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Cisco Web Security Appliance vs Symantec Secure Web Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

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)
5th
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)
Cisco Web Security Appliance
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Secure Web Gateway
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
28th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.4%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Web Security Appliance is 1.8%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Secure Web Gateway is 1.4%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
iboss3.4%
Cisco Web Security Appliance1.8%
Symantec Secure Web Gateway1.4%
Other93.4%
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.
Vusa Ndlovu - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Solution Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Advanced protection features offer robust security while integration process presents challenges
With the WebAssign integration, it is not easy when I am integrating policies within the company, especially with NAND and wireless policies. The challenge arises when traffic is blocked from either wireless or wired connections. Although implementing it as a standalone is quicker, integrating BYOD with Cisco I and FTB can be tiring. Once it is done correctly, the functionality and reports become valuable, although the implementation part can still be challenging.
KK
Principal Consultant at CSaaS
Monitors traffic effectively but struggles with integration challenges
I find that the technical support is mediocre, at least for the Middle East. I frequently face challenges when contacting OpenStack through the distribution channel. It should be more straightforward. I notice that customers work with partners, not directly with Symantec, relying on local company integrators for support. Symantec becomes the level two or level three support, which requires navigating through a supply chain that is quite extensive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From a use-case scenario, what I like the most is the plug-in. I like the fact that we can do the filtering of these devices offsite independent of the network they are connected to, and we do not have to have traffic coming back inside our network."
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"I would say iboss is a very good product; its scalability is very good, and it's seamless for the user."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"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."
"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"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."
"Since working with the tool, we have not found any threats in our organization."
"The deployment process is very simple."
"It's a scalable product."
"The solution is very easy to implement; it's not overly complex or too difficult."
"It integrates well with Cisco Email Security Appliance."
"This appliance gives me good visibility in the userbase and their activities."
"It also allows you to decrypt SSL traffic, and that's a really important feature as well, which is something I also configured."
"The product is stable."
"It has a faster implementation process compared to other products."
"I find the product to be very straightforward."
"It's nice to have it in the cloud where we can pull the reporting together for it so we can see what's happening in machines at different locations."
"In terms of stability, it's fine, as we have never had downtime because availability is AWS' responsibility since it is hosted on their servers, so availability is not an issue."
"The most valuable feature is the endpoint security."
"Overall, this product is okay and it does the job that it is supposed to do."
"It is a stable solution."
"It offers an easy initial setup."
 

Cons

"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."
"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"Fold that in with the risk intelligence they're getting from all of the different subscriptions they are a part of. Now, these security companies subscribe to things like emerging threats, databases, etc. You can fold all this intelligence to decide what's happening on an endpoint. I would love to see them start moving into that space. That would compete directly with Microsoft. Maybe that's why they haven't. Having that ability native within the solution would be great. The other area in which I would love to see improvement is more detailed descriptions of why they block websites."
"The reporting feature needs improvement. It doesn't give you the expected results. It is quite difficult to get the specific reports needed, and it is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform."
"The tool needs to improve cloud-based decryption."
"The licensing model needs to be more flexible."
"Sometimes reporting is a little bit short."
"There are certain shortcomings related to the product's management capabilities, where improvements are required. The solution needs to provide better management of the category of web pages."
"Customer support is good but could be improved."
"The solution could improve the graphical user interface. It is not up to the regular standard of what we would expect from Cisco. Additionally, they need to improve the categorization when blocking in the settings. The CLI could have a better view than the graphical user interface but I did not investigate further."
"During the setup, we had issues with updating the rules."
"Setting up Cisco Web Security Appliance is highly complex and it takes about a week. We have to connect it to the Active Directory and configure all the policies for end users. It takes a long time to configure rules for our company data like port forwarding and separating the public and local components."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
"The platform’s data center is not capable of managing most of the traffic."
"The major challenge is their support. The support from Broadcom is quite poor. It takes forever for them to get back to you, and when they get back to you, they ask you for so much information, which makes it more difficult. That's the only problem I have with Broadcom. This is one of the reasons why we are switching to another solution. Another reason for switching is that we have a plan to adopt solutions in the cloud so that we can offload the administration efforts to the vendor. In future releases, they can improve its reporting and the process for rules creation. They can also improve Broadcom on things such as security information and event management so that from my same platform, I can carry out functions and probably block websites. Such a feature would be nice. Currently, Broadcom is integrated with McAfee to block access to certain sites automatically. It would be nice if they can expand their integration to IBM Resilient Security Orchestration and Automation Response."
"I think the worst thing that we're experiencing is very poor and inadequate technical support."
"I find that the technical support is mediocre, at least for the Middle East. I frequently face challenges when contacting OpenStack through the distribution channel."
"The cost has risen and it is more expensive than it used to be."
"AI-driven security could be helpful, yet how effective it will be remains unclear."
"It's not user-friendly, and we end up making too many phone calls to get things fixed."
 

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."
"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."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Regarding Cisco price-wise, it is always on a bit on the higher side."
"I know from the manager that the price is too high and that other solutions offer the same features for less."
"I rate the product price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The tool's licensing is yearly."
"When you compare the price of this solution to the price of FortiGate, it's high."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is too high."
"I rate Cisco WSA a seven out of ten since it is costly."
"Symantec Secure Web Gateway is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"Pricing and licensing is stunted and licensing is expensive. We have many customers who are now thinking about other solutions due to the cost."
"There is an additional charge for advanced security features."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Web Security Appliance?
Comparing with other products, Cisco has more functionality, but pricing is a challenge. Cisco is not a product for s...
What needs improvement with Cisco Web Security Appliance?
With the WebAssign integration, it is not easy when I am integrating policies within the company, especially with NAN...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Web Security Appliance?
The user interface that I usually provide for the web app includes malware protection, URL filtering, data loss preve...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Secure Web Gateway?
I believe that pricing is on par with peers. Symantec and other vendors offer discounts when cutting a deal with a cu...
What needs improvement with Symantec Secure Web Gateway?
AI-driven security could be helpful, yet how effective it will be remains unclear. I plan to evaluate whatever new fe...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Secure Web Gateway?
I find the product to be very straightforward. I just install it and forget it as it continuously monitors traffic. I...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Cisco WSA, Cisco Web Security
Symantec Complete Website Security
 

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.
New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Caixa Seguradora
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Web Security Appliance vs. Symantec Secure Web Gateway and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.