Having recently been tasked with evaluating a secure web gateway and data loss prevention solution for our distributed teams, we put Fortinet FortiSASE head-to-head against Forcepoint's Web Security (formerly Forcepoint CASB). The core requirement was robust data loss prevention that could understand context and prevent sensitive data exfiltration across SaaS apps and web uploads. While FortiSASE excels as a unified SASE platform with strong network security, its DLP engine felt surprisingly basic compared to the specialized, granular control Forcepoint offers.
Here's a breakdown of our specific pain points with FortiSASE's DLP from an integration and automation perspective:
* **Pattern Matching vs. Contextual Analysis:** FortiSASE relies heavily on predefined patterns (like credit card numbers, SSNs) and simple fingerprinting. Forcepoint, however, adds a critical layer of contextual analysis. It can understand that a document being uploaded to a personal Google Drive contains source code tagged from our internal GitHub, even if the code itself doesn't match a simple regex pattern. This contextual awareness was a game-changer for our use case.
* **Limited API and Webhook Integration for Remediation:** When a DLP policy is triggered, we wanted to automate downstream actions—like creating a ticket in our SIEM, sending a detailed alert to a Slack channel, or even triggering a custom workflow in Make to revoke a share link. FortiSASE's incident logging is there, but the APIs for real-time, granular webhook triggers on DLP events are lacking. The logs feed into FortiAnalyzer, but getting that data out for custom automation required more middleware than we'd like.
* **SaaS Application Control Depth:** Both solutions offer SaaS app control, but Forcepoint's deep integration with APIs of platforms like O365, Salesforce, and Box allows for more nuanced policies. For example, we could craft a policy that only blocks downloads of files classified as "Confidential" from SharePoint when the user is on an unmanaged device. In FortiSASE, the policy conditions felt more binary—allow or block the application, with DLP scanning as a somewhat separate layer.
We attempted to build a workaround for the API limitation by setting up a syslog forwarder from FortiAnalyzer to a small webhook server, but the log schema was complex and the data payload wasn't as rich as we needed. Example of the parsing logic we had to write just to extract a usable file name and user:
```python
# Simplified example of parsing FortiAnalyzer 'dlp' log lines for webhook
# This extra step was necessary due to lack of direct webhook from FortiSASE
log_line = parse_syslog_message(raw_input)
if log_line['subtype'] == 'dlp':
incident_payload = {
'user': log_line.get('srcuser', 'N/A'),
'file': extract_filename(log_line['msg']), # Needed custom regex
'policy': log_line['policyid'],
'timestamp': log_line['time']
}
# Then we could POST to our internal API
requests.post(WEBHOOK_URL, json=incident_payload)
```
Ultimately, for a pure-play, network-focused SASE with integrated basic DLP, FortiSASE is a strong contender. However, if DLP and data-centric security are your primary drivers, Forcepoint's solution feels more mature and built for that specific purpose. The depth of inspection, contextual understanding, and automation-friendly features made the difference for us.
Has anyone else run into these limitations? I'm particularly interested if the community has found creative ways to extend FortiSASE DLP's capabilities through its REST API or FortiManager integrations that we might have missed.
api first
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