Cisco Web Security Appliance Reviews

We use Cisco Web Security Appliance for proxy purposes, for enterprises.

The best feature of Cisco Web Security Appliance is its policy framing. It also has a good UI and it can handle traffic well. Cisco Web Security Appliance is a good product.

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.

Cisco Web Security Appliance is a web appliance, so I don't see much scope for adding other features to it.

I've been using Cisco Web Security Appliance for one year.

Cisco Web Security Appliance is a stable solution.

As Cisco Web Security Appliance is an appliance, it doesn't scale. You need to size it based on your requirements, so if you're a small-scale customer, you'll size based on that. A large-scale customer gets a larger appliance and would need to size in advance, so you cannot scale that. Instead, you'll have to add boxes to add more load, so you can add to the cluster.

The initial setup for Cisco Web Security Appliance was pretty easy. It usually takes just a day or two to complete the deployment if you have all the information, but it's mostly the customers performing the initial setup because it's all done remotely.

I have no information on the licensing costs for Cisco Web Security Appliance.

I have customers that have thousands of users of Cisco Web Security Appliance, for example, five thousand users. I manage the migration for multiple customers.

My advice to anyone who wants to use Cisco Web Security Appliance is that it's a product that's easy to grasp if you know about proxy or any other firewall solution because it's pretty similar to other network security products in the market. If you have zero knowledge of network and security, it'll be difficult for you to understand Cisco Web Security Appliance.

My rating for Cisco Web Security Appliance is seven out of ten. It's a stable solution. It's not the best product, but it's a good product, and because it's on-premise and its visibility or availability on the cloud is minimal, many customers or companies prefer using it.

We primarily use the solution for security and controlled internet access. We just finished deploying one for one of our clients that actually bought both devices. That was just before COVID that we implemented it, so we just finished it now.

There are different types of groups with different types of access depending on the policies for those departments or users. We've got the administrator, the normal users, and then the management. We allow certain users to have access to all of the sites as they do research as well as marketing. We also use those features to actually define the policies so that they can have access to those sites for advertising as well.

Most of the features are great. They've got great filtering. That's what the client was looking at in terms of users when they go out to the internet, to make sure that when they access, they access the sites that actually have been filtered by Cisco to make sure that those sites are secure and they don't have malware that they can download from those sites.

The stability is good.

It's a scalable product.

Technical support has been helpful.

The pricing is reasonable.

We just deployed it. I would just like to have more filters. However, I need more time to give a report to see what limitations may exist. 

During the setup, we had issues with updating the rules.

I would like more automation. When it's on a failover, everyone will think that they'll filter nicely.

We've been using the solution for almost four years now.  

We've been running the latest solution for eight months now and it is totally stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

It is scalable. The clients that we have sold a few of those boxes to, did find integrating with AV software a bit expensive. However, it is possible to expand it.

Technical support is great. They're always on par. They're fine. So far, from what we've seen, they've always managed to respond.

It's a bit on the expensive side, I must say, however, when you look at the trends of the market, if you look where other services are going, the pricing is very close.

While the first assumption from clients is "Oh, Cisco devices are expensive," when you compare it with other devices, it's almost a tie. In general, the pricing of Cisco devices is not that bad.

We are a Cisco partner and a reseller.

We're integrating with the Cisco ISE as well. We bought the licenses for malware as well and then integrated them with the AD. That's been the new authentication for the users when they go into the internet with a specified group. 

I’d recommend the solution. The support from Cisco is excellent. Through my years working with Cisco, I would always recommend Cisco, any product that they provide, thanks to my years of experience.

I have, for the past six or seven years, deployed different types of deployments and I would say Cisco support is excellent. I have met a lot of good, skilled people in terms of support along the way. Especially on ISE as that's one of the more difficult products.

It works very well for what the client actually wants to achieve. You have put the policies in place according to the client’s needs. ISE helps ensure the policies are in place and working. We have logs, we have evidence.

