Cisco Web Security Appliance Reviews

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 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.

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 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.