Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mob...
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (3rd)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (1st), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client is 8.9%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 6.3%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cisco Security Portfolio
Unique Categories:
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
8.9%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
21.3%
Internet Security
38.4%
 

Featured Reviews

Akos Szirmai - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 15, 2023
Versatile and accessible across different devices
Cisco AnyConnect is valuable for our organization as it secures remote access to resources, enabling colleagues to work from anywhere. Its importance grew during the shift to more remote work, like during COVID As an end user, what I like most about Cisco AnyConnect VPN is its reliability and…
Theofilos Tzachristas - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 20, 2023
The solution is easy to use, you don't need an expert to operate it
The interface is well organized, so you can easily find everything. Even if you don't have much experience with Cisco, you can easily navigate the solution and find your way around. Everything has been done well, from the deployment to monitoring. The application is really stable. We never have problems with Cisco not working for our end users. We have an internal communication hub. The office implementation is integrated with our security systems and firewalls, but we also have users worldwide working from home. Our employees are pleased with the user experience, and we've never had reports about Umbrella not working properly or being unable to access a site. It's integrated with Cisco AnyConnect, so our users can access it through a VPN solution. Umbrella actively processes and blocks malicious DNS queries daily, which is helpful for us because we're a small team. We heavily depend on the tool to do its job properly. It works nicely out of the box. You have to do a little initial configuration, but after that, it blocks everything we want and nothing we don't. We've gotten some false positives with other products, but we've never experienced that with Cisco Umbrella. Guest internet access is easy to configure. We set more restrictive policies for our guest users, but it hasn't been difficult to spin up consistent policies in three or four different offices. We just attached the policy that we have for guest users to a specific wireless SSID. Umbrella combines multiple security functions into a single dashboard. If you use Cisco SecureX, there is a dashboard in Umbrella, but you have to look at different areas. In Cisco SecureWorks, you can add the tasks and dashboards you want to monitor, but Umbrella is more standardized, so you cannot make many changes. In addition to the dashboard, we have some daily reports and email alerts. It does what we want.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The solution is a super product that works as designed."
"The solution is quite stable."
"It is an easy system to set up."
"It's fairly easy to set up."
"The initial setup is easy."
"What I like most about Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client is that it's easy to use, and that is its main advantage. You can use it without the need for any setup because it's centrally pre-installed, so you just need to log in with your username and password. I didn't experience any problems with the solution in terms of losing connectivity. It works very well every time."
"Support does solve our issues."
"The customer experience is very good, and the product improves security posture."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Cisco's support is better nowadays."
"It's very stable, reliable and does its job."
"The most valuable thing is how easy it is to deploy. We did it with 9,000 users at my last job, and it took a week to get to all the endpoints. Doing that without having to physically touch all those endpoints was very simple."
"Umbrella, being one pane for managing, being all-encompassing, allows us to quickly go in, make a change, and it applies to either every location, if we want it to, or we can have policies in place that only apply to certain users or certain computers."
"For me, it's important that I get a connection to my corporate network in a secure and fast way. This product just runs in the background and doesn't need any attention. For me, as a user, it's perfect."
"Using this solution has meant that we've needed to make fewer firewall changes."
"Umbrella enables customers to be secure. We are happy with this and this is the most important benefit for customers."
 

Cons

"I have been working with the same interface for the last ten years. I would say that it needs some improvements made."
"The most valuable feature of the Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client is its ease of use and simple interface. It's always available as long as I have a good network connection."
"Behavior analytics and other newer technologies should be integrated into the solution."
"Whenever there's a drop in internet or a connection fluctuation, it gets disconnected automatically."
"Every two weeks there was a new version to install which was annoying for the users."
"Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client can be improved by having better speed and reliability. However, the speed and reliability are already really good."
"All I care about is being connected and I know that we've run into versioning issues in the past."
"If the Internet connection is not stable, it will create a disturbance when using the resources."
"It would be good if the more complex versions of Umbrella are simplified so that we can offer them in a more standardized way. We, as a telco, do not operate the same as a traditional integration partner would, who can sell all its services. We try to have a standardized approach as much as we can so that we can sell the solution with as many services added to it as possible. If you look at the structure of businesses in Switzerland, 95% of them have 10 persons or less, and they do not have a security specialist. Therefore, the higher the automated and standardized features, the better it is for them."
"I'd like to see this solution more closely integrate with other products Cisco has in its portfolio."
"It would be useful if they had a malware protection engine running inside their own VM."
"Missing a real data leakage prevention solution."
"There are some situations where we would like to block things for specific user groups. I know that Umbrella does that, but it's not that easy.... when you want a specific task for specific rules and policies for user groups, you have to go three levels down in the menu, and it's hard to find where you do that task."
"The API is very Cisco orientated, which is absolutely fine if you're using Cisco Firepower and SecureX kind of products, but if you want to integrate with third parties, it is a bit tricky. There are some key API connectors for the more prevalent SIEM tools. I would really like to see in Cisco Umbrella the ability to create customized reports and then assign the rights to view these reports to people within a group. I should be able to create a customized report, which is viewable by anybody who has the rights. I should be able to create groups within Cisco Umbrella, and then assign reports to groups and have those reports split out automatically only to those groups. I can kind of do it by restricting my email list, but it is a half-complete way of doing it."
"I feel that the application needs other characteristics that are available with other applications in the market."
"The rule-making process for blocking sites or for blocking characteristics can use some simplification."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"One thing I've noticed is the price in comparison to other VPNs."
"The pricing depends on the requirement, so proper planning and an RF analysis help to properly size the solution and get the best pricing."
"The initial cost is the ASA and other items, but after that, it is relatively inexpensive."
"Sometimes there is a problem with the number of licenses for the end-user. The number of concurrent users is limited due to a valid license."
"The price is okay."
"The solution is reasonably priced and costs $600 for a five-year license in our scenario."
"The licensing costs are reasonable."
"I am using a paid version of Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client."
"The pricing was marvelous."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"I think it's worth the money."
"Cisco solutions are generally perceived to be rather expensive. We have constant internal discussions as to whether we should offer lower-priced security solutions from some of the competitors."
"When talking about Cisco solutions in general there pricing model is horrible. For example, you can sell a Meraki-based solution, but if the customer starts shopping around, someone is going to have access to the pricing at a level that you cannot compete because they do not have uniform pricing. Not everybody gets fair pricing. Unless you are one of the real major corporations selling the solution your ability to compete is impossible. Cisco will acknowledge the situation and assure you next time it will be in your favor but it never becomes favorable for you. Cisco is not very good in this regard. However, Umbrella is good."
"The price depends on the use case, and it's a bit linear. But it depends on the customer's strategy and how Cisco plans to optimize the costs."
"We did a good negotiation, and at the moment, its price is fine."
"There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
42%
Computer Software Company
17%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Computer Software Company
19%
Educational Organization
18%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client?
The tool is user-friendly, robust and easy to use in any environment.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client?
My company has a three-year or a four-year license. In scenarios attached to a solution where the product may be reaching an end-of-support or end-of-life phase, Cisco provides OS support in such e...
What needs improvement with Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client?
The security of the product has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required.
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security functi...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
 

Also Known As

Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility, AnyConnect Secure Mobility, Cisco AnyConnect, AnyConnect
OpenDNS
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MST, Molina Healthcare, Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, Arup, New South Wales Rural FireService
Chart Industries, City of Aspen, Eastern Mountain Sports, FLEXcon, George Washington University, Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, Ohio Public Library Information Network, PTC, Richland Community College, Smart Motors, Tulane University, VeriClaim
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client vs. Cisco Umbrella and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
787,779 professionals have used our research since 2012.