As long as you put ISE in, it's going to tell you all the issues that you're having with your AD. If it's not configured properly, even if you’ve been running it for 15 years, you'll know. We can show how things may not be configured properly and how to fix them.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use this solution as our web security gateway and as an additional proxy.

The support for the solution could be improved as there are issues with SMARTnet support.

I have used this solution for three years. 

We have 500 users using this solution. 

The support for this solution could be improved. We have experienced issues with their SMARTnet support system. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

This is an expensive solution.

We have compared other solutions for security such as Forcepoint, Barracuda Networks, Symantec as we are considering moving away from using this solution. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution to verify the identity of users that are connecting to the network. It's used to check the compliance of their systems before they are able to connect.

There isn't that much to it. It's not overly complex.

The scalability is good.

The deployment process is very simple.

Technical support is okay.

The stability could be better. 

The solution needs to be more user-friendly and easier to navigate. It's not so easy right now. 

I've been using the solution for five years at this point. I've used it for a while. 

The stability is lacking and is something that should be looked at. We don't find it to be very stable.

The solution offers good scalability. If a company need sot expand it, it can do so. It's not a problem.

We have about 50,000 users on the solution currently.

We've contacted technical support in the past and they have been fine. Cisco has relatively good technical support.

We did not previously use a different solution.

The solution is very easy to implement. It's not overly complex or too difficult. Our deployment took about six months.

We have five team members that can handle setups and maintenance tasks. They are engineers.

While we did do some of the initial setup ourselves, we did also have a consultant come in to assist in certain areas from time to time. 

There is a one-time licensing fee that needs to be paid. 

We are using the latest version of the solution, however, I cannot speak to the exact version number.

I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten. It's an okay solution that needs better stability.

I would recommend the solution to other companies and organizations. 

We use this solution to restrict prohibited websites and applications. It's a good solution.

Within our organization, there are roughly 400 people using this solution.

We plan to continue using this solution. 

This solution could be more secure.

Purpose-wise, I don't necessarily see the point of this solution. Users can gain access to restricted content easily with a simple VPN. It just seems like a waste of money to me.

In my opinion, this kind of technology should be available in a bundle. If internet security and web security were bundled together, that would be great.

I have been using Cisco Web Security Appliance for two years. 

Sometimes support takes a while to respond to us. Honestly, I have had better support from other vendors in the past. 

Deployment and maintenance require two to three technicians. 

We typically purchase either a one-year, three-year, or five-year license.

I would recommend this solution to others. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of six. 

We use Cisco Web Security Appliance as a security proxy when using the web.

It integrates well with Cisco Email Security Appliance. This way, even if a customer clicks on a link that is malicious, thanks to Cisco Web Security Appliance, you have a second chance to protect your website.

Integration-wise, browser-security-wise (for users browsing the internet), it's one of the greatest tools.

This appliance is quite accurate when it comes to categorial filtering. However, It's not as sophisticated as Blue Coat, which features malware blue, malware red, and malware yellow filters. Sometimes I feel that Blue Coat actually has too many categories, which can be confusing — the granularity is good, but the quantity is too much.

Sometimes reporting is a little bit short. Cisco has always put more emphasis on developing big products that are very robust security-wise, rather than focusing on developing solutions with a lot of bells and whistles. In other words, it's not beautiful, but it gets the job done.

Reporting is not so beautiful compared to other solutions, it's not so cute and colorful; however, it does a very good job in the areas that it supports — because it detects malware and malicious code. There is a ton of intelligence behind it.

I have been using this solution since it was first released.

Cisco Web Security Appliance is not the cheapest solution on the market, but it's well worth it.

Implementation has to be done right, it's very important. It's not enough just to connect it — that won't make the traffic go through. 

You have to really think about how you want to route the traffic. It's for HTTP and HTTPS. Speaking of HTTPS, you have to consider the well-done proxying, otherwise, you will be breaking internet security because you'll have issues with the certificates, et cetera. So you have to do a very well-planned integration.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. Security-wise, it's a great product.

We are system integrators and deploy solutions in our client's environment. The primary use case is to allow or deny access to sites or special networks.

The most valuable feature is security.

The GUI is not user-friendly, so it needs to improve or be simplified.

The initial setup is complex, it could be easier.

I have been working with the Cisco Web Security Appliance for five years.

The solution itself is stable, but it all depends on the infrastructure of the end-user, and how to integrate the product to the end-user.

It really depends on the complexity of the infrastructure and the design.

It's a scalable product.

We were using the Fortinet FortiGate Cloud a year ago. Fortinet is easier to use than Cisco.

We also use Cisco Firepower, ASA, the WSA, and ESA for email.

The initial setup is a bit complex.

It can take two to three days to deploy.

We are evaluating the Fortinet FortiGate Cloud.

In the future, we plan to use it in the cloud when there is a Cisco solution available, depending on the market and the purchasing power of the customers.

I would rate this solution an eight out ten.

We have implemented Cisco Web Security Appliance in quite a few places and the results are quite satisfactory. We haven't faced any kind of challenge from it. Neither has the customer reported anything.

I am a solution architect. So I'm able to discuss in terms of configuration management. All I can say is that from a solution perspective, whatever the customer is basically looking for from our web security appliance, Cisco Web Security Appliance has met it all. And more importantly, wherever we have deployed this kind of Web Security Appliance, Cisco hasn't faced any kind of escalation from our customers. And whenever we go for review with them for their satisfaction level, we have always heard that this is one of the products that they are very satisfied with.

Obviously there is always room for improvement for almost all the appliances available in the market. But there are scopes for improvement. I'm pretty sure that Cisco will keep on integrating different feature sets as the market demands and I have seen Cisco as an organization that puts in proactive efforts providing different features before they come into the market. So I'm pretty sure that Cisco will give due diligence in terms of providing all the features in their WSA. 

But one thing I don't like with Cisco is that they're very fragmented in terms of feature sets. What I mean is that 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 days are coming when almost all the customers are looking for a consolidated box or a box wherein you can have multiple feature sets based on infrastructure, which will decrease the carbon footprint in the data center. Then, obviously, the number of devices they will have in the data center will go down. So cooling requirements and power requirements will also go down. So that's what the customer is looking at. But Cisco is too segmented. They gave ESA, they gave WSA, they give their next-generation Firewall Firepower. Then they gave a management center. And for network AMP they made a separate box set. So there are too many devices.

Though I understand technically that, yes, fragmented technology is best because we should let the dedicated device do dedicated jobs. But again, in terms of customer acceptability and the customer's point of view, consolidated devices make much more sense for them.

I would obviously prefer the WSA to be integrated with ESA because there is no point putting so many hardware devices and infrastructures in. So if WSA had the functionality of ESA, at least the basic functionality of ESA, it could be merged into a single box, and that would be good.

Cisco Web Security Appliance is stable. Very recently we deployed corporate-wide security practices with all the Cisco devices like Cisco Firepower, Cisco AMP, Cisco Cloud Email Security, Umbrella, and so on and so forth. That infrastructure is running quite okay for the last two to two and a half years. So I must say that all the security products are quite stable in nature.

Cisco is the best in giving technical support. There is no doubt about that. I am working with Cisco on a range of products since 2004.

I have dealt with all their technical related support. I used to be in deployment. Then I used a lot of their super technical support. But once I migrated from the implementation team to the solution designing team, I did not require that kind of technical support from them in terms of their technical assistance. But yes, I still have discussions with my implementation team and they keep telling me that one of the best features is the technical support we get from Cisco. So as far as technical support is concerned, I don't think that there is a match for Cisco.

Regarding Cisco price-wise, it is always a bit on the higher side. Apart from a few products, if you look at the majority of Cisco products, they are a bit on the higher side as far as the market is concerned. Obviously it would be good if Cisco could cut down on their prices, but they would have to do a lot of negotiation or compromise in terms of their product quality and support quality and a lot of customers may not like that. Price is something very dynamic. In India, actually, we don't find that much of a challenge with prices in enterprises and in government.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give Cisco Web Security Appliance an 8.