We compared Netskope and Cisco Umbrella based on our users' reviews across four parameters. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Cisco Umbrella is praised for its customer service, positive ROI, and ease of use, yet it needs to enhance its user interface, reporting and analytics capabilities, integration with third-party platforms, and customer support. Netskope offers comprehensive data protection and advanced threat protection but could improve its interface, customer support, performance during high traffic, and reporting capabilities. Pricing is competitive for both options.
Features: Netskope stands out with comprehensive data protection and advanced analytics, while Cisco Umbrella excels in robust security measures, seamless integration, user-friendly interface, and reliable performance.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost of Netskope is straightforward, with competitive pricing options, ensuring a smooth experience for customers. Cisco Umbrella also offers reasonable and competitive pricing, with a hassle-free setup cost and a simple and flexible licensing process for easy management. Netskope has shown a positive ROI with improved security, data protection, visibility, threat detection, and cost savings. Cisco Umbrella also provides improved security, productivity, ease of use, and integration with existing systems.
Room for Improvement: Netskope could benefit from improvement in its interface, customer support, performance during high traffic, and reporting capabilities. Cisco Umbrella needs to enhance its interface, the solution's reporting and analytics capabilities, third-party integration, and customer support.
Deployment and customer support: Some Netskope users found the initial setup to be simple and quick, as it only involves rolling out an agent and can be deployed on the cloud. Others mentioned that the implementation phase can be complex and time-consuming, requiring coordination and effort. The deployment process was generally considered easy, especially for those with a networking background. Cisco Umbrella users find the initial setup to be straightforward, with deployment taking as little as a day or two. Others report that deployment can take a couple of days to a few weeks, depending on the complexity of the deployment model and any customization needed. Netskope's customer service is responsive, helpful, and attentive, delivering prompt resolution and knowledgeable assistance. Cisco Umbrella also provides highly regarded customer service, with prompt and efficient assistance and a knowledgeable support team.
The summary above is based on 68 interviews we conducted with Netskope and Cisco Umbrella users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The solution is stable."
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"It has helped reduce my unit's security events."
"The solution is very easy to manage. We found the initial setup, for example, to be quite simple."
"Umbrella has helped my IT staff in two ways. First, our security team was able to get more insights into the users, their devices, and the sites they browse. Second, our system administration team was able to manage DNS resolutions in a way that is more accessible and less intrusive to our domain system."
"The customer experience is very good, and the product improves security posture."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard, visibility, and reporting capabilities. Our customers can see how much Umbrella is protecting their organization. If you don't know what you've got, you can't protect it. With Umbrella, you get the visibility and see the protection that it's providing. We can get PDF reports on a weekly basis of any malware activities and any denial of service or command-and-control-type activities."
"Any time someone went off the network, the AnyConnect client had the Umbrella agent built in, and it would realize when their computer connected that they were not on the corporate network. It would monitor and they would have pretty close to the same rules that they had to follow when they were in the office, regarding what kind of website browsing they could do."
"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."
"Netskope has a diverse portfolio range, which includes cloud access security brokers, content filtering, behavior analytics, and security management."
"The client size and architectural components in Netskope are far better than other solutions."
"The solution offers a better understanding of the real scenario and identifies the cloud apps that are being utilized."
"Netskope is an efficient, reliable, and easy-to-manage solution."
"The most useful feature of this solution is Cloud Control, which allows me to schedule cloud uploads."
"The feature that I like best is the GUI."
"They are very good at CASB as compared to other players."
"It has hundreds of features and many of them are useful."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"It would be better if there was a little bit of flexibility for organizations that don't have SD One in their environment. Because of the complexity of the environment, it's not easy to actually turn on the feature of the secure internet gateway for our users. We have not been able to explore that option yet."
"The product can be pretty expensive."
"It had the ability to do a lot of app control. So, every single app that went through that portal was registered, but there is a general issue with the whole app control. As soon as you add a mobile phone to your network, all of the apps get registered through the system, and you can approve, reject, or just let them go through. When I looked at it, it was impossible to manage app control. There was just so much data. I didn't apply that service because I just didn't have the time to manage it. It would be good if there was a way to categorize applications."
"The only thing I can think of is that I'd like to see a little more flexibility in policy creation. The way that policy is currently structured is like a "first hit succeeds" kind of policy. It would be nice if it were more hierarchical."
"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 reporting could be improved by way of the information that's displayed. For example, when you pull a report, it shows an internal employee going to many websites, but you can spin that right down by saying a lot of it is being cached."
"I'd like to see this solution more closely integrate with other products Cisco has in its portfolio."
"If I want to see which users access a website, I need an Active Directory registered on Umbrella's cloud."
"Netskope needs to improve its stability."
"Third party integration with other cloud applications could be improved. Sometimes the API won't be working, but Netskope is taking it seriously. They accept all the feature requests, and they are trying to provide whatever we ask from them."
"Netskope CASB can improve by working more similarly to a VPN technology instead of a proxy. They then could have visibility on the endpoint device. Most clients have some tools where they check the endpoint health or other things, such as the security posture, or if they want to access the resources. For example, if they should have antivirus running, this kind of posture check should be available but it is missing."
"There could be room for improvement in the subscription process."
"Deployment and policy tweaking were two areas where improvement needs to be made."
"There could be better integration with other solutions."
"Compatibility with other proxy polars would be helpful."
"The configuration in the cloud model could be improved upon."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 108 reviews while Netskope is ranked 4th in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 35 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Netskope is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netskope writes "Network proxy that provides visibility during deployment and allows you to control PII". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and Cisco Web Security Appliance, whereas Netskope is most compared with Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Skyhigh Security and Forcepoint ONE. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Netskope report.
See our list of best Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) vendors and best Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) vendors.
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