Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs Varonis Platform comparison

Forcepoint and Varonis are both solutions in the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) category. Forcepoint is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.1, while Varonis is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.0. Additionally, 90% of Forcepoint users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Varonis users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention and Varonis Platform compete in the data protection category. While Forcepoint is strong in data loss prevention with fingerprinting technology, Varonis shines in data access governance with superior visibility.

Features: Forcepoint's features include fingerprinting technology, a comprehensive suite for endpoint, network, and cloud data protection, and extensive template options for ease of deployment. Varonis offers powerful monitoring, alerting capabilities, and robust data access governance, ensuring visibility and control over sensitive data.

Room for Improvement: Forcepoint requires better email integration, support for more languages, and improved user segmentation. Varonis needs better cloud integration, pricing adjustments for smaller enterprises, and enhanced remediation processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Forcepoint supports various deployment models but is criticized for setup complexity and slow support response. Varonis features ease of implementation and strong technical support, although its cost can be a barrier.

Pricing and ROI: Forcepoint is moderately priced with competitive offerings, delivering ROI through improved compliance and data security. Varonis, viewed as expensive, is suited for large enterprises but may be challenging for smaller firms.

To learn more, read our detailed Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs. Varonis Platform Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs. Varonis Platform

April 2025

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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

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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Atul-Vats

Consultant at Tata Consultancy

Provides excellent endpoint security in a feature-rich, lightweight, handy, and easy-to-deploy tool

The deployment is straightforward once you understand the solution's architecture. A proper understanding of the different components of Forcepoint DLP is essential, as deploying an enterprise-level DLP could be confusing because the policy server is separate from the main engine sitting on the Triton server. Understanding the components of the enterprise DLP suite is the most critical element for a successful deployment. Still, I rate the solution seven out of ten in terms of ease of setup. The scale of the particular DLP deployment is also a factor; we had cases where the customer only required endpoint or network DLP, a relatively quick job that two staff can complete. A complete DLP suite, including email, web, and network DLP, plus data classification and labelling, would require four associates. Our most recent deployment was a complete enterprise DLP, which required four staff. The entire deployment took almost three months, including a one-month planning phase. During the planning phase, we prepared the documentation, designed the HLDs and LLDs, and high and low-level diagrams. Following acceptance from the customer, we started the implementation, which took roughly 50 to 60 days. The level of maintenance required depends on how many events per hour a particular tool is putting out. If a customer wants to check analytics or identify an email or data leak, that situation doesn't require much policy fine-tuning, and a single staff member could deal with it. The customer can also decide what coverage they want, which may be 24/7, an admin to monitor events only, or Monday-to-Friday support. The coverage determines how many engineers will be required. Another factor in maintenance requirements is the volume of events, as an extensive client could have more than 10,000 servers with many sensitive data in motion. The customer had 24,000 users for our last deployment, and there wasn't a dedicated team for the DLP. The engineering team took care of the network, endpoint, and data security together. There were ten of us on the team, with two engineers per shift for 24/7 coverage.

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Frederic Delos

Senior Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Offers the ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data

The most effective feature for me is its ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data, provided you have access, to determine whether it's a false positive or a true positive. That's the best thing for me, out of all of it. It's got everything, like other ones, but I like to be able to look at something if I'm doing forensics on the alert and say, "Okay, do I really need to do something with this?" For example, we don't want sensitive data in our OneDrive. So it identifies the sensitive data that's possibly in the OneDrive. And what I can do is look at it and identify whether it's actually sensitive data in Datalert or whether it looks like sensitive data, but I know it's a false positive. If it is a false positive, I can basically say ignore this pattern based on X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's Redjax or keyword proximity. So I like that. With other tools, I gotta go through a whole process because it's a little bit more complex. Here, I can tag it and bag it in one shot. And the next good time I scan, it slips over it. So it helps in that.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."

"The UI is good."

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."

"Cloudflare has many features."

"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."

More Cloudflare pros

"I did not experience any crashes. The solution has been stable in my usage."

"Scalability-wise, I rate this solution a nine out of ten."

"The product is good and reliable. The vendor company is continually improving it and they seem to stay one step ahead."

"I like the SaaS solution they're offering now a little bit more. It's a new product but it's easy to install and configure."

"I like that you can quickly create policies and enforce them in a matter of minutes."

"Regardless of the size of your company, this solution can be scaled accurately."

"Another valuable feature is that it provides integration to things like Cloud Access Security Broker, which provides security around cloud applications."

"The scalability is fantastic. One of the things that I like about Forcepoint is that I can customize the solution to suit my objectives."

More Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention pros

"I also appreciate the reporting feature, which allows for the extraction of various reports based on specific needs. These reports can be used for audit purposes, such as tracking changes in file locations or deletions."

"Varonis Platform is transparent and captures everything in the environment without impacting the performance. The tool helps us unify data feeds into a single reporting system."

"There's also a 90-day policy where if a user is not using the warehouse, it will automatically delete that username."

"It can easily identify unusual behavior or access patterns that may pose a potential threat, while operating as a unified reporting system."

"On the Varonis side, technical support is phenomenal. Their ability to explain is very good, and they seem to be very knowledgeable. When I get an alert that doesn't quite make sense, they dive in there and kind of take me through it. That's very useful and very good. There are some false alerts, but it is better to have a false alert than no alert at all."

"That alerting and reporting service is great."

"The telemetry to capture everything and the reports are very easy to configure without having a developer degree."

"Varonis offers robust data access governance, allowing us to understand which sensitive data exists and who has access to it."

More Varonis Platform pros

Cons

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."

"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."

"The product needs to improve its automation."

"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."

"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."

"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."

More Cloudflare cons

"There is room for improvement regarding OCR. I would like to see it enhanced to handle multiple languages and it should be easier to manage."

"The post-optical character recognization feature could be improved because it only really works on documents with some length (at least three paragraphs)."

"Lacks the ability to control the USB port devices so that content coming out of the port is blocked."

"The policy update size and agent size could be improved. We would also like to have a proper solution for Linux OS which Forcepoint does not offer."

"The reporting features, the real-time reporting, can be improved in Forcepoint. On the dashboard, we don't have a feature that shows real-time incidents. We have to schedule a report in the environment."

"The setup is complex and has room for improvement."

"In terms of display, the support and the Mac platform requires a lot of improvement."

"An area for improvement in Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention is the complex UI and policy deployment. You have to find the policies, and then designing the policies is also tricky."

More Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention cons

"The GUI should be more functional. There should be a process for connecting through Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc."

"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."

"I would like it to have cloud integration."

"It is significantly complex."

"The solution's interface is a little complicated with regard to setting up filters and reports."

"Varonis requires more access permissions for its core functions compared to competitors, which can be a concern for companies about data safety."

"The remediation process can be improved. There will be no existing permission group for the McAfee channel domains. We can create a new permissions group for the required folder."

"I'd like to see automatic updates for this solution. Currently, it's a manual process to update all the keywords"

More Varonis Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"Its pricing is quite low considering the features they are offering. As compared to other solutions, it is reasonable. They do have professional support. If we need professional support, then there will be additional costs."

"The pricing is reasonable. That's why we went with Forcepoint. They were pretty competitive."

"Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention is costlier than other brands, but not all. Of the solutions, I have used Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention is more costly."

"The licensing of Forcepoint is quite straightforward. It's based on the number of users. The support fees are a separate cost."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"From one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high, I rate the solution's pricing to be an eight."

"Forcepoint DLP is a bit expensive."

"The cost for the product for our use is less than $10 per user."

More Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."

"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."

"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."

"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."

"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."

"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

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What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

What do you like most about Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention?

The technical support for the solution is very good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention?

The pricing is reasonable and medium, not very low, but fair for the product offered.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention?

I would recommend aligning OCR with endpoints. This is a highly demanded technology globally, especially for endpoint...

See all answers

What do you like most about Varonis Platform?

The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor acti...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?

Varonis started as an on-premises solution and is transitioning to cloud. It hasn't fully moved yet, which is an area...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?

The primary use case for Varonis Platform is data discovery, specifically for discovering sensitive data in our organ...

See all answers

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention

May 2025

Download Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention product report

Buyer's Guide

Varonis Platform

April 2025

Download Varonis Platform product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Forcepoint DLP, Forcepoint Data Security Suite, Websense Data Security Suite

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Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention offers comprehensive data protection with strong template support, seamless cloud integration, and detailed reporting. It ensures data security through extensive endpoint, network, and server-level controls.

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention is equipped with advanced fingerprinting technology, optical character recognition, and a large library of predefined rules. Organizations gain comprehensive data visibility and effective policy enforcement, supported by dynamic user behavior analysis and compliance capabilities. Its intuitive interface and flexible deployment options position it as a top choice for data security, although it could improve in communication reliability and language support. Complex reporting, machine learning integration, and cross-platform compatibility require enhancements.

What are the key features of Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention?

Fingerprinting Technology: Enables precise data tracking and protection.
Optical Character Recognition: Enhances identification of sensitive information in documents.
Built-in Rules and Classifications: Offers a vast library ready for immediate use.
Dynamic User Behavior Analysis: Provides insights for proactive security management.
Cloud Integration: Ensures seamless data protection across cloud environments.

What benefits and ROI insights should users consider?

Policy Enforcement: Robust mechanisms to ensure compliance and data protection.
Comprehensive Visibility: Offers detailed insights into data movements and security posture.
Efficient Management: Simplified controls for streamlined security operations.
Compliance Support: Assists in meeting standards like PCI DSS.

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention is utilized extensively in industries like finance and law to protect sensitive information from unauthorized transfers. It secures enterprise legal documents, financial assets, and personal data, employing features such as OCR to safeguard data across network, email, and cloud channels.

Forcepoint

Varonis Platform specializes in network security and data monitoring with modules for alerting, data classification, and access management, benefiting environments like Microsoft 365.

Varonis is designed to secure data by auditing and tracking data movement. It leverages data alert and classification modules to identify and manage sensitive information. The platform enhances network security by alerting users to unexpected data modifications and deletions, crucial for effective data loss prevention. It supports unstructured data management, ensuring proper data access and permission controls. Known for its 24/7 support, Varonis offers comprehensive analytics and unified reporting, helping prevent data overexposure and facilitating compliance efforts.

What are the key features of Varonis Platform?

24/7 Support: Provides round-the-clock assistance.
Data Monitoring: Tracks data activities efficiently.
Unified Reporting: Consolidates data access reports.
Data Classification: Identifies sensitive data effectively.
Permission Management: Simplifies managing access rights.
Behavior Analytics: Detects abnormal behavior patterns.

What benefits should be highlighted in user reviews?

Enhanced Security: Improves data protection measures.
Compliance Support: Assists in meeting compliance standards.
Data Transparency: Offers clarity in data access activities.
Access Control: Ensures proper access to data.
Centralized Remediation: Eases remediation procedures.

Varonis Platform is widely utilized in industries needing stringent data confidentiality and management, such as finance and healthcare, for tracking data modifications and unauthorized access. Enterprises deploy it to manage permissions within large datasets, benefiting Microsoft 365 environments. While Varonis requires enhancements in cloud integration, the current deployment is often based on-premises, with attention to addressing the security needs and effective data handling for critical infrastructure.

Varonis

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Alphawest, Betsson, Cellcom Israel Ltd., Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, Confartigianato Vicenza, EverBank, Finansbank, iGATE, Landa Digital Printing, Northern California Bank, Reliance Capital, Remosa, Toyota, Scavolini, Zim Integrated Shipping Services

Nottingham Building Society

Buyer's Guide

Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs. Varonis Platform

April 2025

Free Report: Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs. Varonis Platform

Find out what your peers are saying about Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention vs. Varonis Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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