Menlo Secure vs Symantec Proxy comparison

Menlo Security and Broadcom are both solutions in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category. Menlo Security is ranked #25, while Broadcom is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.3. Menlo Security holds a 2.3% mindshare in WSG, compared to Broadcom’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Menlo Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

Menlo Secure and Symantec Proxy are competing products in the cybersecurity solutions category, each with distinct advantages. Menlo Secure seems to have the upper hand in cost-effectiveness and customer support, while Symantec Proxy stands out with a more comprehensive feature set.

Features: Menlo Secure features a cloud-native isolation platform that blocks malware before it reaches endpoints, lightweight protection for flexible architectures, and the ability to rewrite email links to ensure all connections pass through its security. Symantec Proxy offers extensive filtering options, a reliable URL database for malicious URL detection and policy creation, and robust threat detection and prevention capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Menlo Secure could enhance its logging capabilities and address bypassing challenges for certain sites. Improvements in SSL decryption are needed, as well as providing complete access logs for current users. Symantec Proxy could simplify its complex configurations, improve its single-window interface, and refine its caching effectiveness in light of increased HTTPS traffic encryption.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Menlo Secure provides an intuitive deployment process supported by agile customer service, ensuring a streamlined setup. Symantec Proxy, while powerful, involves more intricate setup steps and demands more time and resources. Its customer service is reliable but lacks Menlo's quick response times.

Pricing and ROI: Menlo Secure offers an attractive pricing model with a swift ROI, aligning well with budget-conscious strategies. Symantec Proxy requires a higher initial investment but promises a rewarding long-term ROI for enterprises prioritizing a comprehensive security infrastructure.

To learn more, read our detailed Menlo Secure vs. Symantec Proxy Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure vs. Symantec Proxy

August 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 August 2026, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.5%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Menlo Secure is 2.3%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Proxy is 1.7%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
iboss	3.5%
Symantec Proxy	1.7%
Menlo Secure	2.3%
Other	92.5%

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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Ganesh Basappa

Network Security Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Granular control for web traffic with enhanced content inspection, but support needs improvement

There are many use cases in terms of content inspection, such as having granular control for file type extensions when trying to download file types by default. It depends on the requirements, and based on that, we customize policies. We have deployed it in an Azure infrastructure, and we have…

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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

"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."

"We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times."

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

"Its initial setup was straightforward."

"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."

"We chose iboss for both zero trust and proxy (SWG) because their SWG was superior."

"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."

"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."

More iboss pros

"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."

"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."

"We have definitely seen ROI, as we save a ton of money and time because 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."

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

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

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

"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 most valuable features of this solution are the URL database, malicious URLs, policies, and policy creation."

"We are resellers and we provide solutions to our customers, and we use Symantec Proxy for a forward proxy."

"The initial setup of Symantec Proxy is easy."

"I would rate the overall solution a nine out of ten."

"The most valuable feature of Symantec Proxy is the support and autoscaling."

"The content that we are getting is very good, and content caching is also supported."

"The most valuable features are content inspection, caching, SSL encryption, decryption, WAN optimization, and more."

"The proxy is valuable due to its reputation and categorization features for sites, which assist in blocking malicious sites."

More Symantec Proxy pros

Cons

"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 area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."

"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, and that is where in 2025 we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform."

"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."

"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."

"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."

"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 endpoint-type solution is an area that needs some improvement."

More iboss cons

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

"The user monitoring could still be improved."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Activating the SSL inspection is one of the challenges."

"Support response time and case resolution could be improved."

"Support services are lagging and not very responsive. I rate their support as five out of ten."

"AI features could potentially improve the proxy by helping build rules more efficiently, suggesting unused rules, and enhancing preference setting."

"Improvements in log availability would greatly enhance its overall effectiveness."

"The product needs improvement in support services, as they are lagging and not very responsive when we raise concerns or queries, especially in terms of significant impact."

"The tool’s reporting features must be improved."

"The platform's pricing needs improvement."

More Symantec Proxy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"The tool is pretty expensive."

"There are no licensing fees required."

"The price is too expensive compared with that of another solution."

"The product is highly priced. There are no additional costs apart from the standard licenses."

"There is a different department that looks into the licensing part."

"Symantec Proxy has different expiry dates and renewal dates, which is a problem, so Broadcom should improve the licensing renewal process for the solution."

"The solution is very expensive."

"Licensing is based on a subscription."

More Symantec Proxy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

13%

Construction Company

12%

Retailer

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

27%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	10

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	12

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?

I think iboss could be improved by making reporting and dashboard customization more flexible, and simplifying troubl...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

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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 ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Proxy?

Pricing is difficult to specify as Broadcom sells platforms that include multiple products, making it hard to determi...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Symantec Proxy?

AI features could potentially improve the proxy by helping build rules more efficiently, suggesting unused rules, and...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Symantec Proxy?

I use Symantec Proxy for surfing the internet from internal to external networks. My endpoints do not have direct acc...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

iboss

July 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure

July 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Symantec Proxy

July 2026

Download Symantec Proxy product report

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security

Blue Coat Encrypted Traffic Management, ProxySG Appliance

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

Symantec Proxy offers robust web security by providing features like content caching and URL filtering. It enhances security, optimizes performance, and simplifies policy management for enterprises, serving as a dynamic tool across cloud environments.

Symantec Proxy integrates with Broadcom's FireGlass, providing enhanced compatibility and seamless functionality. Known for a stable deployment and a precise URL database, it offers comprehensive threat detection and policy creation, utilizing the Global Intelligence Network. Users deploy it for web security, malware blocking, and traffic filtering. Symantec Proxy's reputation and site categorization bolster defense against malicious sites, although SSL inspection, dashboard integration, and technical support could benefit from improvements. The platform has shifted post-Broadcom acquisition, needing streamlined solutions. Current challenges include performance with O365 and complexities around pricing and licensing.

What features define Symantec Proxy?

Content Caching: Improves performance by storing frequently accessed web content.
URL Database: Provides accurate categorization for security policies.
Policy Creation: Allows for detailed web and URL filtering rules.
Global Intelligence Network: Offers a robust threat detection system.
Autoscaling: Adjusts resource allocation to meet demand efficiently.
Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates potential security risks.

What benefits and ROI considerations are evident?

Enhanced Performance: Boosts speed through efficient caching mechanisms.
Security: Protects against malicious attacks with intelligent filtering.
Simple Configuration: Allows for quick setup and policy management.
Integration: Seamlessly works with other Broadcom tools for broader functionality.

Enterprises leverage Symantec Proxy to secure web access and manage Internet usage across industries. Deployed across cloud providers like AWS, GCP, and Azure, it supports URL filtering, remote access, and bandwidth control by user privileges. Organizations also find value in its role within antivirus scanning, policy customization, and reporting.

Broadcom

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

Jefferies

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure vs. Symantec Proxy

August 2026

Free Report: Menlo Secure vs. Symantec Proxy

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