What is Forcepoint? A Simple Guide to Modern Cybersecurity
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Invisible Shield for Your Business
Have you ever had that sinking feeling in your stomach? Maybe you were about to hit “Send” on an email containing a private client list, only to realize you typed the wrong address. Or perhaps you’ve worried about a disgruntled employee walking out the door with your company’s secret recipes, designs, or financial records on a tiny USB drive.
In the modern world, our most valuable assets aren’t kept in a heavy metal safe. They are stored in the cloud, sent via chat apps, and accessed by employees working from home, coffee shops, or offices across Pakistan. This freedom is great for business, but it makes keeping secrets very hard. This is exactly where the question what is forcepoint becomes important.
If the name sounds familiar but you can’t quite place it, you might remember a company called Websense. A few years ago, Websense joined forces with other security giants (like Raytheon and Stonesoft) to become what we now know as Websense Forcepoint. Today, they are one of the biggest names in the industry, helping thousands of companies breathe easier.
In 2026, the digital world is faster than ever. We use AI to write emails, we store everything on the internet, and hackers are getting smarter. Companies use Forcepoint today because it doesn’t just block bad websites it understands how people behave. It looks for patterns to spot if something is wrong before a disaster happens.
In this guide, we are going to break down everything you need to know about Forcepoint’s tools in plain, simple English. Whether you are a small business owner looking to protect your hard work or an IT manager looking for a reliable partner like ITCS, this post is for you.
Forcepoint Cloud – Secure Access from Anywhere
A few years ago, going to work meant commuting to a specific building and sitting at a specific desk from 9 to 5. Today, the office is wherever your laptop happens to be. Your team might be working from home, from a client’s site, or even from an airport lounge. This shift to remote work has created a massive security headache: how do you keep your company data safe when it’s flying all over the internet outside of your control?
This is where forcepoint cloud solutions come in to save the day.
One of the most important things it does is called CASB (which stands for Cloud Access Security Broker). Think of a CASB as a digital bouncer at the door of an exclusive club. When an employee tries to log into the company’s OneDrive account from public Wi-Fi at a mall, the Forcepoint “bouncer” checks their credentials. It asks:
Is this person really who they claim to be?
Is the laptop they are using safe, free of viruses, and up-to-date?
Are they trying to download a massive amount of sensitive data at 3 AM on a Saturday?
Another key element is something experts call SASE (pronounced sassy). This is a fancy industry term that basically means your security tools are no longer stuck in a physical metal box in your server room. Instead, the security lives on the internet itself. This means your protection travels alongside your employees. No matter where they go in the world, the same strict security rules follow them automatically.
Forcepoint DLP Endpoint – Stop Data Leaks on Computers
Have you ever heard IT people use the term DLP? It stands for Data Loss Prevention. In simple, everyday words, a DLP system is your company’s Secret Keeper.
While a firewall is designed to keep bad guys out of your network, a DLP system is designed to keep your valuable secrets in.
The forcepoint dlp endpoint is a piece of smart software that is installed on every computer, laptop, or server in your company (these are called endpoints). Its entire job is to quietly watch how data is being moved around. Now, this doesn’t mean it’s spying on employees private chats or reading their personal emails. Instead, it is trained to look for specific types of highly sensitive business information, such as:
Credit card numbers
Pakistani National ID (CNIC) numbers
Private healthcare records
Confidential customer contact lists
Company financial spreadsheets or future plans
Imagine an employee, perhaps intending to do some work over the weekend, tries to copy a list of 5,000 customers onto a personal USB thumb drive. Without protection, that data walks out the door in their pocket. But with forcepoint dlp endpoint installed, the computer instantly recognizes that a file containing “sensitive customer data” is trying to move to an unauthorized place (the USB drive).
This is incredibly helpful not just for stopping malicious theft, but for training staff. Reports show that a huge percentage of data leaks happen purely by accident. An employee might try to upload a file to their personal Google Drive just to be helpful, not realizing they are breaking security rules. Forcepoint stops them before the mistake becomes a crisis. It’s like having a helpful security expert sitting on everyone’s shoulder, ensuring they don’t accidentally expose the company to risk.
For more on protecting individual devices, you can read our guide on endpoint protection basics.
Forcepoint Firewall – Strong Network Protection
If the DLP system is the secret keeper floating around inside your office, the forcepoint firewall is the sturdy, armed guard standing at the front door, along with the security cameras monitoring the perimeter.
Every single time anyone in your office goes to a website, receives an email, or downloads a file, data packages are trying to enter your company network from the wild internet. A firewall’s job is to inspect every single one of those packages. If a package looks like it contains a virus, ransomware, or a Trojan horse designed to spy on you, the firewall blocks it instantly and throws it away.
But Forcepoint’s firewall isn’t just a basic allow or block filter. It is what the industry calls a Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW). Here is what that means in everyday language:
It’s Application-Smart: Old firewalls just saw web traffic. Forcepoint’s firewall knows exactly what application is being used. It can tell the difference between someone using Facebook for business marketing and someone using Facebook to play Farmville. You can set rules that allow your marketing team to do their jobs on social media while blocking distracting games or dangerous apps for everyone else.
It Connects Offices Securely: If you have a head office in Lahore and a branch in Multan, the Forcepoint Firewall can create a secure, private tunnel through the internet connecting them (this is often called SD-WAN). This allows your staff in different cities to share files and work together as safely as if they were sitting in the same room, without hackers being able to peek inside the tunnel.
It Sees Inside Hidden Traffic: Nowadays, almost every reputable website uses HTTPS (you see the little padlock icon in your browser address bar). This encrypts traffic for privacy, which is good. However, clever hackers have started hiding viruses inside that encrypted traffic because they know older firewalls can’t read it. A Forcepoint Firewall has the power to safely decrypt that traffic, peek inside to make sure no monsters are hiding in the shadows, re-encrypt it, and send it on its way.
From Websense to Forcepoint – A Quick History
You might still be wondering why some IT veterans refer to the company as websense forcepoint. To really understand what is forcepoint today, it helps to take a very quick look at where it came from.
Back in the earlier days of the internet, a company called Websense became famous globally for its Web Filter. It was the undisputed king of blocking employees from visiting bad or inappropriate websites at work. For many years, Websense was the gold standard for basic internet safety and productivity.
However, as the internet evolved, simply blocking a list of websites wasn’t enough to stop advanced hackers. The threats became too complex. In 2016, a massive global defense and cybersecurity company called Raytheon acquired Websense. They then merged it with another company called Stonesoft, which was famous for making high-powered firewalls.
They rebranded this new, powerful combination of web filtering and firewall technology as Forcepoint.
The goal of this merger was to move away from just blocking IP addresses and move toward understanding human behavior. This history is important because it shows that Forcepoint isn’t a new or unteste startup. They have decades of deep experience. They took the absolute best parts of Websense’s web safety knowledge and combined it with military-grade firewall and data protection technology. You can read more about this corporate journey on the official Forcepoint Wikipedia page
Forcepoint Support – Getting Help When You Need It
No matter how good a piece of software is, eventually, you might have a question, need to configure a complex new rule, or run into a technical glitch. This is why the quality of forcepoint support is such a huge factor in why companies choose them over cheaper alternatives.
When a business invests in Forcepoint, they aren’t just buying a download link and being left alone to figure it out. You get access to a massive support ecosystem:
An Online Knowledge Base: A huge, searchable library of articles and guides that explain how to fix common issues step-by-step.
Global Technical Experts: You can call or chat online with highly trained engineers who know the products inside and out.
Trusted Local Partners: For businesses in Pakistan, this is often the most crucial part.
At ITCS, we act as your trusted local Forcepoint partners on the ground. While the global forcepoint support team is excellent, having a local partner like ITCS means you have someone in your own time zone, someone who understands the local business environment, and someone who can even come to your office physically if needed. We help you set up your firewall correctly the first time, configure your DLP rules to match your specific needs, and make sure your cloud settings are optimized. Good support is often the difference between a security tool that works perfectly and one that just sits unused on a server.
Conclusion: Why Forcepoint Matters in 2026
So, back to our original question: what is forcepoint?
After reading this guide, we hope the answer is clear. It’s not just a single computer program you install and forget. It’s a modern, intelligent way of thinking about safety in a digital world. In an era where your “office” is a laptop screen and your vital “files” are floating in the cloud, the old ways of protecting data with just locked doors and basic antivirus simply don’t work anymore.
As we move through 2026, businesses in Pakistan are facing new challenges. Artificial Intelligence is unfortunately being used by scammers to create incredibly convincing “phishing” emails that can fool even smart employees. More people are working remotely than ever before, and global data privacy laws are becoming stricter, meaning losing customer data isn’t just embarrassed—it can be a massive legal and financial disaster.
Forcepoint helps you stay ahead of these threats instead of just reacting to them. Whether it’s the forcepoint cloud keeping your remote team safe at an airport, the forcepoint dlp endpoint stopping your customer list from being copied to a USB drive, or the forcepoint firewall blocking advanced hackers at the digital front gate, this suite of tools is designed to let you focus on growing your business while the “digital bouncers” handle the security.
At ITCS, we believe that advanced technology should be easy to understand and even easier to use. We are proud to be a trusted local partner for Forcepoint in Pakistan, helping businesses of all sizes implement these world-class solutions.
Do you want help choosing or setting up Forcepoint for your company? Don’t try to navigate the complex world of cybersecurity alone. Contact ITCS today for a friendly, no-obligation chat about your needs. We’ll help you build the perfect digital shield for your business.
