


Forcepoint ONE and Cisco Secure Access are competitors in the secure access solutions market. Cisco Secure Access often appears to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive features, although it comes at a higher cost, with superior capabilities outweighing affordability.
Features: Forcepoint ONE offers simplified security controls, ease of integration, and affordability. Cisco Secure Access provides advanced threat protection, comprehensive network visibility, and flexible configuration options.
Room for Improvement: Forcepoint ONE could improve scalability, speed of updates, and advanced functionality. Cisco Secure Access is often critiqued for its complexity, resource-intensiveness, and intricate setup.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Forcepoint ONE is noted for its straightforward deployment and responsive support. Cisco Secure Access, while featuring highly knowledgeable customer service, can present deployment challenges due to complex procedures.
Pricing and ROI: Forcepoint ONE is seen as cost-effective, attracting budget-conscious users with favorable ROI. Cisco Secure Access justifies its higher costs with long-term security benefits and robust functionalities, providing a perception of higher value over time.
With iboss, whenever you turn on your laptop, the iboss agent automatically connects to the iboss cloud, enforcing all security policies. So with respect to the security side, it strengthens measures.
I have seen some cost effectiveness from iboss; it has reduced certain support requirements, making it a more hands-off solution.
At Amazon, we knew exactly how much it would cost if a fulfillment center was down for an hour.
The AI features further contribute by expediting threat detection and incident response, ensuring tangible returns through operational savings.
It is one of those tools that needs to work right out of the box, and thankfully, it does; it is reliable, and the setup time was quick and straightforward.
I have fewer employees because Forcepoint ONE does the work that I used to rely on a team of engineers to previously detect.
Since I'm on the technical side, I don't handle ROI or financial metrics directly, but based on client feedback, many have seen improvements in operational efficiency mainly through centralized policy management and reduced manual investigation time, resulting in time savings and better visibility across their environments.
It is very difficult to measure the return on investment, but the control for the data is very important for companies because without an application similar to Forcepoint ONE, there is no control.
They are very fast, responsive, and knowledgeable.
The quality of the support is fantastic.
We had promising discussions about resolving these issues, but no real action followed.
Cisco TAC is very competent.
With our established point of contact within Cisco, our experience has greatly improved; we no longer log all issues through technical cases, as we can go directly to our account managers or customer service team, which expedites resolution.
This stems from their original business in networking, integrating router and switch operations, as well as security devices.
Having a local principal support available also helps speed up communication and coordination, especially for urgent or region-specific cases.
An engineer comes to resolve the issue.
They are responsive and assist me with creating cases for any complex issues.
They are also able to meet on-demand requirements based on your contract with them, and can easily provide adequate resources and scalability.
I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.
If I start seeing sluggishness or anything like that, I just reach out to my rep, and they connect with their dev team, typically resolving it the same day.
We turn the traffic to the Cisco Secure Access cloud, and we can manage and apply the policies that are necessary, making it very easy to scale the solution.
I would rate scalability at eight to nine out of ten.
Cisco Secure Access scales with the growing needs of our company.
It can easily scale to support thousands of users and devices without requiring major infrastructure changes.
Forcepoint ONE runs smoothly, and scaling is easy.
Forcepoint ONE is very scalable because it is located in the cloud, and I don't have to manage the machines or anything with the infrastructure.
It's been pretty solid; I've never had an outage with them, and if I ever had, it's only been once out of the seven years.
We've experienced zero downtime.
Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device despite our ClearPass sending information to the iboss box.
Cisco is renowned for their reliability, and their products perform well under high data usage.
I rate the stability of Cisco Secure Access as ten out of ten.
The solution is stable enough, and I did not experience any latency or performance issues.
Forcepoint ONE is very stable.
There have been some specific outcomes since switching to Forcepoint ONE.
I think Forcepoint ONE is pretty stable, as the connection and agent synchronization are reliable, but it can still be improved.
It is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform.
We also had a problem with a transition when we upgraded from one appliance of theirs to another, but their engineer lost a good deal of our data.
Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc.
Modernization is needed, specifically in the enhancement of security features and functionality.
It was challenging to learn because it has a significant learning curve and requires considerable training to become proficient.
The granular access issue is coming from the product limitation at the moment, as it does not offer us the option to tell it that a particular role can only manage websites, allowed sites, and blocked sites.
I need to control specific functionalities within certain applications, like preventing the transfer of certain file types.
Having more flexible reporting and alert customization to tailor insights for different clients and compliance needs would be beneficial.
There is room for improvement in making the reporting closer to real-time, ideally around five or ten minutes instead of half an hour.
It offers the same features you would get from a vendor that charges 250,000 British pounds for a fraction of the price.
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.
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern.
The solution is cheaper than premium options such as Palo Alto, existing Cisco licenses facilitate replacing previous solutions with Cisco Secure Access smoothly and affordably.
It is good because you want to push Cisco Secure Access, and regarding the price, it is very much below other products.
Improvement on the pricing will help in expanding the market for Cisco Secure Access and then it can be affordable to much more number of companies than what it is right now.
The pricing is very good and cheaper than other solutions like Netskope and Forcepoint.
the pricing is better than all
The licensing and pricing were fine with no issues.
