iboss Reviews

We are a K–12 school district. We have an on-prem box. We use our on-prem box to filter the local traffic for our users, staff, teachers, and everybody on there as well as the students.

We also have a cloud instance. We use Chromebooks here in the district. We use their Chrome plug-in to filter the students' devices, both on-site and off-site. When they take the devices home, they are filtered at home as well.

In terms of day-to-day usage, it is very simplistic. You have a cloud interface. Everything is online. You could sign in, make any sort of changes, and view and do active monitoring to see if there is anything that needs to be done. The initial setup, like with any product, takes a long amount of time because you need to figure things out. You need to figure out what you want to block and what you do not want to block category-wise and weighting-wise, but once it is up and running and you have everything in there, there is not much to do. We are not in there every day. You kind of set it and forget it. Once everything is set up, you just leave it alone unless there is an issue, somebody cannot access a site, some site is blocked, or you want to actively block a new site because some kids found some new game site to get to or whatnot. Once it is up and running, you do not have to do much to maintain it.

The console is very good. You can access everything from it. I like the layout of it. It somewhat mirrored some of the older interfaces, but I definitely like the layout and the ease of use of it, and I never struggle to find what I am looking for.

It did help us a bit with consolidation. We removed the on-premise monitoring or filtering thing that was doing the logging. We removed the logging side of it that was on-premises. It did help us do that because that went to the cloud in association with the actual product to do the filtering itself. They have what they call the reporter and then the actual iboss appliance. Moving that reporter to the cloud helped push everything into a single pane of glass, which made everything a lot nicer to work with for sure.

The single-pane-of-glass console helped our organization improve security. We can get in there and see what sites are being attempted to be accessed a little bit more easily through that single pane of glass than before. Previously, we had multiple tabs open, and we were clicking back and forth. I like the real-time log being associated on the cloud, and I also like that it is accessible from anywhere. If I am off-site at a meeting and somebody contacts me about it, I do not have to VPN in. I can just log in to that site from wherever I am and do what is needed.

iboss gives you great visibility into what is being utilized inside the network. You can see the traffic flow, what sites the kids are accessing, and what sites the staff are accessing. It is a very good tool if you are looking to monitor bandwidth or try to figure out what is being utilized within the network. It would be a big tool if you are trying to do this sort of analysis of data traffic because it does log all that. You get to see top sites visited, top sites blocked, and some of that information, which definitely would give you some insight into what your Internet is being used for.

iboss definitely helped our organization reduce security incidents. It is stopping people from going to sites that could potentially be harmful or contain spyware or malware, or something that could potentially get into the network and cause us problems. It is doing its job and blocking out sites that are potentially hazardous. Our network is safer with it in place.

We could see its benefits immediately. Prior to going to iboss, we were using another filtering product. I was very unhappy with it. It was very clunky. I struggled to get things unblocked and manage it. It became very cumbersome. I was new here at the time, so we started to look at different products. We demoed quite a few products. We demoed Lightspeed. We demoed iboss. We demoed a couple of others. We liked the interface of iboss the most, and we all made that decision. Once we got it in and up and running, I was so much happier because I went from such a terrible product to a good product. I felt like it was easy to manage. The iboss team was very good at helping us get everything implemented and get us going in the right direction to get everything in there. I was immediately happy with it after the switchover. 

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. With some of the other filtering solutions that we looked at in the past, a lot of times, if you wanted to filter when the devices were not onsite, you had to funnel that traffic back to your network all the time to send the filtering back to them. I like the fact that the plug-in is just in there, and we can control the devices regardless of where they are. Also, that stops kids from circumventing or jumping onto another network or a hot spot or trying to use a VPN client. It does not matter because the plug-in still blocks them from being able to access content that we do not want them to be able to access.

Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box. It may come at a higher cost because it would have higher CPU and RAM, but they should at least offer a box that would be a single pane or a single device that we could put in the network allowing us to go above one gig. That would be the one thing I would say to them. They would probably come back saying that they have put everything into the cloud, which is a possibility, but it is a lot more work. I like the way we have our configuration set up currently, and I hesitate to go away from it because it has been so successful for us for such a long time. Offering an on-premise device that allows something above a gigabit connection would be one thing that I would ask them to provide. I hope they will do that in the future.

We switched to iboss in 2014 or 2015, so it has been nine or ten years since we started using it.

It is super stable. We have not had any issues with the box, even the older boxes. It is super stable. I have not experienced anything in particular that would tell me that it is not stable.

It is super scalable because we could just pivot at any point and go all to the cloud. That is the one benefit of it. If we wanted to scale to that, we could scale to that. They did say that we could stack another box in there. If we want to go with a two-gig inbound connection or a three-gig, we could stack a third box in there. It is scalable. The solution is absolutely scalable, but there is a cost of that.

