Symantec Cloud Secure Web Gateway Reviews

Symantec simplifies management by shifting from on-premises solutions to a cloud-based approach. This allows you to maintain control over remote users. Whether corporate desktops are used in the office or remotely, agents can route traffic through a common proxy.

Most products in this space are still maturing. Organizations rushing toward implementing zero-trust models often encounter issues during large deployments. For example, problems may arise when scaling to thousands of users across multiple sites, revealing gaps that weren't apparent in smaller tests. These challenges are common as products evolve and companies adjust to large-scale implementations. It's a widespread issue, and many products face similar complaints during the transition to corporate-wide deployments.

Symantec support is not very good. It is now outsourcing a significant portion of its support desk functions to distributors, who are taking over some of the help desk responsibilities.

Neutral

We work with Symantec and iBoss, and while their technologies are different in their implementations, they are evolving to meet enterprise-level demands. You’ll likely hear feedback from enterprise customers about challenges with scaling to the high volumes they want to support.

Depending on the complexity of your system, you might need additional help during implementation. Considerations such as whether you’re using federated Active Directory or on-premises Active Directory need to be addressed. While setting up a system can be quick, taking only ten minutes to get started, rolling it out for an enterprise requires careful planning. Ensuring you make the right configuration choices is crucial for a successful deployment.

It depends on the size of your deployment. While you can handle the setup, larger deployments might require additional support to manage effectively.

I rate the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

Many of our deployments aren't focused on calculating ROI in traditional terms. Instead, the main benefit is reducing the time and effort spent on maintaining hardware. Moving to a cloud-based solution eliminates the need for hardware upkeep, which translates to savings in terms of time and resources. However, calculating the exact ROI can be challenging because organizations often add new elements to their cloud setup, such as integrating laptops and other devices, which can offset some savings. The primary goal is to enhance security rather than achieve immediate financial savings. 

Symantec is now part of Broadcom, and their pricing is comparable to others in the market. It's reasonably priced relative to similar products.

Customers are increasingly adopting web isolation to enhance their network security. While this technology is costly, organizations carefully evaluate the risks and rewards. Many choose to route only specific types of traffic, particularly suspicious traffic, through isolation rather than all their traffic.

Broadcom has a model where core customers receive dedicated support, while non-core customers get their support through distributors like TD SYNNEX or Carahsoft. This means core customers often get more direct attention and better service. Non-core customers, on the other hand, interact with their distributors for support.

Similar issues have been noted with other companies, like VMware, where customers are unhappy about rising prices despite the technology remaining solid. Broadcom’s products are generally good, but customer dissatisfaction often stems from support and business practices rather than technology. As a result, some customers are shifting away from Broadcom to other solutions, though the products themselves are still highly regarded.

The product itself is quite solid. Some customers are dissatisfied with how Broadcom, and by extension Symantec, handles business operations rather than the technology itself. Issues with business practices can lead to customers leaving, even though the product is effective.

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

It's just a bit proxy. That's the use case.

The possibility of blocking unwanted web content and malicious websites is the most valuable aspect to me. 

Symantec Cloud Secure Web Gateway can be improved by giving customers more ability to provide feedback on the categorization of websites and the site review portal.

Customers should be able to submit more feedback on the reports from malicious web content and malicious websites. The solution could be more effective at identifying and classifying malicious websites.

I have been working with this solution for one and a half years. It's a cloud version, and we are working with an agent version called 9.2.1.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten.  It's in the cloud, so it's quite easy to scale. Our license offers some on-premise proxies as well, and they are quite easy to scale. We have already done so.

We have around 2200 end points in our company. We use it 24/7. It is always connected even when the users are out of the office. 

We have plans to increase the further usage. We are in part planning to have all our service go through the on-premise proxy as well.

The customer service and support were fine and up to the quality. Something could always be better. 

Positive

I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy to set up.

It was pretty straightforward. 

It took around three months to deploy the solution in our company.

So the process was to have the proxy agent installed on all our clients, and we made the very cautious process by rolling out the product slowly to see what affected that and what websites it might break or any connections with might break. So we were quite cautious. Otherwise, we could have done it more quickly.

We used a partner for advisory, but we did the job ourselves. We chose to do it slowly.

Two people were required for the deployment process.

I would rate the pricing a five out of ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive. The price is fixed and affordable. 

We evaluated Trend Micro and Zscaler.

Symantec could lead all our needs. That was the main reason to chose this solution.

Before choosing any product, define your use cases. You will be able to find a solution that would fit your use case. 

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

We use the product for WAF and DLP features. It works as a cloud firewall service as well.

The product's most valuable features are isolation and integration.

We have been using the product for four years. We are using the latest version.

We have Symantec Cloud Secure Web Gateway with 200 users in our organization.

The technical services are good.

The product is easy to install and deploy on the cloud. The process involves securing the licenses, registering on Symantec cloud, and follow-up steps for firewall settings. Later, we have to authenticate it after configuration.

We have one in-house engineer to monitor the platform. We take help from Symantec's support team in case of technical issues during implementation.

The product is cost-effective, considering its features, technology, and support services. However, it is a little expensive compared to other competitors.

I rate Symantec Cloud Secure Web Gateway a nine out of ten. I advise others to go for the product if they want secure technology.

We use this for secure home internet traffic.

This solution does not require much administration.

WSS runs slowly sometimes, I would like for this to be looked into.

I have been using this solution for about five years.

This is a stable solution.

This is a scalable solution. We currently have about forty thousand users in our company.

Customer service could be a bit faster in terms of time to reply.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It took a team of three about two weeks in total.