Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway Reviews

The most valuable feature for me in Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is URL filtering, though all other features of the product are okay as well.

A room for improvement in Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is the support it offers. It's very bad.

What I'd like to see in the next release of the product is for it to be less complicated because at the moment Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is more complicated than other products. Sometimes issues come up that you can't solve without the support team. For example, you should write the root password to fix the issue.

In the next release of the product, it would be good if it had an easy-to-use interface. Troubleshooting issues in Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway should be less complicated as well.

I've been dealing with Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway for about two years now. My company doesn't use the product. It's the customers who use Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway.

Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is a scalable product.

We had to contact Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway technical support because some of the features didn't work, but it took them a long time to respond. Sometimes, even if you call support many times, they will not respond. In the end, they weren't able to solve our issues. We solved the issues ourselves.

The initial setup for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway isn't easy. When you compare it to Fortinet, it's very complicated.

For example, for Fortinet FortiProxy, you don't need to install the database or SQL, and there's no need to prepare a server. You also don't need to do a lot of authentication because it's only one appliance, so it will work via proxy, then you can do the installation.

For Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, you need two servers: one for installing the management software and the second server for SQL, and only then can you control the appliance.

The initial setup for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is complicated, especially when compared to Fortinet FortiProxy.

In terms of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway pricing, I'm not part of the sales team. I'm on the technical team, so I don't have information on the price.

I work for an IT company that provides solutions to customers such as Fortinet, Palo Alto, Forcepoint, and GoSecure. In terms of Forcepoint, my company focuses on web security, particularly Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway.

My company has enterprise customers who use the product.

The number of users of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway varies. One customer has around six hundred users. Another customer has three hundred users then there's a customer in the banking industry that has a thousand users.

My advice to others looking into implementing Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is to prepare a lab and create scenarios in the lab before going to the customers.

My rating for the solution is seven out of ten.

We use it for internal monitoring of internet access as well as for controlling internet access.

It has got a really good URL categorization database. It is simple to set up. It is also easy to use and quite intuitive. It has got a nice utility for troubleshooting.

We are using a V10000 G3 appliance. It is just a proxy. It is just HTTP, FTP, and HTTPS. Now, as our website has developed and we are using rich time-connectivity protocols, the proxy doesn't have the ability to work with these protocols. It would be nice if the UDP feature was there for it to filter UDP traffic. It needs firewall capabilities for UDP filtering.

Its upgrades can be quite complex, and they don't always go as per the plan. Its reporting could be a bit more granular. 

I have used it for quite some time.

I am satisfied with its stability. We have got a good network infrastructure.

It is easy to scale. You can just add another box to scale it up. 

We are using it for about 3000 users, but it can take a lot more. You have to look at the box you choose and use it as you require.

I have interacted with them. Nine out of ten times, their support is really good. There are different packages you can buy for support. The one we have is really good. We usually get a response within four hours, and they are available seven days a week. They have been helpful, and they do point you in the right direction. If they don't have a solution, they will go back and solve it through another team member.

I can't remember, but I think we used Blue Coat. We switched because at the time, most of the technology modules were embedded into one appliance in Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, which is how you can reduce the number of boxes you would have in your server, which is really good. In terms of cost also, it was working out better for us.

The initial setup was straightforward. The upgrades, however, are not straightforward, and they don't always go as per the plan. It also depends on your environment and the configuration. The advantage of going for a cloud solution is that you don't have the overhead of managing upgrades and downtime. The advantage of an on-premises solution is that you have more control, which is really nice. You have ownership, and you have the chance to develop your own solution, which is fantastic.

We got help from a third-party vendor.

I would not recommend the version that we have, that is, V10000 G3. I would recommend the later versions. 

Its implementation depends on your working environment. You might want to go for a hybrid version where it is partly on the cloud and partly on-premises. You also have to look at deploying agents on your systems. So, it just depends on how you are planning on working. Are you working from an office or are you going to be working remotely? That would dictate how you implement the solution. It is a fine product for what it does. Going forward, it would need firewall capabilities for UDP filtering.

I would rate Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway an eight out of ten. It needs UDP support and a bit more granular filtering of reports, but all in all, it ticks most of the boxes.

All the proxies have the same features, but the idea here is about URL categorization and the support you have. I found this very interesting in Forcepoint.