They are great. They get right back to you. Every time I have been on a call with them, they seem very knowledgeable. We can do a screen share or not. I always walk away from those support calls with a little bit more knowledge than I had about the product before, which is always a good thing.

Recently, we were dealing with something, and I got to know that there is a pack file where you can exclude certain traffic for monitoring because it fills up the logs quite quickly. I did not know that was even there. It might have been a new feature, but they showed us how to do that. I utilized it probably four or five months after the call because I was working on something and I thought I could use that pack file. When I get off those calls, I tend to pick something up that I could put in my pocket and carry on, and down the line that might come in handy.

Positive

When I originally started here, I used SonicWall's firewall. They had a built-in content filter. I used that, and there was this old product that was here when I originally started, which was MX570 or something. I cannot even remember what it was. Those were the two previous filtering applications that I had used.

It was fairly easy. The iboss team was very good. Support worked with us very well and helped us get everything going. I did not have too many problems. Their team did a great job of helping us, and we rolled it out pretty easily.

It probably took us more than a day to get it in place, but it took us several weeks of tweaking the different categories and weights. We set up blocking for what we wanted to block and created our groups and other things. It took us a couple of weeks to configure everything and figure out what is not being blocked, or what is listed as education but it should not be. We had to go through that and work through those problems slowly but surely over time.

The plug-in does require some maintenance. When they release a new version of the plug-in, it needs to be updated. We do have it set to auto-update and whatnot, but we had some issues last year with a site being blocked, and it was weird. We reached out for support. They helped us through it, and we had to unpublish that version and then re-push a new version of the plug-in and make some configuration changes on the backend in Google Admin Console to make sure that they were being filtered properly into the right groups, so there is a little bit of maintenance. You do need to go in there and periodically make sure everything is going as expected.

We did it all in-house by ourselves.

I do not know whether it helped with cost reduction per se because we probably pay a little bit more now. Everything was on-site or on-premises earlier. We paid a licensing fee when we initially set it up and then did a five-year agreement or a three-year agreement. Through the renewal process and going to the cloud, it did end up costing us a little bit more because we are paying per device for that. As far as I know, we are paying per device for the plug-in for Chrome, so I do not know if it is much cost-saving, but I do like the layout of it.

I do not know what we renewed at the last time. It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side. I implement the product, manage the product, and also select the product, but somebody else takes care of whether we can afford it.

Lightspeed was one we looked at. The Palo Alto firewall had some sort of thing. We definitely looked at iboss and at least two or three demos of competitors to iboss.

I liked the interface of iboss. I liked the configuration of how it is laid out. I also reached out to a couple of other people. We are in the K-12 school district. We have some friends in other districts who were using the product and had given good reviews. I compared that with some of the other districts that were running Lightspeed and a couple of the other ones. Overall, after looking at the product and then getting recommendations from some outside people, I just thought it was the right path to go down.

Be prepared to work through some problems with pages being blocked or sites being blocked that were not blocked in another filter. Have everything ready to go. I got everything that I needed to be unblocked.

You will have to tweak it, so be ready to tweak it and embrace that. If you run into any issues at all, contact their support. They are good, and they will be able to help walk you through figuring out where you are being blocked. If you run into any sort of thing, be prepared to tweak it. For the first few months of having it in place, you are going to be in that interface a lot. Once you get that all configured, you can just set it and forget it.

I would rate iboss a nine out of ten.

We are a PreK-12 public school district, and we use iboss to filter internet content for our students at home and staff member devices to ensure they do not access inappropriate sites.

iboss alerts us to activities that we would not necessarily know or monitor, such as attempts by users to access proxies to bypass filtering. 

I am sure it saves us costs because it prevents students from loading malware. It saves the amount of time it would take to bring these computers back, rebuild their operating system, and send them out. 

We cut down on staff issues or malware because we are blocking that actively. We let it block things by category. We are preventing all installs of things that would cause work for us. It has cut down about 15% of our time in managing workstations. iboss has reduced security incidents by 25%.

iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good. They are responsive.

As with any software, there is a learning curve. Overall, it is pretty straightforward. It is web-based. It is easy to use.

I have the same complaint about them that I have about other software companies. 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. This 'runaround' can be bothersome, but once the sales rep is involved, the issue is usually quickly resolved.

I have been using iboss since 2015, so it has been around eight years.

Since moving to the cloud, we have not experienced any downtime. When it was on-premises, we encountered a hardware failure that took some time to work around. It took half a day of downtime, but the transition to the cloud has been stable. Now that it is in the cloud, we get notifications. They keep us in the loop about when they are having problems, but so far, their problems have not taken us down.

