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Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise vs Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (8th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Akamai Secure Internet Acc...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
23rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Domain Name System (DNS) Security (11th)
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.3%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is 1.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is 3.1%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
iboss3.3%
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway3.1%
Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise1.1%
Other92.5%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
MS
Senior Analyst at Deloitte
Have successfully routed high-volume application traffic through secure channels and maintain compliance across client environments
CDN capability is what I appreciate about Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise. It protects applications that are internet-facing or public-facing. Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is a product which has very good features and capabilities. I have worked on Radware also, but Radware has some limited capabilities. Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise has positively impacted my organization. We have around 62 applications within our firm which are now routing traffic through Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise. It has fewer false positives, which is something we haven't encountered yet. I assess the impact of Akamai's real-time threat filtering as 10 out of 10, and I am satisfied with this feature.
reviewer1047669 - PeerSpot reviewer
PS & Technical Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Has faced usability challenges while managing integrated components
We are working with web gateway and full endpoint security. URL filter is a notable feature. While it is not specifically related to Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway alone, if you have the complete Forcepoint solution, it can integrate with other Forcepoint products, such as DLP solution and email gateway. The URL filter of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is good for web gateway. Clients and consumers do not prefer it because the interface is not good. When using FSM with DLP, web gateway, and email gateway, upgrades cannot be performed simultaneously since Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway might need an upgrade while email gateway does not, despite having the same manager controlling them. Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway works well with banking and small companies. Email gateway is less needed as everything is moving to the cloud.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"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 danger."
"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"From a corporate perspective, I understand that it's important to keep the company data safe."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"The threat intelligence feature is particularly valuable when used with another product of Akamai, as their researchers continuously update this threat feed database, making it an effective tool for defending against and blocking bad actors, public malicious IPs, harmful hashes, and malicious URLs."
"The best feature of Akamai SPS Threat Avert is that it's very user-friendly compared to other technologies."
"Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is a product which has very good features and capabilities."
"Reporting and automatic updates of website categorization."
"They have well-integrated web security and have the enterprise DLP included in the cloud as well."
"The functions of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway are most valuable due to Forcepoint's long-standing presence in the Web Security business, as it was formerly called Websense, which was in the market for almost 15 years."
"Most valuable features were content filtering and monitoring."
"The solution’s administration is easy."
"It allowed our company to not worry about the security of a page, but talk more about the content and the productivity of specific types of web categories."
"The tool categorizes the user profiles which is very comfortable."
"Forcepoint Web Security is a complete web security solution, not just a web filter, like many other solution offerings."
 

Cons

"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"iboss can be improved because the integration could be better; you need to import all the sites that you access today, and there are a few problems whenever you import thousands of websites, making the integration process messy for the users."
"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices; it is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents, and that is where in 2025 we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform."
"I have heard they are doing DDoS filtering, but I am not certain if they are implementing it correctly."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"Akamai SPS Threat Avert's pricing could be improved because it's a very expensive enterprise solution."
"Their support response time needs improvement. They take on average one week to respond, which is not satisfactory given how critical applications are to the organization."
"From a financial standpoint, I do not believe Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is cost-effective when compared to other solutions available in the industry."
"It has a problem with tablets and the iPhone. It's not filtering on these platforms. It filters on Windows but not iOS or Android."
"When we first began working with it, the product was not mature and we had performance issues."
"Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway could be improved by offering a SaaS-based service, which is increasingly being adopted in the market. They need to enhance their CASB solutions since currently, the cloud index support is low compared to competitors."
"The documentation is almost too much, it could be laid out in an easier to understand."
"We have a lot of false positives, which is one area that can be improved."
"The technical support team's response time could be improved."
"The reporting could be improved."
"What's missing in Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is a specific level of micro-control on protocols or devices, for example, where you can control a particular user or user device."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"Provided the features Akamai SPS Threat Avert provides, it is bound to be expensive."
"The pricing for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is expensive. You pay per user and functionality. I'd rate it a four on a scale of one to ten."
"Forcepoint's pricing is moderate."
"It is quite expensive."
"The solution is priced a little high compare to similar solutions."
"Licensing is flexible. License pricing information is based on the customer, their environment, and on the future approach."
"The price of this product should be reduced to make it more competitive."
"The solution's price is good."
"The cost for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is lower than that for Zscaler and Netskope. It could be around $4 per user annually."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise8
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We used iBoss mainly for Internet Access by having an Agent on Windows laptops Primarily because when we try to use i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
I am not involved in pricing, but as per the information I have, during that time, the Blue Coat proxies we were usin...
What needs improvement with Akamai SPS Threat Avert?
Since Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is not being used in our campus environment, as our users do not route...
What is your primary use case for Akamai SPS Threat Avert?
Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is designed to protect users' access to the internet.
What advice do you have for others considering Akamai SPS Threat Avert?
Our organization does not utilize the internet access feature of Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise because our...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
I would rate pricing for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway a two out of ten. It's really expensive.
What needs improvement with Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is not endpoint security. If we have a chance to change, we would change it because it ...
What is your primary use case for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway?
We have no big project, but we are trying to sell it in the market here. We are working with Forcepoint because there...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Akamai Enterprise Threat Protector, Akamai ETP, Akamai SPS Threat Avert
Forcepoint SWG, Websense Web Security, Forcepoint TRITON
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
MCNC, Educational Testing Service
Adventist Health, Alphawest, Amadori, Anoka County, Compartamos Banco, Davies Turner, EverBank, iGATE, Karlstad Municipality, Lake Michigan Credit Union, Scavolini, Smurfit Kappa, Toyota
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise vs. Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.