In terms of functionality, Forcepoint is the best web proxy available.

I'm an engineer, and as an engineer, I often try to use the best solutions and ones I'm most comfortable with. I like Forcepoint. It's very good for implementation, but it's functionality is great. It has very, very deep technical features, and in-depth introduction features. I really encourage anyone to have it in their environment.

If the solution had a lower cost, it would be easier to implement.

In the 8.5 version of the solution, I took some issue with the interface. 

I'd recommend that the company supports more process to matrix files. We've had issues with that.

The solution should be better able to support itself and operate faster. Sometimes the technical support team takes too long to respond.

I was first introduced to Forcepoint in 2013. At that point, it was Websense and has since been acquired. I've been using the solution in total for about two years. I've spent the same amount of time with the email and web security parts of Forcepoint as well.

The solution is very stable. I didn't see any issue regarding stability. The hub itself is very powerful. It's very good that I can look at the hardware good or node maintenance and see where there are vulnerabilities. 

I implemented it in an environment with multiple users and other environments which included about 20 other items and I've found scalability to be great. You can have a lot of appliances that act as a cluster and you could have high availability on a sort of virtual ID server. You can do additional ID configurations from the other appliances so that typically it extends well. You don't have to have something like download X5. If you have two appliances, you just need to distribute both. For example, you can do it from the configuration. I couldn't find any situation in my work with Forcepoint that was not able to satisfactorily scale. So you can really make it as you wish.

Technical support sometimes takes too long to respond to queries.

In terms of implementation, if you are going to implement Forcepoint, you have to think about how you will deploy it in your proxy environment. You have the ability code, as well as other items. 

If you are implementing Forcepoint in web proxy, it has to be P1 or P2. It has to be on the user onsite as V2 on V5. You could, for some environments, have two interfaces that communicate with each other. You cannot get both to interface, however. If you use the P1 for a user's internet, you then have to make P1 access the internet.

We're a Forcepoint business partner in Egypt.

There are a lot of features already in the application and a lot of features that are added every day, so you have to learn how to implement them. If you decide to use the solution, you have to plan it out and prepare for it. You also have to update your knowledge and make sure your system is updated with regard to the solution. The most difficult part about Forcepoint is that if you take some time away from not working with it you forget features and processes. You need to work on it often and continue learning about it all the time.  

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I'm currently using the solution for the internet traffic controller for the application end.

The solution makes it really easy to control traffic, whitelisting, and the GUI environment. Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is a user-friendly solution. Functionality-wise, we never experience any threats, and we also face no issues with the bandwidth. We are currently using load balancing, which is running smoothly.

The solution has complexity with the databases, and we have to manually clear old data logs.

I have been using Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway for two years.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

The solution is suitable for all company sizes, including small, medium, and enterprise businesses.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten for scalability.

The technical support team needs to improve its engineer count because fewer engineers are working in the support team.

Positive

I would recommend Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway to other users.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I have found the simplicity of the solution valuable. The dashboard and reports are good as well.

Our experience thus far with Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway has not been good. The availability of clusters is limited, and the product is very unstable. The development team is slow as well.

There have been a lot of changes in the network at Forcepoint, and we've had downtimes of almost three hours. This happened six times from August to December.

When Forcepoint moves user traffic to another cluster during maintenance, the transaction is not smooth for end users. They lose access to the internet.

In the Middle East, the ISPs block the IPs of Forcepoint, and the Forcepoint compliance team has been unable to resolve these issues.

Forcepoint should focus on understanding how Zscaler works.

In the next release, they should provide an inbuilt, full-fledged DLP CASB feature.

Forcepoint should also work on improving their communication regarding maintenance.

I've been working with this solution for the past seven months.

We have experienced several problems with stability, so I would rate the solution at four out of ten for stability.

I would rate Forcepoint's scalability at seven out of ten. 

We have 75,000 end users and around 300 IT specialists who use this solution.

Technical support staff take a long time to understand and resolve issues. You will need to implement a workaround yourself as technical support may take six months to resolve an issue. This can be the case even when the ticket is escalated. Therefore, I would rate technical support at four on a scale from one to ten.

