No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Cisco Web Security Appliance vs McAfee Web Protection [EOL] comparison

Sponsored
 

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (5th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (8th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Cisco Web Security Appliance
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (19th)
McAfee Web Protection [EOL]
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
Vusa Ndlovu - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Solution Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Advanced protection features offer robust security while integration process presents challenges
With the WebAssign integration, it is not easy when I am integrating policies within the company, especially with NAND and wireless policies. The challenge arises when traffic is blocked from either wireless or wired connections. Although implementing it as a standalone is quicker, integrating BYOD with Cisco I and FTB can be tiring. Once it is done correctly, the functionality and reports become valuable, although the implementation part can still be challenging.
VivekGupta7 - PeerSpot reviewer
DGM at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Secure, reasonably priced, and performs well
We used cloud services for testing purposes. We used Amazon cloud services. Depending on the solution, there are a variety of options. There are several options such as Endpoint, WAF, NAC, and SIEM are currently available. A variety of solutions are implemented. It was a third-party implementation by Inspira. McAfee also provides an endpoint solution. McAfee's DLP is also present. Previously, we had used Trend Micro and Symantec. There is a method we had to upgrade our systems, a solution was required, and it had to match the three, four solutions from one company that were going to be cheaper, and there is a bidding process, whoever comes first, based on quality and cost, wins the competition. The requirements were speed, quality, and cost. Because Symantec was about to be renewed, our renewal would be more expensive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From a corporate perspective, I understand that it's important to keep the company data safe."
"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 solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"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."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"It operates well, however, the on-premises version is limited in terms of scaling."
"Through my years working with Cisco, I would always recommend Cisco, any product that they provide, thanks to my years of experience."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The product is stable."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance is user-friendly and easy to manage. It protects your environment while accessing the internet."
"The technical support is good, it is reactive, and the documentation is very specific and very useful."
"The most valuable features is of the solution is that it is user-friendly and we get good web security from it."
"The solution is one of the best enterprise-based products in the market and is not expensive compared to others."
"Even if the product, as well with the Advanced Threat Defense costs a lot, it's a long-term investment and will help you with attacks."
"The solution is not too expensive. It's affordable."
"The most valuable feature is the ease in the configuration for security roles."
"One of the best things we've found is when you are at home, all the rules that we applied here in our facility or our office go to the cloud, the same rules apply to anyone who works at home, and we block the ability to go to any site that is found on the blacklist, which has improved a lot lately because now we have almost zero PC compromise."
"The product is very easy to implement, the process is straightforward with no complexities to speak of, and it's very quick to deploy so you can install it and have it up and running in ten minutes."
"I would recommend the solution to others; it works well for me and it is affordable."
"The LiveSafe version works very well and has a very small price."
"It is functional. It has reduced risk and downtime while also ensuring regulatory compliance, which is critical."
 

Cons

"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc. It is easy to gain access if, for example, hackers obtain my username and password."
"The endpoint-type solution is an area that needs some improvement."
"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 the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"The reporting feature needs improvement. It doesn't give you the expected results. It is quite difficult to get the specific reports needed, and it is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform."
"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."
"The one thing I don't like about Cisco is that they are very much fragmented in terms of providing the complete solution. They keep on breaking their different feature sets into different boxes."
"The pricing is too high, so that could be improved."
"It's so expensive. It's $10,000 per year."
"The stability is lacking and is something that should be looked at. We don't find it to be very stable."
"It should have a user-based quota, per-user quota, that can be defined on the appliance."
"The solution could improve the graphical user interface. It is not up to the regular standard of what we would expect from Cisco. Additionally, they need to improve the categorization when blocking in the settings. The CLI could have a better view than the graphical user interface but I did not investigate further."
"We would like to see a security service head, where we can combine all the security into one solution."
"The tool needs to improve cloud-based decryption."
"In McAfee Web Protection there are gaps in the security design, in the overall architecture, the gaps need to be fixed."
"The configuration could be simplified because it is more complex to make the configuration on McAfee. What can be improved is the support of the agent on smartphones, IOS or Android. That still now is not available yet."
"The True Key version for mobile phones should be improved. The password manager is not as seamless as on the desktop. Once implemented, on the desktop, when you go to the site, it automatically fills and connects you, whereas, on the mobile phone, it doesn't do that quite seamlessly. You need to open the True Key application and then select the password you want to use. It then opens in the browser. There are fewer steps in the desktop version as compared to the mobile version."
"We need a better customer experience and more flexibility in the product."
"McAfee Web Protection can improve the information provided for hybrid installations in the console. Additionally, having cloud protection would be good."
"The solution should be more proactive in regards to sending you updates."
"We used a consultant to help us set it up. Unfortunately, he was not that good. They were out of McAfee people. He was a consultant and knew the product, but he was not a McAfee person. How they managed it and how they worked was not straightforward."
"Add McAfee Client Proxy agents for mobiles to Web SaaS instead of the consumer based mobile security platform."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"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."
"I rate the product price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The tool's licensing is yearly."
"The solution's cost depends on how many users you purchase. It was maybe $3 or $5 per user, which is a bit expensive."
"Licensing fees are based on the number of users."
"I know from the manager that the price is too high and that other solutions offer the same features for less."
"I rate Cisco WSA a seven out of ten since it is costly."
"The pricing is too high."
"The pricing is cheaper than some of the other options that are available."
"The license number would be approximately $35,000."
"In McAfee Web Protection you have the ability to install any appliance you want with the same license. If you need an appliance on-premise, you can install it with the same license because the license is for users, not for appliances. If you need one more, you can install it and you don't have problems with the license or need to change your environment."
"It is not very expensive. It costs 100 Canadian Dollars per year per license. I buy one-year or two-year protection. The license covers my PC, laptops, and telephone. The cost is per user but for multiple devices. It has just the standard licensing fees. There are some options for extended protection. For example, if I wanted to have a VPN, there will be an extra cost. So, there are upgradable features, but I'm very happy with what it is giving me with the basic plan. It gives me the basic privacy protection that I need."
"$150 Canadian per year."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
899,125 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Marketing Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
10%
Performing Arts
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We used iBoss mainly for Internet Access by having an Agent on Windows laptops Primarily because when we try to use i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
I am not involved in pricing, but as per the information I have, during that time, the Blue Coat proxies we were usin...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Web Security Appliance?
Comparing with other products, Cisco has more functionality, but pricing is a challenge. Cisco is not a product for s...
What needs improvement with Cisco Web Security Appliance?
With the WebAssign integration, it is not easy when I am integrating policies within the company, especially with NAN...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Web Security Appliance?
The user interface that I usually provide for the web app includes malware protection, URL filtering, data loss preve...
Do you recommend McAfee Web Protection?
I highly recommend McAfee Web Protection. In my opinion, it is a comprehensive web protection platform with a great f...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Cisco WSA, Cisco Web Security
McAfee Web Gateway, McAfee SaaS Web Protection
 

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.
New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Caixa Seguradora
Sicredi
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Zscaler and others in Secure Web Gateways (SWG). Updated: May 2026.
899,125 professionals have used our research since 2012.