FortiGuard Web Content Filtering versus Websense
March 2005FortiGuard 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.
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:
¾ Blocking by keyword ¾ Custom URL block lists
¾ Custom URL exempt and override lists
¾ Custom script filter option to block Java applets, ActiveX components and Cookies.
¾ User authentication to block or permit web usage
• Web page caching on FortiGate devices enhances the performance of web filtering. • Using FortiGate’s 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 Fortinet’s AVLab shows that FortiGuard consistently beats Websense in terms of Rating Availability and Rating Accuracy.
Test showing the Rating Accuracy between FortiGuard Web Filtering Service and Websense. Note that Websense is consistently below the accuracy provided by Fortinet’s rating database. This is primarily due to Fortinet’s comprehensive ratings database with over 25 million rated domains (as of March 21, 2005) and the accuracy of the rating information.
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
Features comparison of FortiGuard vs Websense
Feature List FortiGuard Websense
Blocking and Detection
Internet Blocking & Filtering Yes Yes
Block Spyware Yes - FortiOS Yes
Block Phishing Sites Yes Yes
Block/Allow Specific File Types Yes - FortiOS Yes
Customizable Block Pages Yes - FortiOS Yes
White List / Override List Yes - FortiOS Yes
Prevent P2P File Sharing Yes - FortiOS Yes
Manage Internet Access by Network Protocol
Yes - FortiOS Yes
User Authentication Yes - Local database, Yes - Active Directory, RADIUS, LDAP eDirectory, LDAP
Additional Costs FortiGuard Websense
~ $15 p year
Licensing Cost 40% of chassis er user / per
Additional Hardware No Yes
Additional Software No Yes
User must manage URL database server No Yes
SW & HW Platform FortiGuard Websense
Appliance Yes No - Runs on Linux,Sun
or Windows
Fully Outsourced Solution Yes No
Reporting Features FortiGuard Websense
Centralized Reporting Yes - FortiReporter No - Report server required at each location
Web-Based Reporting Yes - FortiReporter Yes
Report Templates Yes - FortiReporter Yes - Over 80 reports
Multi-Format Reports Yes - HTML, MS Word, MS Yes, HTML, MS Word,
Excel, Text, PDF PDF
Management Functions FortiGuard Websense
Yes - Per FW Policy Yes Customizable Policies
Web-Based Central Management Yes Yes
Database Ratings FortiGuard Websense
Number of Rated Domains/Sites 25+ million * 6+ million
Customizable Categories No No
Dynamic Real-Time Rating No No
DB Update Frequency 1 x per day 2 x per day
Languages 12+ 52
Note: Fortinet continuously updates their web content ratings databases with thousands of *
entries per day. For the latest rating content numbers, please contact Fortinet’s Product Management Group.
rd, and Copyright 2005 Fortinet, Inc. All rights reserved. Fortinet, FortiGate, FortiASIC, FortiProtect, FortiGua 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.
