Cisco Web Security Appliance Reviews

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.

Web Security Appliance is a proxy and I have gotten active with the open-source proxy. If I want a feature that is not present, most of the database updates and filters are good. Our clients use Cisco Palace which is a very big database that is very quickly updated.

It also has high availability. These kinds of solutions impact the user experience. If you have an issue with the proxy not responding, you have to install or activate new does in order to reestablish the connections for the customer. 

There are some problems with this solution but it's not related to this product. If a user wants to use it for other devices like mobile or smartphones, this product isn't so reliable. If you want to implement it in a track point mode, it is difficult to implement and is not so reliable. There should be more implementation. 

I have been using Cisco Web Security Appliance for five to six years. 

It's very stable. We have thousands of users and they don't have any issues with it. It's very stable.

If you want this product to be stable you have to put it through the EPS and you have to manage the connection to the power. If you shut down the product, there will be a problem because they encrypt the discs and you'll have hardware loss. The solution won't work. 

It's very scalable. If you buy one bundle with 100 users, you can install unlimited appliances to scale horizontally. You can have ten appliances that can log share communications. It's very scalable. 

We have contacted Cisco support for other products. I am satisfied with their support. It depends on the level of the technician you get. If you are an end-user you start with level one help which isn't so easy. If you request escalation to the next level you get a good level of support. 

I only used an open-source solution. Cisco's advantage is the support and they have good scalability which is not so easy to implement in other solutions. 

The level of complexity of the initial setup will depend on the level of customization. If you want to start the product with the best practices presented by Cisco, it's very easy. You have to manage your own IP addresses and check that the service is okay. It's integrated with other services and then apply it to your users. It's very easy to implement. You need a high level of skills to manage it. If you want special customization or a high level of security activation, it may be a bit more complex. 

For a single appliance without any high-appliance activated and if you have all the data, DNS servers, and IP addresses, it can around an hour to implement.

Try it. See how it works, it's not difficult to implement and it's not so expensive. I would recommend it. 

I would rate it a ten out of ten. 

In the next release, I would like to see reporting to implement more features. The license should also be more flexible. 

We are using the Cisco Web Security Appliance as part of the security in our data center. Our data center includes equipment and software from a variety of vendors including Cisco, Dell EMC, Microsoft, and Veritas.

This appliance gives me good visibility in the userbase and their activities. I can see what they are using, which websites they are browsing, a history for each user, and how much bandwidth they have utilized.

It integrates well into the Cisco environment.

The licensing model needs to be more flexible. How it works is that you can have from zero to 499 users at the first stage, then from 500 to 999 users at stage two, and so on. They need to be more flexible because when you exceed 1,000 users then you are supposed to deploy a separate appliance to cater to them.

The technical support could use some improvement.

We have been using the Cisco Web Security Appliance for three years.

The stability of this product is very good.

It is a scalable appliance that can integrate with my endpoint security appliances, as well as my core networking appliances. 

We acquired 200 additional licenses this year and we plan to continue increasing our usage.

We have been in contact with Cisco technical support and they are good. I would not say that they are the best, or highly recommended, but they are good.

The problem we experienced had to do with the ownership of the ticket. When we engage one engineer and explain everything, they continue to work on it until their shift ends. At that point, we have to explain everything to the next engineer, from scratch, and they continue to work on it. I think that one engineer should take ownership of the problem until it is complete.

We found the initial setup to be slightly complex because it was a new product for me and my team. We installed it in the Unity environment and tested it for quite some time. Then we deployed it slowly, starting with the back office and then rolling it out to the branches. The deployment took about four months to bring it from purchase, through a PoC, and into production.

Licensing fees are based on the number of users.

We evaluated several products but because we were already using Cisco, it was easy for us to get discounts on this appliance. It also integrated well with our existing environment.

My advice for anybody who is researching this appliance is to first determine exactly what it is that they require. There are a lot of applications and features but many of the features are useless for the organization. For example, if they do not need the DDoS features then they shouldn't get them and pay the additional fee.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are using this solution as a proxy.

The most valuable feature is that we can use it as a proxy.

They need a better graphical interface, and they need a better ISE mechanism.

In the next release, I would like to see the reporting features enhanced.

I have been using the Cisco Web Security Appliance for three to four years.

This solution is stable.

If you want to go to the next level, you will have to change the hardware. The general requirement is that when you reach the hardware limitations, you have to change it.

Depending on the customer, there are anywhere from 100 to 500 uses.

I have contacted technical support and I was satisfied with their help.

The initial setup wasn't easy but not complex either.

I implemented this solution.

You need a fair comparison with other solutions to judge and compare others fairly. I have only used Cisco and would not be able to provide a fair assessment.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use this solution for securing network traffic.

The Gateway is an advantage that I can see in Cisco. 

The WCCP is good at delivering HTTP and HTTPS traffic. Before this ping forwarding was a problem for us.

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.

You can partition your IPs based on scoring from Cisco Cloud.

There is a variety of options for integration with other products for authentication and authorization of users.

You can control everything through policy.

Technical support needs to be improved because they take a very long time and there is no communication or notification.

Controlling engines at the network layer needs to handle more links or multiple links from the internet.

Controlling with the applications, or more applications as part of the local applications so that it's bigger.

The price should be moderated.

I have been using this product in my daily operations for forty years.

When it comes to this technical support, sometimes it is not good. If you open a case with the local region here in the Middle East, sometimes also from the outside, the tech support takes a long time getting you logged in and troubleshooting files and screenshots.

They are not quick to respond or in the analysis, they don't even let you know what the current status is with my issue or a plan of resolving it.

I have been impacted often with issues regarding our integration from Cisco with this solution.

The technical support takes a lot of time without any feedback or any answers. They never even let you know if they are working on fixing it. 

After some time, I end up fixing it myself.

 And after a long time, I troubleshoot this issue and fix it myself. And notification would be cleared.

I know from the manager that the price is too high and that other solutions offer the same features for less.

There are some other powerful competitors such as ForcePoint and Symantec.

I use this product and implement it.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

This is one of the solutions that we provide to our customers.

The price of this solution needs to be reduced.

The FTD 21 model's Firepower Threat Defense does not have the multi-instance feature for the virtualization with the physical equipment. This makes it difficult to propose this solution to the customers. 

The issue that we are facing is, for example, if we have a project with a client, and we suggest the twenty-one series, we don't know until we have implemented it that we do not have the multi-instance feature.

The technical support is good. It is reactive and the documentation is very specific and very useful.

When you compare the price of this solution to the price of FortiGate, it's high. 

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

We use this solution mainly for web security for content and products, or for URL filtering. 

The most valuable features is of the solution is that it is user-friendly and we get good web security from it.

The pricing is too high, so that could be improved. Also, the solution is not very compatible with other products.

It is a very stable solution.

The setup was very easy and straightforward.

It is a very expensive program and therefore many people choose other, cheaper programs.

I will rate this solution a nine out of ten. I hope to see the next release being more affordable and better integration between platforms. 

We use it for security.

It's most valuable feature is its convenience.

I would like to see management automation in the next release.

It's so expensive. It's $10,000 per year.