Forcepoint’s view of the Secure Web Gateway market
You’ve heard by now that Gartner has released the 2017 Magic Quadrant for Secure Web Gateways (SWG). Reports like these can provide guidance to organizations looking to get educated on a technology market, and industry analysts like Gartner are in a unique position to provide their perspective. However, because of their different vantage points, vendors and analysts don’t always share the exact same views on a given market.
As pioneers in cloud security with a track record of continuously expanding the very definition of what it means to be a Secure Web Gateway, we have strong views about the future of this technology. Our vision for SWG goes beyond URL filtering, malware defense and tunneling options. Those things are important, but our human-centric SWG strategy encompasses more than that. It’s about the gateway protecting every user everywhere, regardless of where they are; the roaming user support is crucial. It’s about the gateway enabling organizations to safely embrace the cloud with deep visibility and control over the use of cloud applications (for those that race into the cloud with no seatbelts!). And finally, it’s about doing all of that with the most secure, trusted, high performance cloud available.
One area where Forcepoint agrees wholeheartedly with Gartner is that the Secure Web Gateway market continues its rapid shift toward cloud-based SWG services. We’ve invested over the years in anticipation of this shift, and we’re certainly seeing the interest within our customer base. We’ve deployed 27 data centers around the world – each of which complies with the highest certification standards – and we recently opened new sites in Toronto, Milan, Stockholm and Warsaw. A few months ago, we acquired CASB technology and have quickly integrated features like cloud app discovery and reporting into our Web Security product. We’ve been investing in the cloud for years and will continue to launch new innovation this year to extend our leadership across on-premises and cloud-based SWG.
Regardless of where you are in the cloud adoption lifecycle, you need solutions that match the pace of your move to the cloud. Infrastructure is quickly migrating to the cloud, as is corporate data. Users are commonly working from remote locations and are increasingly leaving the traditional perimeter exposed; supporting roaming worker use cases is a fundamental requirement for cloud security.
And yet, an individual organization’s move to the cloud can take years. There’s no on-off switch; digital transformation projects take time and hybrid scenarios will be common for years to come. Deployment flexibility is incredibly important; you want to work with a vendor that offers a wide range of deployment options, from appliances and cloud-based services to hybrid deployment modes that enable gradual migration to the cloud.
We’re constantly striving to fulfill that vision, innovating around those themes and taking the Secure Web Gateway into the future. As we move forward, look for us to keep pushing boundaries in areas like:
- Granular visibility & control of sanctioned cloud applications
- Policy enforcement and threat protection
- Content controls for both data in motion and data at rest
- Holistic understanding of user risk
So, if your business is moving to the cloud, come talk to us. If you care about sensitive data and the users that interact with it, come talk to us. If you have roaming users, come talk to us. If you want to accelerate your shift toward a human-centric security paradigm, come talk to us. We’re here to help, and we’re ready to share our vision of the future of Web Security and the role it plays in protecting the Human Point.
For additional reading: as always, we recommend that technology buyers consider multiple third-party perspectives when performing their due diligence. Consider IDC. They placed Forcepoint as a “Leader” in the IDC Marketscape: Worldwide Web Security 2016 Vendor Assessment and ranked Forcepoint no. 2 in share for the overall Worldwide Web Security market. For the 10th consecutive year, Radicati Group said we were a “Top Player” in its Corporate Web Security Market Quadrant including the new 2017 report.