The solution's mental health function can detect if someone needs help.
It's given us a lot more visibility into our computer assets that may be infected with viruses and also shows us people who have unusually large uploads or might be engaging in high-risk activities, such as searches or going to sites not categorized by their web crawler.
iboss was the best solution for us because, no matter what domain you were in, everything is under a single pane of glass, which is exactly what we wanted.
It eliminates the hassle of switching on VPNs and provides a direct connection to resources via Cisco Secure Access.
They are sending the traffic encrypted and categorizing the traffic based on the type, whether web traffic or internet traffic, and doing the security mechanism that is needed for the traffic type.
Using ZTNA in Cisco Secure Access has positively affected my transition and my clients' transition to Zero Trust and least privilege principles, reinforcing the security posture.
The most valuable feature was the website blocking capability, which allowed me to quickly block any dodgy websites.
It shortens response time for our clients, allowing their security team to view incidents in real-time, classify them easily, and focus on genuine risks instead of sorting through false positives, and it simplifies reporting and audit preparation since all the relevant data is consolidated in one place.
Forcepoint ONE made a difference, particularly regarding cost reduction because all the features that Forcepoint ONE bundles are in one package.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Cisco Secure Access | 3.4% |
| iboss | 3.3% |
| Forcepoint ONE | 1.6% |
| Other | 91.7% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 6 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 7 |
| Large Enterprise | 8 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 12 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 8 |
| Large Enterprise | 27 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 10 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 3 |
| Large Enterprise | 12 |
Iboss offers a comprehensive cloud-based security platform valued for its scalability and autonomous features, ensuring robust security with easy deployment and management capabilities.
Renowned for its robust security architecture, Iboss integrates seamlessly within diverse networks, delivering efficient granular filtering and advanced content categorization. Its single pane of glass console provides ease of management, allowing rapid scalability suitable for rapidly deploying environments. Operates in BYOD setups due to inline filtering without device installation. Integration with cloud-based applications enhances user control, and features like SASE, SSL inspection, and ChatGPT risk protection stand as highlights. Despite its strengths, users have pointed out areas for enhancement like direct navigation in reports, SSL decryption, and better cloud integration while having room to improve data loss prevention.
What are the most important features of Iboss?The usage of Iboss spans educational institutions, specifically K-12, to enforce internet policies, protect data, and support remote work environments. It provides web filtering and security frameworks to ensure safe browsing. Its platform-as-a-service model offers flexibility for both cloud-based and on-premises requirements, integrating seamlessly to deliver enhanced security features suitable for various deployment needs including zero trust, CASB, and network security for work-from-home setups.
Cisco Secure Access is a comprehensive Security Service Edge (SSE) solution (a key component of a SASE solution) that addresses the complexities of securing a hybrid enterprise. Cloud-delivered and grounded in zero trust, it delivers a unique blend of user simplicity and IT efficiency for frictionless, secure access to all applications—SaaS (with gen AI), private apps, and the internet—regardless of user location or device. Secure Access protects users, data, and devices against relentless, sophisticated, and constantly evolving threats including AI-driven attacks and identity breaches.
Provides all core SSE components (ZTNA, SWG, CASB, and FWaaS) plus extended capabilities.
Includes VPN-as-a-Service (VPNaaS), data loss prevention (DLP), AI Assistant, visibility/control/guardrails for generative AI use, digital experience monitoring (DEM), reserved IP, remote browser isolation (RBI), DNS-layer security, flexible security enforcement (in cloud or on-premises), policy verification, and more.
Protects users as they seamlessly access resources and apps with no extra steps needed, regardless of protocol, port, or level of customization
Simplifies IT operations through a single client, single dashboard, single license, and unified policies.
Lowers risk with least privilege, granular controls backed with unmatched threat intelligence of Cisco Talos.
Eases interoperability with other products from Cisco and third-party vendors with common administrative controls, data structures, and policy management.
Robust integrations
Integrates with Cisco Identity Intelligence to protect against the startling increase in identity-based attacks.
Integrates with many SAML Identity Providers (IDPs) such as AD, Azure AD, Okta, Ping, etc.
Integrates with Cisco offerings including SD-WAN, Splunk, XDR, Thousand Eyes, third party technologies such as Menlo RBI, Chrome Enterprise Browser, and AppOmni for SSPM.
Forcepoint ONE offers a comprehensive solution for data protection and security compliance, focusing on cloud applications and role-based access control for safe interactions across platforms.
Forcepoint ONE effectively manages data access, ensuring security and compliance while reducing operational costs and offering a user-friendly interface for easy management. Integrating seamlessly with existing company devices, it provides enhanced Zero Trust Network Access, incident management, and identity verification. Cloud application protection, including Office 365, is maximized through strategic use of Secure Web Gateway (SWG) and Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) models, which help guard against unauthorized access, manage secure logins, and filter URL content.
What are the key features of Forcepoint ONE?Organizations use Forcepoint ONE primarily for ensuring compliance and secure data management in environments like healthcare and corporate sectors. By safeguarding sensitive information like PHI and utilizing robust role-based access control, users can enhance security measures significantly. Additionally, the system's ability to manage secure exchanges and protect resources underlines its relevance in regulated industries.
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