PIX & Websense?? 1

[rshendrix]

Anyone have any experience with the Cisco PIX firewall and the Websense employee internet management product?

I'm looking at this solution because I need to filter/block internet sites based on user.

Any comments will be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[xlee]

Great product. Support sucks!

 

[scothaniel]

Check out MIMESweeper and WEBSweeper @ Contenttechnologies.com. We went that route for Web / Mail filtering and virus control. A little cheaper then Websense, just as good (in my opinion).

 

[rshendrix]

Thanks for the info.

Just a couple of questions if you don't mind. In what type of environment are you running Websweeper? how many users? what operating system?

I took a quick look at contenttechnologies.com and it looked like it would meet some of my needs.

Randal

 

[ama299]

I currently run websense with my pix515 firewall with about 800 users works great. I would not chose anything else. Very easy to maintain, and setup. The report feature is great to have you can create a report on one user to all users. Will tell every site they went to, or attempted to go to. Easy to add sites, or you can block by key word for example I don't want anyone downloading exe files so I add keywork exe and no one can download exe files. excempt for the people who have the rights. You can also use qoata time lets say at a cetain time of day you can let people get to there hotmail for whatever time you tell it. default is 20 mins. You can also block viruses to.

Hope this helps

 

[rshendrix]

Thanks ama299.

If you don't mind, I have a couple other questions.

What are the specs for the server that you are running Websense on? (processor, memory, disk size)

Are you logging to SQL Server or MSDE?

Thanks in advance.

 

[ama299]

The specs on my server is

Windows2000 Server SP2
Compaq DL-380 Dual PIII 866
1 Gig of RAM
Partition is 3.94 GB
It does not need this much in order to run.

and yes I do use the reporter Works great I used MSDE, and SQL 2000 both work just fine.

Anymore questions just ask
Thanks

 

[scothaniel]

Sorry for the late response-

We are running WebSweeper on (2)1GHz NT4 Servers. 1200 users total. Using Sophos for anti-virus.

If you are running a LDAP based network, you could also go the open-source route of using Squid Proxy server. It requires a lot more work, but the price is right.

 

[Speaker]

You can DL a trial version of WebSense for 14 days. I did and liked the product. The integration with the PIX is really nice. The only problem is that it's pretty expensive. You have to subscribe to their banned sites updates, and if you ever stop subscribing the product no longer works.

The price for our 300 user network was about $6500 or so for one year, which was on par with most other products, but after three years the total cost was close to $18,000 whereas the other products would be roughly half that after three years.

If money were no object (and if it isn't, let me know if your company is hiring) I'd go with WebSense.