskope vs Cisco Secure Access

Compared 8% of the time

Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) vs Cisco Secure Access

Compared 5% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs Cisco Secure Access

Compared 2% of the time

More Cisco Secure Access Competitors

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs CloudLock

Compared 23% of the time

Skyhigh Security vs CloudLock

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs CloudLock

Compared 16% of the time

Oracle CASB Cloud Service vs CloudLock

Compared 9% of the time

Netskope vs CloudLock

Compared 8% of the time

More CloudLock Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

iboss

September 2026

Download iboss product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Access

October 2026

Download Cisco Secure Access product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)

September 2026

Download CloudLock product report

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform

No data available

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

Cisco Secure Access is a comprehensive Security Service Edge (SSE) solution (a key component of a SASE solution) that addresses the complexities of securing a hybrid enterprise. Cloud-delivered and grounded in zero trust, it delivers a unique blend of user simplicity and IT efficiency for frictionless, secure access to all applications—SaaS (with gen AI), private apps, and the internet—regardless of user location or device. Secure Access protects users, data, and devices against relentless, sophisticated, and constantly evolving threats including AI-driven attacks and identity breaches.

Provides all core SSE components (ZTNA, SWG, CASB, and FWaaS) plus extended capabilities.

Includes VPN-as-a-Service (VPNaaS), data loss prevention (DLP), AI Assistant, visibility/control/guardrails for generative AI use, digital experience monitoring (DEM), reserved IP, remote browser isolation (RBI), DNS-layer security, flexible security enforcement (in cloud or on-premises), policy verification, and more.
Protects users as they seamlessly access resources and apps with no extra steps needed, regardless of protocol, port, or level of customization
Simplifies IT operations through a single client, single dashboard, single license, and unified policies.
Lowers risk with least privilege, granular controls backed with unmatched threat intelligence of Cisco Talos.
Eases interoperability with other products from Cisco and third-party vendors with common administrative controls, data structures, and policy management.

Robust integrations

Integrates with Cisco Identity Intelligence to protect against the startling increase in identity-based attacks.
Integrates with many SAML Identity Providers (IDPs) such as AD, Azure AD, Okta, Ping, etc.
Integrates with Cisco offerings including SD-WAN, Splunk, XDR, Thousand Eyes, third party technologies such as Menlo RBI, Chrome Enterprise Browser, and AppOmni for SSPM.

Cisco

CloudLock provides advanced security solutions for cloud-based environments by allowing organizations to monitor, control, and secure data without affecting user functionality.

CloudLock offers an integrated approach to data protection, helping businesses manage compliance and security challenges across their cloud platforms. It enables real-time policy enforcement and anomaly detection across cloud applications, ensuring sensitive data is adequately safeguarded while facilitating seamless collaboration.

What are CloudLock's essential features?

Policy Management: Implements policies to control data access and sharing in cloud environments.
Threat Detection: Identifies suspicious activities using behavioral analytics to enhance security measures.
Compliance Monitoring: Assists organizations in adhering to industry regulations through continuous compliance tracking.
App Discovery: Detects and manages third-party applications connected to organization networks.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces costs by preventing data breaches and compliance penalties.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlines security processes, allowing teams to focus on core objectives.
Risk Reduction: Minimizes risks through comprehensive monitoring and threat intelligence.
Enhanced Security Posture: Strengthens defenses with advanced threat detection capabilities.

In various industries like healthcare and finance, CloudLock is adopted to ensure that data meets regulatory compliance standards. By integrating seamlessly across cloud platforms, businesses in these fields can protect sensitive information, supporting stringent privacy requirements while promoting operational efficiency.

Cisco

Sample Customers

Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.

1. IBM 2. Microsoft 3. Amazon 4. Google 5. Apple 6. Cisco Systems 7. Oracle 8. Intel 9. HP Inc. 10. Dell Technologies 11. Verizon Communications 12. AT&T 13. Comcast 14. T-Mobile 15. Sprint 16. Vodafone 17. Orange 18. BT Group 19. Deutsche Telekom 20. Telefonica 21. Nokia 22. Ericsson 23. Samsung Electronics 24. Sony 25. Panasonic 26. LG Electronics 27. Siemens 28. General Electric 29. Ford Motor Company 30. General Motors 31. Toyota Motor Corporation 32. Volkswagen Group

Dominion Enterprises, Quality Distribution, Clark Construction Group LLC, Ahold, Middlesex Hospital, Austin Community College (ACC), Dominion Enterprises, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Oakland Unified School District, Sunnova, Damballa, Financial Times, Boise State University

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Access vs. CloudLock

September 2026

Free Report: Cisco Secure Access vs. CloudLock

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Access vs. CloudLock and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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