Cisco Umbrella Reviews

We are using this product for DNS security that is integrated with Active Directory. We are also using public DNS connectivity for the filtering of underlying threats.

What we like most is security and how easy it is to integrate with other appliances.

The different levels of security, such as backend security and internet security, need improvement.

In the next release, I would like to see the integration of VDI NSX with Cisco Umbrella.

We have been using the entire Cisco Solution for three years.

In the two years that I have been using this product, it has been stable. We have not had problems.

It's a scalable solution.

My experience with technical support is that when you open a case, you get better support. I ordered a part and was told that it was not available. When I opened a case, it was better.

In addition to Cisco Umbrella, we are using Cisco Firepower. 

We use the entire Cisco solution that includes Cisco Umbrella, Cisco AMP for Endpoint, and Cisco Firepower.

The initial setup is easy. It took a day to deploy.

We use the entire Cisco solution and we are happy with the product integration.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is for protecting and defending against cyber-based threats. So anything on the internet emanating through DNS-type attacks and then also content filtering. It ensures that our employees are only going to know safe categories. 

The weekly reportings are great. The investigation is super and the application management is equally great.

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. So for example, if you go to www.msn.com, that would then not only pull the MSN domain down, but it would also bring back all the ads and the adverts. It looks like you've been to 30, 40 websites when in actual fact you've only been to one. They should narrow it down.

We have had Cisco Umbrella at my company for three years but I have been using it for six months. 

The stability is great. 

We've got full coverage, but from an admin perspective, there are four users who use it on a daily basis. 

We've contacted their support once or twice and thy were great.

It is 1,000 on a yearly basis. Everything is included in the standard license, there are no additional fees. 

It does not require maintenance. It is very light in that way. 

Architecturally, for the deployment, you should consider if you want it on roaming clients or if you want it central. If people are connecting back through a VPN, it's then probably on every single client. Looking at how we're all working now with COVID, having a roaming client deployment gives you that added layer of protection because you're not dependent on the users connecting back to corporate VPN. They're always protected. Think about your deployment.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

I think Umbrella is good enough as of now. It has the security of domains. It analyzes the domain security and helps us implement the securest policy. This feature is presently not being provided with other technologies. It's a multi-tenant solution. Multi-tenancy MSSP packages, they're all ready. As well as any cost amounting deployment security coverages with DNS and intelligence policy of production and protocols.

I would like to see integration with SecurNX in the future.

We have contacted Cisco technical support a number of times for Cisco They are two hundred percent. They are very efficient. Any kind of support you can stay with Cisco. We don't have any issues with technical support.

The initial setup is traightforward. There is no complexity in the setup. The setup took minutes only.

Setup and maintenance are done by our own team.

It is not a very expensive product.

Cisco Umbrella is a very good product as of now as there is no competition. It is an excellent product. It is, actually, a must for our organization. It is not a very expensive product. I would rate Cisco Umbrella at a ten on a scale of ten.

The primary use case for this solution is for DNS based attacks and for malware protection. It has a malware protection engine.

If you install Cisco Umbrella Clients on the remote PC, you can do URL filtering, malware protection, and you can check the health and status of the device itself.

All of the DNS Queries are sent to Cisco Umbrella and you have more visibility of what users are asking, as well as what users are accessing over the Internet. 

You have all of the details and all of the information of what the users are accessing, even before they get access to the website. For example, if one website is malicious and it has some malware and some viruses in it, and a user sends a request to this URL, it will be reported in the Cisco Umbrella Cloud before the user gets the response back from the webserver. 

It will protect, give you more robustness, and faster responses, compared to any firewalls or any of the proxy web servers.

Based on the DNS, Web proxy, and other servers, it waits until after the DNS request. It will put in its action after the user gets it by the webserver when the response is coming back. 

In the end, the response from the malicious server will come into your network. Cisco Umbrella cloud has stopped it before that. You have one more layer of security on top of the URL filtering or on top of that server response.

