We have been a Websense customer for quite a few years now and while the basic functionality of the system has always been acceptable, I’ve always found everything else to be a tedious and slow process with them. 

For example, when we first implemented Websense we had a Cisco PIX firewall and integrating Websense with the PIX was a snap.  Eventually we replaced the PIX with a Watchguard and had to find a new method of integrating Websense into our network.  We had a Cisco router as our LAN gateway, and Websense had an integration for Cisco routers so that seemed like the logical road to go down.  After spending over a month working with their support crew without getting the integration to work, one of their techs asked “why don’t you just use it in standalone mode?”   Naturally I had assumed that standalone mode would require the Websense server to be physically between the clients and the internet gateway, or to have the clients configured with proxy settings.  Neither of which was something that I was willing to do.  Turns out, neither is required.  Why wasn’t this the first road for tech support to show me?   It turned out that standalone mode was SO easy to install and configure, that I still can’t for the life of me understand why they even have integration options. » Read more: Websense Remote Filtering – x64, Vista, Windows 7