Cisco Secure Access vs Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker comparison

Cisco Secure Access vs. Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker

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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 Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker is 1.0%, up from 0.7% 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%
Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker	1.0%
Other	89.7%

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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Farzad Ebrahimi

Senior Devsecops Cloud Cybersecurity Specialist at CGI

Layered security has protected our cloud AI apps and significantly reduced attack incidents

The best features Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker offers are multilayer protection against security attacks and escalation. The escalation feature in Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker is valuable because we are using more and more users, and it is very scalable in relation to the number of users using the same app on the cloud. The performance of Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker stands out as the number of attacks blocked is more than 90%. Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker has positively impacted my organization by resolving all of the security issues related to app security. I can share specific outcomes, such as a reduction in the number of incidents, which is more than 90% related to the past.

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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

"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 has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."

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

"From a corporate perspective, I understand that it's important to keep the company data safe."

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

"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."

More iboss pros

"The integrated capabilities of Cisco Secure Access deliver significant ROI through reduced mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR), with resource efficiency notably improved as fewer personnel are needed for triage and system management."

"It works well. It hasn't broken. While I don't know enough about all the features yet, it hasn't caused us any problems."

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

"I find the zero trust approach helpful and beneficial in securing standard applications, which means you are accessing the applications directly instead of giving privilege to access the network itself."

"I believe Cisco Secure Access is the best option on the market at the moment; it is the right and recommended choice."

"It is very flexible, a very competitive solution, very helpful, and very secure; it includes everything a business needs, and the pricing is also available."

"Giving the customer peace of mind has been one of the biggest benefits we have seen, and my security team probably knows more details on my side."

"The feature I like the most about Cisco Secure Access is the whole concept of zero trust, as it is exactly what we need and I believe that Cisco Secure Access is the future of cybersecurity."

More Cisco Secure Access pros

"The quarantine feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."

"The tool's most valuable feature is reporting. It helps us understand what's going on in our environment."

"The product is stable."

"Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker has positively impacted my organization by resolving all of the security issues related to app security."

"From stability and availability standpoints, it is pretty good."

Cons

"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."

"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."

"I appreciate that iboss's single pane of glass console gives centralized visibility into web traffic, user activity, security policies, and alerts from one dashboard, allowing us to quickly investigate incidents and monitor policy violations without switching between multiple tools, improving operational efficiency; however, the dashboard customization and reporting could be more flexible."

"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."

"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."

"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."

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

"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."

More iboss cons

"I have had experience with customer service and technical support already. It was not very good because we always have to escalate to engineering with our problems, so the TAC cannot help us."

"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."

"To improve Cisco Secure Access, I believe there should be better clarity from Cisco regarding where organizations should focus their investments."

"One big challenge which I see with Cisco is their MDR capabilities. They do not provide it as a service, which Palo Alto does provide."

"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."

"I would describe my experience deploying Cisco Secure Access as working well, though we are hitting bugs."

"However, the cost of Cisco's products and licensing is high, and mid-size or smaller businesses typically cannot afford Cisco Secure Access."

"When speaking about improvements for Cisco Secure Access, the licensing structure is an area of concern, as many users struggle to understand how it works."

More Cisco Secure Access cons

"They are priced significantly higher and less cost-effective than alternative options."

"The TLS encryption needs to be improved. It's not state of the art."

"Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker should be cheaper."

"I think some of the hiccups that we had were with the number of domains that we had and how that had to be implemented in Proofpoint."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"The tool's most valuable feature is reporting. It helps us understand what's going on in our environment."

"We had an enterprise contract with them for about 32,000 users at that point, which has now grown."

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915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

Financial Services Firm

17%

Outsourcing Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

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...

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 ...

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...

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. ...

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 ...

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...

What needs improvement with Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker?

Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker can be improved with more AI features, as it could help. I feel it is fine to no...

What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker?

My main use case for Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker is to protect our applications on the cloud against securit...

What advice do you have for others considering Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker?

My advice to others looking into using Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker is that more AI features are needed. Proo...

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs iboss

Comparisons

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

Forcepoint CASB vs Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker

Compared 25% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker

Compared 22% of the time

Netskope vs Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker

Compared 14% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker

Compared 12% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker

Compared 8% of the time

More Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker Competitors

Product Reports

iboss

Download iboss product report

Download Cisco Secure Access product report

Cisco Secure Access

October 2026

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)

Download Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker product report

Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker report

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform

No data available

FireLayers, PCASB

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

Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker provides comprehensive security for cloud applications, helping organizations protect against data breaches and manage compliance within cloud environments efficiently.

Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker leverages a combination of advanced threat protection, data loss prevention, and identity management to secure cloud-based applications. By offering visibility and control over user activities, it enables IT professionals to mitigate risks and ensure compliance with industry regulations. Its seamless integration with existing security frameworks allows for a streamlined approach to safeguarding digital assets.

What are the main features of Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker?

Advanced Threat Protection: Shields against sophisticated cyber threats targeting cloud applications.
Data Loss Prevention: Detects and prevents unauthorized data sharing across platforms.
Visibility & Control: Provides comprehensive insights into user activities for enhanced monitoring.
Identity Management: Ensures secure access by managing user credentials and permissions.

What benefits and ROI should users expect from Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker?

Enhanced Security Posture: Reduce risks by securing sensitive data in cloud applications.
Compliance Assurance: Meets regulatory requirements through effective monitoring and controls.
Cost Efficiency: Minimizes security costs with integrated solutions compatible with existing systems.
Operational Ease: Streamlines deployment process for faster time-to-value.

In finance, healthcare, and education, Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker is implemented to protect data privacy and meet compliance standards specific to each industry. By tailoring configurations to sector-specific needs, organizations leverage its capabilities to maintain robust security and support regulatory adherence.

Proofpoint

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

Emerging Technologies, HP, CSA, Perion

Cisco Secure Access vs. Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker