Menlo Secure vs NordLayer comparison

Menlo Security and Nord Security are both solutions in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category. Menlo Security is ranked #26, while Nord Security is ranked #37. Menlo Security holds a 2.2% mindshare in WSG, compared to Nord Security’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Menlo Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Nord Security users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Menlo Secure and NordLayer based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Zscaler and others in Secure Web Gateways (SWG).

To learn more, read our detailed Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Report (Updated: May 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

May 2026

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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

iboss

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 Menlo Secure is 2.2%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NordLayer is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
iboss	3.3%
Menlo Secure	2.2%
NordLayer	1.0%
Other	93.5%

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula

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.

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reviewer2701794

Head Of Bluechip Enterprise at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

Provides strong protection and multiple use cases but struggles with market recognition

There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco. What can be improved is market awareness and adoption of the technology. When selling it in the channel, regardless of how good the technology might be, success depends more on market adoption and awareness.

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Christophe Derdeyn

Partner delaware Singapore at delaware Singapore

A convenient and easy tool with an incredibly high number of dialing points

The solution is convenient and easy. It has an incredibly high number of dialing points for pretty much every single country in the world. It has a few additional security features. It has a function that prevents unsecured access if my connection were to drop for any reason. It’s something I like. It has threat protection features. It can protect my web connection and files against malicious downloads and trackers.

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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 iboss solution gives me the ability to scan the traffic through all the ports, through all the 131,000 PCP and UDP ports, and with this ability, we have the granularity also for consults over social media and applications on mobile, and this is an advantage that the customers are looking for right now."

"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."

"The iboss system is highly reliable. The false positive rates are small compared to some other systems we've experienced through other partner agencies who use competing solutions."

"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."

"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."

"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device."

"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."

"From a corporate perspective, I understand that it's important to keep the company data safe."

More iboss pros

"The solution is invisible to our end users, so it doesn't have any impact on their work or performance."

"Either you have access to something or don't have access to it, and if you do, we can ensure, 100 percent of the time, that there is nothing malicious that is going to impact our system in any way."

"This security technology addresses risk and enables people to conduct business without that risk, which is where the ROI is realized."

"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."

"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."

"For us, the primary goal is protection on the web, and that's extremely important. We're not using any of the other services at this time. The web part is key to the success of the organization. It gives us the ability to protect. It can isolate. It opens the session in an isolated format so that the code isn't running locally. It is running over in the Menlo environment, not in ours. It is not running on the local computer, whereas if you were to go to a normal website, it would run Java or something else on the local machine and potentially execute the malicious code locally. So, it does give us that level of protection."

"We are not aware of a single compromise from the web since implementing the solution."

"It has reduced security events to follow up on. While it is not 100%, there has been probably a 90% or more reduction. We were getting hit left, right, and center constantly from people browsing the Internet and hitting bad websites. It was not just bad websites that were stood up to be malicious, but good sites that were compromised."

More Menlo Secure pros

"The solution is convenient and easy."

Cons

"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."

"The reporting feature needs improvement."

"It is stable, but due to growth, it can sometimes be less stable than wanted."

"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."

"Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You feel that you are running into that support wall."

"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers."

"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."

"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."

More iboss cons

"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."

"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."

"The user monitoring could still be improved."

"Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco."

"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists."

"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."

More Menlo Secure cons

"The tool is not perfectly stable."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."

"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."

"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."

"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."

"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."

"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

14%

Retailer

10%

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

12%

Construction Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	8

No data available

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto....

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

People are mainly using it for zero trust web access. Menlo Secure is built from the ground up to provide zero basic ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

Secure file sharing and data protection is not exactly what Menlo Secure is designed to do. While it can handle some ...

See all answers

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Comparisons

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Menlo Secure

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

iboss

May 2026

Download iboss product report

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure

April 2026

Download Menlo Secure product report

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Infrastructure VPN

May 2026

Download NordLayer product report

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security

No data available

Overview

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?

Scalability: Supports rapid deployment across diverse networks.
SASE: A consolidated approach to secure access.
SSL Inspection: Ensures safe data transmission.
Granular Filtering: Detailed control over accessible content.
Single Pane Management: Unifies control through a centralized console.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Cost-effectiveness: Offers competitive pricing with robust features.
Autonomous Operation: Reduces management overhead.
Responsive Support: Provides assistance when needed.
Flexible Deployment: Available for both cloud and on-premises environments.

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.

iboss

Menlo Security Secure Application Access

Menlo Security Secure Application Access makes zero trust access easy, giving users secure connectivity to private applications, including web and legacy applications. At the core of Secure Application Access is the Menlo Secure Cloud Browser, which fetches, secures and delivers the content for users.

In addition to providing simple-to-deploy, clientless ZTA, Secure Application Access and the Menlo Secure Cloud Browser protect applications from attacks such as session hijacking, cookie manipulation, and other tactics that employ protocol manipulation.

Secure Application Access protects applications from Internet threats and provides granular controls for added protection of the application and associated data. These security controls include Read-only/Read-write, Upload/download, Copy/paste, AV scanning, Sandboxing, and Data Loss Prevention.

Last Mile Data Protection

Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection identifies and prevents sensitive data from leaving your company by meticulously inspecting all file uploads and user input across browsing sessions. Leveraging the Secure Cloud Browser, users are protected from the internet and you can protect your organization from data loss with comprehensive traffic monitoring and controls. This approach addresses the growing concerns surrounding data leakage in the age of AI tools like ChatGPT.

By identifying sensitive data through file types, regular expressions, or predefined libraries, Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection empowers security teams to regulate data input into AI platforms and prevent unauthorized uploads. This capability provides crucial protection for intellectual property, PII, and other confidential information.

The solution leverages the Menlo Cloud Security Platform's visibility and control over traffic to reliably detect and prevent data leaks originating from both browser submission forms and non-browser traffic. With the ability to inspect encrypted web traffic, Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection enforces DLP policies consistently across all users and devices, ensuring comprehensive data protection.

Menlo Security

NordLayer offers a robust cybersecurity solution designed to protect business networks with advanced features. It caters to enterprises looking for secure, scalable, and efficient network management.

NordLayer delivers a high level of network protection with flexible features tailored for businesses. Its cloud-based architecture ensures seamless implementation and integration, allowing dynamic companies to manage secure access and connectivity easily. By emphasizing user-centric security practices, NordLayer addresses the evolving challenges of network security efficiently.

What are the main features of NordLayer?

Network Access Control: Manage user and device access to networks effortlessly.
Secure Remote Access: Safeguard data in transit with encrypted remote connectivity.
Centralized Security Management: Simplify security policies and management from a single interface.
Scalability: Quickly scale security measures as businesses grow.
Multi-Factor Authentication: Add an extra layer of protection with easy-to-use authentication.

What benefits and ROI should users expect?

Improved Security Posture: Enhance network defenses against threats.
Operational Efficiency: Streamline network management and policy enforcement.
Cost-effectiveness: Reduce infrastructure costs with a subscription model.
Compliance Support: Meet industry-specific data protection standards easily.

NordLayer is particularly effective in industries like finance and healthcare, where data protection is critical. Its flexibility and compliance features support these sectors' stringent security requirements, ensuring that sensitive information remains protected while maintaining high operational effectiveness.

Nord Security

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.

Information Not Available

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Buyer's Guide

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

May 2026

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