Forcepoint SWG Reviews & Insights

Score9.7 out of 10

137 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Helpful and Clear Help Articles: Reviewers have praised the clear and helpful help articles provided by Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway. These articles were found to be a valuable resource in understanding and utilizing the software effectively, with some users mentioning that they served as a comprehensive reference point for various tasks and functionalities. The availability of these detailed and informative articles not only contributed to a smoother learning curve but also helped troubleshoot issues independently, reducing the reliance on customer service support.

Time-saving Feature: Users appreciate the time-saving aspect of Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway's clear and easily accessible help articles. With these resources readily available, reviewers mentioned being able to find answers to their questions quickly, allowing them to continue working without interruptions. This feature has been particularly useful in minimizing downtime caused by seeking support from customer service or navigating complex user manuals.

Commitment to Customer Satisfaction: The inclusion of clear help articles demonstrates Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway's commitment to customer satisfaction. Reviewers highlighted how this comprehensive resource eliminates unnecessary back-and-forth communication with customer support, as it provides extensive information upfront. By offering detailed guidance through these articles, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway ensures users have access to reliable self-help options, enhancing overall user experience.

Forcepoint SWG Reviews

39 Reviews

Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees)

WebSecurity

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

December 15, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PIL is using Forcepoint Web Security throughout the whole organization; it addresses surf content filtering and prevents malicious infection.

Pros

Hybrid mode deployment —cloud.
Able enforce web content filtering at home.
Implement for both office and remote users.

Cons

In recent hybrid mode deployment, it was discovered that quota time was not able to apply for the remote user.
The existing office encountered a challenge to deploying Forcepoint Web Security.
To consider price competitive for global deployment.

Likelihood to Recommend

Scenario: Hybrid mode for home and remote users scenarios Out china office is not able to deploy force point due to Forcepoint Web Security moving out of the China market.

Boon Leng David Aw

Deputy General Manager - Technical(ISD) in Information Technology at PIL (Transportation/Trucking/Railroad, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

View profile

Decent product with poor support

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

November 30, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Used to help prevent users from accessing malicious sites and sites considered counterproductive to work.

Pros

Quota Time.
Somewhat easy redirection of web traffic.

Cons

Enforcement is inconsistent at times.
Seems to cause connection timeouts with certain websites.
Very poor product support.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited to on-premises web filtering. We have recently attempted to implement the agent for remote users and have had issues with it interfering with our VPN software.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (Banking company, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Forcepoint Web Security: Secures Your Browsing Traffic

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

October 15, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it for our entire organization. With Forcepoint Web Security, we can be certain that the web traffic from users’ browsers will be scanned. Both plain and encrypted communications can be scanned, malware and executable programs can be filtered out, and it works transparently for the users. We have selected a number of "forbidden" categories; if they try to visit a site from that category, they will receive either a block page or a warning page.

Pros

Customization of configuration and block pages
Performance for web browsing is very good
Easy to troubleshoot with logging
Supports high available configurations (clustered setup) and virtual servers

Cons

Does not support web sockets, used by (e.g., WhatsApp Web, Spotify, call/video apps) unless you install client software
Learning curve can be steep
Sometimes lagging behind modern browsers (e.g., when SAN in SSL became a requirement)
May not support TLS 1.3 decryption fully

Likelihood to Recommend

It can be used as [an] explicit proxy, especially when combined with a proxy PAC file that lists the exceptions, and we have a lot of them (e.g., Microsoft apps like Teams). Then the exceptions will bypass the proxy and need to be able to pass through the firewall. A transparent setup should be possible, but we never got it to work reliably, [...] because this depends on [a] redirection by switches or firewalls, for which no modern protocol is being supported.

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (Transportation/Trucking/Railroad company, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Forcepoint Web Security: An application that does what we expect it to do

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

August 15, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Forcepoint Web Security is being used across the whole organization on our servers and our PCs, including laptops. We use it to filter websites and protect us from accessing URLs that may be harmful. It addresses the need to have protection on our devices, even when users are out of the office.

Pros

It prevents users from accessing websites that may have recently been created for the purpose of distributing malware.
It prevents users from accidentally or intentionally accessing websites that are considered inappropriate for a work environment.
It allows us to create different policies for different teams in our organization.

Cons

Forcepoint Web Security can be improved by making the setup less bloated. We have two proxy servers clustered together for each environment, and we currently have environments for our campus, server, DMZ, and external networks. The setup and maintenance of the application can be cumbersome.
Updating the agent needs to be implemented better. Instead of having to create and push out updates for the agents, there should be a way agents can get software updates directly from Forcepoint Web Security.
Accessing the web content gateway to make changes is also not as streamlined as I would like and it should be improved.

Likelihood to Recommend

[Forcepoint Web Security is well suited] if you have an organization where there are quite a few servers and PCs that access the internet. If a user's internet usage logging is needed, then this product is well suited for your environment. If you have a smaller organization, Forcepoint Web Security may be overkill for your establishment.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (Utilities company, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

9 years of experience

Forcepoint Web Security- The Industy leader in Content filtering and Security

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 26, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Earlier we were using the URL filtering from other Firewall vendors for our web security but we were so many challenges with that as it had so many categorization issues. Sports sites were getting blocked in the Movies category and some unwanted URLs were not getting blocked. Our users were facing many problems in their daily tasks. Then we decided to go ahead with Forcepoint Web Security and trust me it was life-changing decision for our infra. First, it got installed in our Data Center on-premises and their categorization is just perfect. After implementing it, we got our web security covered and users didn't face any issues after that.

