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Cisco ScanSafe Web Security SaaS [EOL] vs iboss 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

Cisco ScanSafe Web Security...
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
iboss
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (6th), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Samir Shah - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO / Managing Director at Infinity Access Technologies Pvt Ltd
Easy to implement with good security and scanning
The software is scalable, no doubt about that. As such, the customers that we have given this software to had previously scaled up. Still, with a new version, we were able to satisfy them without any issue. Cisco is continuously working on making the software better, stronger, and compliant with the latest vulnerabilities. Their main aspect is to have software or hardware that is scalable. There is never an issue with the scalability. I'd rate it five out of five in terms of the ability to scale. This is a data center, so there are a lot of services that are being accessed from different departments. As far as users are concerned, they don't have more users within the data center. However, when it comes to accessing various services from the data center, it is sizeable. There may be 4,000 service requests happening daily. There may not be more than 50 users in general.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is an easy solution to implement, the web security is great, the filtering of different URLs has been very helpful, it also acts as a firewall which is quite helpful in terms of security, we've used it for content scanning and filtration in the data center, since this is on the cloud the cost has gone down, it's got good features and is easily manageable, and Cisco is rather well-known and robust."
"It is valuable to be able to block whole categories or groups at one time."
"The cyber security features they offer are most trusted."
"The solution is super stable because it is made up of a bunch of mega proxies."
"The web security is great."
"The console is cloud-based, which is something I really appreciate."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"Deploying iboss leads to good return on investment, estimated around 70% to 80%."
"I would say iboss is a very good product; its scalability is very good, and it's seamless for the user."
"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"As I mentioned, the return on investment is significant, as it saved our office locations' bandwidth because when you are working remotely at home, your internet traffic routes directly to iboss and will not go to your office building, saving bandwidth bottlenecks and ensuring that issues with our building internet circuits will not impact your internet connectivity because you are directly going to the iboss data center."
 

Cons

"The licensing could be better. They are an expensive product."
"The solution is not supported because it is legacy and almost out of market."
"Cisco has good technical support although sometimes our clients would like it to be better in some areas."
"Setup is not that difficult, but it really requires proper technical training."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc. It is easy to gain access if, for example, hackers obtain my username and password."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers. This type of encryption is tough for any appliance in a BYOD environment."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"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."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"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."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with iboss?
I think iboss could be improved by making reporting and dashboard customization more flexible, and simplifying troubleshooting policy issues. Some advanced policy configurations have a learning cur...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
I use iboss as a cloud-based secure web gateway to provide secure internet access, web filtering, and protect remote users from web-based threats. In my day-to-day work, I enforce web access polici...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
My experience with iboss's pricing structure, setup cost, and licensing model has been positive, straightforward, and highly competitive compared to legacy network security vendors.
 

Also Known As

ScanSafe Web Security SaaS
iBoss Cloud Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Arup Group, Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha, K&L Gates, New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Transplace
More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Zscaler and others in Secure Web Gateways (SWG). Updated: August 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.