We performed a comparison between Cisco Web Security Appliance and Symantec Proxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Web Security Appliance is the better choice when compared to Symantec Proxy. It has a user-friendly interface, strong features such as SSL decryption and Umbrella DNS security, and is reasonably priced. While Symantec Proxy has a strong URL database and granular policy creation, it is criticized for its difficult deployment, expensive pricing, and mixed reviews on customer support.
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The solution is stable."
"This solution offers categorization for YouTube and other specific applications from Facebook to WhatsApp, which can be controlled whether it's on mobile or PC."
"Since working with the tool, we have not found any threats in our organization."
"The deployment process is very simple."
"It integrates well with Cisco Email Security Appliance."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the functions of proxy for the users who use the internet and the security it offers against the not-so-secure web pages."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance is user-friendly and easy to manage. It protects your environment while accessing the internet."
"This appliance gives me good visibility in the userbase and their activities."
"The setup was very easy and straightforward."
"It enables us to manage bandwidth for users based on their privilege levels. For example, if a user wants to use a certain application or resource, we can provide access based on their privileges."
"The most valuable feature of Symantec Proxy is the support and autoscaling."
"The initial setup of Symantec Proxy is easy."
"The tool's most valuable features are content-to-content filtration and SCCM protection."
"It is easy to use, and it is stable and scalable. You don't need a large team for deployment and maintenance."
"We can address and rectify issues promptly, resulting in consistently positive outcomes."
"What I found most valuable in Symantec Proxy is that it doesn't have any limitations. It also has a simple configuration, with only one window pane, unlike Zscaler, which has multiple window panes. Deploying the agent is also more straightforward in Symantec Proxy."
"The content that we are getting is very good. Content caching is also supported."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"Technical support needs to be improved because they take a very long time and there is no communication or notification."
"The support for this solution could be improved. We have experienced issues with their SMARTnet support system."
"The solution needs to be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"Customer support is good but could be improved."
"As Cisco Web Security Appliance is eight years old, though it's simple to access its UI, the UI needs a little bit of updating. If it could be more interactive similar to the latest gen solutions, that would improve the product. Adding a few more integrations would also make Cisco Web Security Appliance better."
"The transparent proxy is quite difficult to enforce on smartphones and tablets."
"The reporting needs improvement."
"The tool needs to provide logs. They need to improve firewall threat defense."
"There are performance issues with all of the proxies."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"Support response time and case resolution could be improved."
"The solution is quite complex."
"Activating the SSL inspection is one of the challenges. We are currently moving to the O365 cloud, and one of the challenges is the performance when all of our users are connected to O365 by a proxy."
"The initial setup is actually quite complex to install because our users don't have admin rights on the boxes and there's no remote install option by an administrator."
"The user interface could be improved, and the price could be lower as well."
"The deployment is quite difficult."
Cisco Web Security Appliance is ranked 10th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 29 reviews while Symantec Proxy is ranked 15th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 18 reviews. Cisco Web Security Appliance is rated 7.8, while Symantec Proxy is rated 7.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Web Security Appliance writes "Ensures security for remote workers". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Symantec Proxy writes "A user-friendly solution with good technical support". Cisco Web Security Appliance is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Zscaler Internet Access, Fortinet FortiProxy, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway and Check Point Web Gateway, whereas Symantec Proxy is most compared with Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, Skyhigh Security, Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway, McAfee Web Gateway Cloud Service and Cato SASE Cloud Platform. See our Cisco Web Security Appliance vs. Symantec Proxy report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.
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