Pros

Categorization
Real-time security updates for threat protection
It has a centralized granular policy controls
Content Filtering

Cons

Customer Support
Scalability and throughput
Documentation availability
Pricing should be bit lower

Likelihood to Recommend

Forcepoint Web Security is a suited solution for all the kinds of organizations who are accessing the web internet, be it small size, mid-size or larger organizations. Its content filtering feature is just awesome which is not available with other vendors. If you want to allow Sports category and block movie category on the same URL (youtube) then this kind of scenario can be achieved by Forcepoint Web Security. It has intuitive management and reporting and the largest intel database.

Chandan Singh Rathore

Senior Technical Consultant in Information Technology at iValue InfoSolutions Pvt. Ltd. (Information Technology & Services, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

You can make it better

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 11, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Forcepoint is used across Organization. It takes care of web-security and data leakage prevention.

Pros

Crawler works very well
Each word scanning page wise works well
User behavior pattern is very useful

Cons

Intelligent DLP
Network devices vulnerabilities detection
Intelligent analysts of threat vulnerabilities

Likelihood to Recommend

[Well suited for] project specific restriction. DLP restriction works well. Shadow IT is not visible.

Ashish Chakraborty

Head Information Technology & Security in Information Technology at Harbinger Group (Computer Software, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

View profile

Excellent threat protection and Productivity monitoring with now in house overheads.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

December 3, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In use by the whole organization, provides extra layer of security also provides content blocking as well as time based access to certain sites to increase productivity.

Pros

Blocks malicious sites.
Allows restriction complete or by time to sites such as social media.
Provides keyword content and category blocking of sites.
Provides extensive reporting for browsing and security alerts.

Cons

Ability to temporarily disable the proxy.
More flexible client deployment options.
Web chat support.

Likelihood to Recommend

Forcepoint is great for monitoring users online browsing behaviors and time spent being less productive, it also provides a layer of security to block malicious websites.

Grace Huang

Network Engineer in Information Technology at MLA (Farming, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

Forcepoint Web Security offers comfort and security

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 24, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have 8 years experience as a Forcepoint Web Security customer and I am very happy with it. We have a small IT department and as the IT Manager, Forcepoint allows me to rest at ease as the application does all the work. I really enjoy the fact that it is a cloud-based application, not an appliance. I can quickly run standard reports from the report catalog. I feel a great sense of security knowing my users can browse the internet while Forcepoint blocks malicious threats. This is a inexpensive, but very effective, layer I use for my company's security. I look forward to many more years using Forcepoint Web Security.

Pros

Advanced threat protection
Set it and forget it
Any user, any device, any location
Change in web content control happens quickly

Cons

None I can think of

Likelihood to Recommend

I strongly believe every small organization or IT department can benefit from Forcepoint. The dashboard is a quick way to see what is going on in your environment. The application is set it and forget it and gives me a strong secure feeling knowing malicious sites or content is being updating constantly. User do not know it is on their machine or device. They are alerted by a page saying that is a blocked site, if they really need access, they let me know and if I approve, I can quickly give them access.

Justin Leos

IT Manager in Information Technology at VNA Hospice & Palliative Care of Southern California (Hospital & Health Care, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

Forcepoint: Great results easily implemented.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 8, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have Forcepoint web security deployed across the whole organization, worldwide with over 350 active endpoints. It provides a very effective defense against everything malicious the web has to offer. Also, it provides us with critical metrics of what types of sites users are visiting and for how long it also enables us to do content and keyword blocking of sites and time-based locking of common sites, eg. social media, this can be achieved very granularly via Active Directory integration.

Pros

Blocks malicious and compromised websites.
Provides a raft of customizable detailed metrics.
Provides very easy to implement content filtering of which there is a lot of default framework ready to go.

Cons

The endpoint software at times can be a little glitchy.
Would be good to be able to temporarily disable the filter via the client for troubleshooting and admin purposes.
Would be good to be able to manually set a Geo location for better response.

Likelihood to Recommend

Due to the diverse and roaming demography of our users, Forcepoint suits us with its global flexibility and its ease of use, endpoint and web interface management, and deployment. Providing trends and user habits has been great for reports to the business, as well as defense security blocking reports presented at board reporting intervals.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (Government Administration company, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Forcepoint Web Security - The Only Choice

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 13, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Used across the whole organization as the sole web filtering platform. Allows us the peace of mind in insuring that our users only access approved web categories and that they remain safe when browsing the internet whilst on the corporate network.
Forcepoint web filtering policies allow us the flexibility needed to tailor the end users experience according to company policy.

Pros

Web category filtering.
Governance and compliance.
Investigative reporting.

Cons

Real time monitoring on the cloud platform would be good to have.

Likelihood to Recommend

Without disclosing too much information Forcepoint Web Security is well suited in HR related issues where performance management/productivity or breach of internet use policy is questioned. The reporting can be very granular and damming for individuals being investigated.
It is less appropriate for real-time monitoring as this is not possible at this point in time from what I understand.

Gareth Petersen

Infrastrucuture Engineer in Information Technology at City of Armadale (Government Administration, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

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