I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

iboss is scalable, and increasing the number of devices is straightforward as we only need to inform our representative to adjust capacity. There is a fee associated with that.

We have about 12,000 users. We are in one county, and we have 21 sites or physically different addresses that we manage. All those devices have iboss.

Support is generally good, but the initial engagement through standard protocols can be cumbersome until our sales representative intervenes to assist.

Positive

iboss has been our main vendor. We had another vendor's built-in content filter, which was limited and site-based. We are using iboss globally for filtering our devices off-site.

When we originally got it, it was on-prem. Over the years, we have moved to the cloud. When it was on-prem, it was hands-on. You build an installer and send that installer out, whereas now, they take care of everything. In the cloud, it is fairly straightforward and quick.

The initial deployment of iboss took about half a day, with about a week to fine-tune the settings. Migrating to the cloud took an hour and a half. It was very quick to do that. Making sure everything worked after going to the cloud probably took two or three days. They stuck with us the whole month, so it was pretty good.

In terms of maintenance, we used to have to go in and update the devices for the clients. Since migrating to the cloud and within the last two or three years, they have the ability to auto-release updates. You just need to select the channel you want.

We are on a stable channel. We just sit back, and literally, it takes care of itself from that point.

It is hard to put a number on the ROI, but there have been about 15% time savings overall. 

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

I would recommend iboss because it has been stable. We have not had any major issues. It served us well during COVID. When the home devices of others were collapsing and not working, all of ours worked.

I would rate iboss a nine out of ten. There is room for improvement when it comes to the support aspect.

We use iboss for cloud proxy, CASB, and SSL inspection. I am gradually evaluating the zero trust feature of it.

iboss helped us consolidate our security solutions that were previously scattered across different platforms. Previously, we had different solutions for CASB, SSL inspection, proxy, and other functions. This consolidation did not significantly reduce the costs, but it did help.

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 dangers. It has been helping us a lot.

We were able to realize its benefits within a month and a half. In the beginning, I had to work hard to get it up and running and ensure that people other than me could also run it. From the users' perspective, the benefits were seen right away, but from an admin perspective, it took us about a month and a half to get going and see its benefits.

There are a lot of valuable features. Cloud proxy is valuable, and SSL inspection is also valuable. It is pretty heavy to keep track of it all, but once you get it up and running, it is pretty good. In terms of ranking, I would say that Cloud proxy comes first, followed by SSL inspection, and then CASB.

It is fairly pretty easy to use once you get around it. It took me probably a month to get used to it and get the hang of it. As with the other cloud providers, the UI changes a little here and there every once in a while, so I have to keep up with that. Other than that, it is fairly easy to use. Everything is straightforward. We use their web admin console.

We can integrate with a lot of cloud solutions but not as many as I would hope to. We have a lot of visibility into the major ones, such as Microsoft or Google solutions, but they still have a way to go in getting it integrated with other third-party applications and getting visibility into them.

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. Configuring zero trust requires a lot of manual setup, whereas with other solutions, that comes prepackaged. If they can reach the other vendors' level in regards to setting it up, it would be good. That is something that I want to see improved.

We started using iboss approximately three years ago, and including the proof of concept, it's been about four years.

In terms of stability, iboss has been stable for end users for the past couple of years. Initially, there were some issues with agents not starting up, but for the past couple of years, it has been stable for end users. However, on the admin end, we have had a couple of problems with replacing the SSL certificate, which was a big hassle. Additionally, we lost some proxy access logs due to cloud node updates.

We have been running it with two nodes since the beginning and have not had a need to scale beyond that. The only thing that we have scaled is the log partition. That was pretty fast. That was done in about a week after we ordered it. According to what I have read, the scalability of the node is supposed to be fast and reliable, but we have not implemented it yet.

Their support is very good. It is wonderful. They are very fast. I have not seen anything faster than iboss support. The quality of it is exceptional. They go a step further to investigate issues on a case-by-case basis, which has been a tremendous help. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We did not use any similar solution before. 

When I joined this company, iboss was not even in the talks. About four years ago, we had to review all our Internet security solutions. I was the one who did the PoC, and I was the one who implemented it. I was the one who pretty much got it up and running with the help of a few people.

The initial setup of iboss was fairly easy because we used distribution software to install it across all clients. It took us about a month from start to finish.

Maintenance-wise, there is not much. I check the admin console every day, but in regards to node maintenance and agent maintenance, everything is done automatically on the iboss end. That is pretty good.

The implementation was carried out in-house with the help of the iboss support team. It was a team effort, involving probably four or five people.

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.