Neutral

The initial setup can be complex depending on the location. For instance, in the Middle East, we have to use our direct endpoint client. In Europe, we use the proxy endpoint client.

The cost for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway is lower than that for Zscaler and Netskope. It could be around $4 per user annually.

I would not recommend Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway because of all the issues and give it an overall rating of five out of ten.

I've done a few deployments with roaming user filtering and with central management consoles on the content creation and on different critical locations.

The DLP database from Forcepoint is also very good.

It's got a very reliable orientation.

It is a scalable solution. We can use it for global-level customers and for separate locations.

This is a highly detailed product with very good key features. When it comes to optimization, it's similar to Blue Coat. It has a very stable architecture.

It's very feature-rich when it comes to visibility and reporting. The reporting module is very handy. We can schedule reports and generate investigations. 

The initial setup is easy.

I'd like to see the solution improve the banded optimization to offer more bandwidth control, similar to what is on offer with Blue Coat. For example, it would be useful if we could arrange the restriction of certain uploads for particular applications.

It would be great if they had classic customization features. I have quite good experience in Check Point solutions, so I experienced how application protocol features help when we want to deploy bandwidth content filtering. I expect to have the same or close to the same level of customization in Forcepoint.

My bread and butter is Forcepoint DLP. I've worked for about seven years with Forcepoint solutions. However, I've worked with the Secure Web Gateway for five years and have deployed it for customers as well.

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

It has good architecture. It has an architecture where I have the policy brokers, policy severs, and content creation, as well as an integrated reporting module with a reporting database. I have a team building products with me, including OEM software. When it comes to Forcepoint, it's a very reliable solution.

Many of our customers have between 400 and 800 users. 

I've contacted support many times. 

I cannot say they are excellent support. That said, quite often, I get some good support. Still, I cannot recommend them highly. Luckily, I can manage myself just fine. Now that we are in an apex region, I hope that we will get a good level of support for the application.

Neutral

I am also familiar with Blue Coat

The initial setup is not overly difficult. 

The time it takes to deploy the product depends. If I have all the items I need in my hand, it doesn't take that much time. However, compared to other products, it takes a little while time since you need to get it on the client's field servers for reporting, and you need to have some access with admin privileges. 

I'm able to deploy the solution for my clients. 

I don't deal with licensing and have no visibility on the exact pricing. 

I'm a partner. My company is a system integrator, and I am a consultant. We deploy this solution for clients and have handled five or six high-end deployments so far. 

I'd recommend the solution to others if the requirements make sense and it works in the company environment. 

I would rate the solution seven out of ten. It's very reliable. It just needs more features.

I use this product for email filtering.

The spam filter is very effective.

It does a good job of detecting ransomware links in email and then blocking them.

We have a lot of false positives, which is one area that can be improved. At the same time, there is a lot of spam that still gets by the filter.

The engine should be enhanced because some malware still gets by the filter.

The login for emails should be more advanced.

I have been using Forcepoint Web Security for four years.

This service is very stable.

It is easy to scale. I can set up more than one Exchange server and more than one domain. We have about 600 users in the company and we do not plan on increasing at this time.

We obtain support from the local partner, rather than from Forcepoint directly.

Prior to this, I was working with Websense. 

It is a cloud-based deployment so the initial setup is not complex. There are a couple of things to configure, pointing them to your mail servers, but it is easy and straightforward. 

We only require a single person for maintenance.

The price of this product should be reduced to make it more competitive.

In summary, this is a good product and I highly recommend it. However, it is important to remember that suitability will vary depending on the environment.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

• Reporting
• Custom Block Pages
• AD integration

It allowed our company to not worry about the security of a page, but talk more about the content and the productivity of specific types of web categories.

Allow for faster exemption of websites or the ability to reclassify websites.

Five years.

None.

None.

None.

Great. They made sure that we were choosing the right version and helped us understand the tradeoffs between their different deployment strategies.

Great. I had only a few issues after rollout and their tech support was quick to help.

Cisco Web Security. The AD integration was lacking. The speed was also lacking.

It was straightforward, since I had deployed it at my previous company. The engineer assigned to our deployment was also on hand to make sure that I followed the updated best practices.

In-house with vendor support.

It is a well-priced option.

Zscaler, Barracuda, Sophos, and Cisco Web Security.