Fortiguard Web Content Filtering Versus Websense
Fortiguard Web Content Filtering Versus Websense
Fortiguard Web Content Filtering Versus Websense
March 2005 FortiGuard Web Filtering offers schools and enterprises a cost effective and easy to deploy solution to enforce safe and acceptable web usage policies, which results in increased employee productivity and reduced legal liability, by blocking access to websites using a constantly updated and accurate database of 20+Million categorized and rated internet websites.
FortiGuard offers lower overall deployment costs compared to competitive products by licensing web filtering per FortiGate device rather than per user. Very accurate and up to date URL database of 25+Million rated domains and 2 billion rated web pages in 56 categories. Antivirus protection is delivered by the integrated antivirus feature in every FortiGate AV firewall. FortiGuard is a fully managed web filtering service, there are no additional servers to install and manage. To use the feature the administrator simply enables the subscription service on each FortiGate device. Centralized based report tool with a web based interface.
Target Customer Profile Schools, libraries, government agencies and enterprises from the small to large enterprise class will benefit by deploying FortiGuard web filtering to control internet usage.
Customer Challenges How to increase employee productivity and reduce legal liability by centrally managing internet usage at school and the workplace. IDC reports that up to 40% of internet usage at work is non-work related and other reports show that 80% of adult related sites are accessed between the hours of 9:00am to 5:00pm, Monday through Friday.
Deployment Considerations of Websense URL filtering High Total Cost of Ownership. Websense licenses per user which becomes a very costly solution for medium to large enterprises. Pricing includes the software only. There are additional costs for the hardware and operating system software to run the Websense application. No centralized reporting. For multiple site deployments, a Websense report server must be deployed at each location. Key Selling Points of FortiGuard Web Filtering Simple and cost effective by licensing the web filtering service per FortiGate device, and not per user which is how many competitors license web filtering. FortiGuard is easy to deploy, no additional servers are needed to install and manage. All that is needed to use FortiGuard is to enable the feature on the FortiGate device. FortiGuard provides an up to date and very accurate URL database of 56 rated categories with over 25 million rated domains and over 2 billion rated web pages (as of March 21, 2005) Fortinet security professionals work around the clock and are located in many countries around the globe to provide timely updates to all FortiGuard subscription services. Thousands of web sites are added and refreshed daily to keep the database as accurate as possible. Fortinet engineers update the URL database daily to provide accurate and updated URL listings. Fortinet offers a centralized reporting server that all FortiGate devices can forward logs to. No need to deploy multiple reporting servers at each location. FortiGuard blocks access to Phishing sites as well as popular Spyware sites. FortiOS provides virus scanning of HTTP data for inbound and outbound connections. FortiGuard Web Content Filtering can be enabled with many of the other FortiGate security functions (firewall, antivirus, intrusion protection, antispam) on one platform to increase security effectiveness. Websense can not do this as they are a dedicated web filtering service. Fortinet offers 2 layers of security against Spyware. FortiGuard blocks access to Spyware websites while FortiOS scans for malicious and sensitive data being sent to known websites. FortiGate device offers many user definable web filtering options: Blocking by keyword Custom URL block lists Custom URL exempt and override lists Custom script filter option to block Java applets, ActiveX components and Cookies. User authentication to block or permit web usage Web page caching on FortiGate devices enhances the performance of web filtering. Using FortiGates granular firewall rules and authentication methods, very specific web content filtering profiles can be created for each department or user group. Internal testing performed by Fortinets AVLab shows that FortiGuard consistently beats Websense in terms of Rating Availability and Rating Accuracy. Note: Performance testing was performed by taking 300 random Web site URLs and running them against FortiGuard Web Filtering Services rating database and Websenses rating database. This was done for a period of 28 days to define a consistent performance trend.
Test showing the Rating Accuracy between FortiGuard Web Filtering Service and Websense. Note that Websense is consistently below the accuracy provided by Fortinets rating database. This is primarily due to Fortinets comprehensive ratings database with over 25 million rated domains (as of March 21, 2005) and the accuracy of the rating information.
Test showing the Unrated Percentage between the FortiGuard Web Filtering Service and Websense. Note that Websense is consistently higher in terms of the number of unrated web sites that were used to test both systems over the 28 day period.
Test showing the Incorrect Percentage between the FortiGuard Web Filtering Service and Websense. Note that Websense is incorrect percentage is higher. With a larger database, Fortinet can maintain better accuracy and a higher percentage of rating hits.
Sample Pricing Comparison The following pricing chart illustrates the US Retail Pricing between FortiGuard Web Content Filtering and Websense for systems supporting 250 users and 10,000 users.
Features comparison of FortiGuard vs Websense Feature List Blocking and Detection Internet Blocking & Filtering Block Spyware Block Phishing Sites Block/Allow Specific File Types Customizable Block Pages White List / Override List Prevent P2P File Sharing Manage Internet Access by Network Protocol User Authentication FortiGuard Yes Yes - FortiOS Yes Yes - FortiOS Yes - FortiOS Yes - FortiOS Yes - FortiOS Yes - FortiOS Yes - Local database, RADIUS, LDAP FortiGuard ~40% of chassis No No No FortiGuard Yes Websense Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes - Active Directory, eDirectory, LDAP Websense $15 per user / per year Yes Yes Yes Websense No - Runs on Linux,Sun or Windows No Websense No - Report server required at each location Yes Yes - Over 80 reports Yes, HTML, MS Word, PDF Websense Yes Yes Websense 6+ million 80
Additional Costs Licensing Cost Additional Hardware Additional Software User must manage URL database SW & HW Platform Appliance
server
Yes - FortiReporter Yes - FortiReporter Yes - HTML, MS Word, MS Excel, Text, PDF FortiGuard Yes - Per FW Policy Yes FortiGuard 25+ million * 56
Management Functions Customizable Policies Web-Based Central Management Database Ratings Number of Rated Domains/Sites Number of Categories
No No 2 x per day 52
* Note: Fortinet continuously updates their web content ratings databases with thousands of entries per day. For the latest rating content numbers, please contact Fortinets Product Management Group.
Copyright 2005 Fortinet, Inc. All rights reserved. Fortinet, FortiGate, FortiASIC, FortiProtect, FortiGuard, and FortiOS are trademarks of Fortinet, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. COM1210503