My company is strict on spending. We cannot go ahead and adventure on a lot of different solutions. iboss was the solution that fit our price range and requirements, so we went for it.

My advice is to thoroughly do proof of concept of iboss because everyone has different use cases. To be able to use iboss smoothly, it is crucial to identify all the small settings and parameters during the PoC phase. Some settings are challenging to change once you go live.

I would rate iboss a ten out of ten. 

We use iboss for the proxy solution. I used iboss in my organization to block a few sites for a few of my employees.

Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.

Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent. This is a hiccup that iboss should improve.

I have been using iboss for the last two years.

iboss is a stable solution, and we didn't face any major outages with the solution. I rate iboss a seven out of ten for stability.

iboss is a scalable solution. We deployed it for around 300 users, and there's no limitation on the number of users.

The solution's technical support was pretty good. I rate the solution's technical support a seven or eight out of ten.

Positive

It is easy to deploy iboss on any client's machine. However, configuring the solution is a bit complex.

The solution's end-user deployment is pretty easy and takes five or ten minutes.

We used iboss on our private cloud, but since iboss is a managed service, they provide a public cloud platform for the solution.

Overall, I rate iboss an eight out of ten.

The solution is a corporate proxy server, an intelligence proxy.

From a corporate perspective, I understand that it's important to keep the company data safe. From a corporate point of view, it's a good solution.

The solution is stable.

The solution can scale. 

It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast.

Technical support is okay in terms of the assistance they provide. 

I've been using the solution for one and a half years at this point. It hasn't been that long just yet.

As simply an end-user, I cannot speak to its stability, however, I have not had any issues. I would say that it is more or less stable.

I'm not managing the solution; I'm only using it. Therefore, I cannot speak to its scalability. That said, from what I understand, the solution can scale. 

All computers and servers are using the solution. I'd say there are about 100,000 users on it in our company.

I've been in touch with technical support and I've found them to be okay. I have no complaints as to the level of service they provide. 

The installation is very simple and straightforward. It's not what I would consider being complex or difficult. 

The deployment is fast and can be done within minutes. 

Our deployment was handled centrally by the global team. I'm not sure how many people were assigned to deployment and maintenance duties. 

I don't have any opinion on the price or any insights into the pricing. I'm mostly just a user. Licensing would be handled by management. They may have a yearly licensing agreement set up.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution. 

As we are using the cloud deployment model, we are always on the latest version of the solution.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. It's very useful for corporations.

I would recommend the solution to other organizations. 

We use the solution for web filtering to secure networks from malicious websites.

The solution operates autonomously.

The solution's pricing could be better.

We have used the solution for five years.

I rate the solution's stability as a ten.

We have around 80 solution users in our organization.

The solution's technical support was excellent.

Positive

The solution's initial setup was straightforward.

The solution gets expensive every year. Its cost increases too quickly.

The solution is expensive compared to Cisco Umbrella. I rate it as a ten.

My role is security solutions architect. I do the research for the customers. We are implementors and consultants. We provide solutions for our clients.

With everybody working from home due to COVID, iboss was the solution that we implemented as the security architecture for those who were working from home and normally don't. It has decentralized the office.

The endpoint-type solution is an area that needs some improvement. They don't identify that they are a security risk. This is something that needs some work.

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

I would like to see anything regarding the endpoint or the endpoint-base improved.

I have been working with iboss for one year.

Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive.

I would rate iboss an eight out of ten because it needs better coverage on the endpoint.

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.

Overall the solution is quite good. It's similar to Microsoft where it had a base and just added more platforms.

The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle.

We started using the solution three to five months ago.

Stability-wise, I can't say that we have had any problems at all with the solution. It's decent. It's not exceptional, however. 

We find the solution to be quite scalable. If an organization needs to scale up they can do so with iBoss. It should be a problem at all.

We have about 20 to 30 people on the solution, so it's not a huge amount. They are all mainly end-users.

Technical support has been very good to us. We've found them to be responsive and knowledgable. Their work is good and we've been satisfied with their level of service so far.

We didn't previously use a different solution before we took on iBoss a few months ago. 

The initial setup is quite straightforward. It didn't give us too many issues.

The pricing of the solution is okay. It's less expensive than, say, Check Point.

I've heard that Check Point is also very good, although it's a more expensive option.

We're a partner with iBoss. We resell the product to our clients if the solution makes sense for them and covers their requirements.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

I would recommend the solution. You don't necessarily have to do a POC first. However, I would recommend it. For us, it was easier to have it integrated into our outreach environment. For clients moving towards the cloud for the first time, especially on Microsoft platforms, its something that really should be seriously considered before actually just jumping in on a new solution.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If we wanted to, we could go with a more costly setup.