The deployment was for two thousand plus users. We have multiple sites, and we have some remote users in different locations.

Cisco Umbrella is a fitting solution for DNS-based attacks and malware protection. It is a very good solution for that, and especially for remote users.

The most valuable feature is that it prevents DNS-Based attacks, which is quite common these days.

The DNS Query is first sent by the user and then it will communicate to the URL. If you are requesting for some URL it process also to an IP.

The basic functionality of Cisco Umbrella is to save this type of request and to have a more secure way to communicate the DNS Query back to the user. Any attack based on the DNS Query is stopped by Cisco Umbrella.

If you have a proxy, for example, if my DNS server is 172.19.222.21 and I make a server on the same IP or different IBN with the same DNS name, I can make a proxy and the user request will come to me and I can send this user any way I want. So based on these types of attacks, Cisco Umbrella protects the user.

The user requests a lot of DNS queries. Even if you don't know it or if the user is not accessing any URL, the laptops or any PC keep on accessing different URL's and you are not aware of it or if it is good or not. Cisco Umbrella gives you the visibility and you know what is happening from this laptop or this endpoint.

Cisco Umbrella does not have a Malware Protection engine itself. It would be useful if they had a malware protection engine running inside their own VM.

They have some VM appliances with the installing enterprises for limited access for the DNS proxy to the cloud. If they had this feature running inside the VM, it would be much better.

It would improve this solution to have applications hosted on the cloud.

I would like to see the application that they promised. If you have an application running inside your environment, with multiple portals, as an example, we have our employee portal, ERP and some other portals. These portals will be accessed through the Cisco Umbrella Cloud, and the deployment will be a VPN-based deployment, Cisco Umbrella Cloud will be connected to your enterprise and afterward, you can just click on this application using Cisco Umbrella Cloud subscription, and you will have the access to your application anywhere in the world, and you don't have to publish it. You will save public IPs, and a lot of bandwidth because publishing requires bandwidth. 

All of the users from outside will be coming inside your environment and will be accessing the web servers, so there is no need to publish.

It will be some time before this feature is introduced. They are working on it and it is still not ready.

I would like to see IPS-based solutions. To have an IPS solution inside the Cisco Umbrella cloud. 

If there were an IPS product built inside the solution, it would be very good. It would be a one-box solution. With this one-box solution, you wouldn't need any extra security layers,  and you don't need any WAN solution.

There is a solution called Carbon Black. This solution can do sandboxing solution inside the PC. It checks the application which you are accessing, and what you are installing on your PC. It checks everything. It does a compliance check.

If these types of features are available on the Cisco Umbrella, so you wouldn't need any other solutions installed on your PC. It would be one solution that does everything together.  I would, like to see this.

It's quite stable. It's a very stable product, and, it's quite straightforward. We deployed this solution a year ago with no issues afterward. We didn't get any complaints. There are some categories, and filtering that will block you for something which is not malicious, but it is considered as a threat to Cisco Umbrella. You will need to white list some IP address or some URLs manually if it's under your corporate use for some reason.

This solution is quite scalable. It is a cloud-based solution. If your users are spread all over the world they can access Cisco Umbrella using an internet connection and it's quite straightforward. The scalability is quite robust and we can implement it anywhere in the world.

We are using this solution every day. Even if I try to access something now from my corporate laptop, the request will go to Cisco Umbrella, the DNS is configured as Cisco Umbrella.

Currently, we don't plan to increase our usage because we don't have more users at this time. If we scale or we are expanding and we have more offices, in the future we will increase the number of endpoints or number of users.

As we are running our virtual environment in our enterprise, it's not a problem. Normally if you are going to implement VMs, it will be a large scale deployment. If you have more than 2000 or 3000 users and you want a faster response from Cisco Umbrella, you have this VM.

If you have this type of environments, of course, you have a virtual environment, you have any hypervisor like VMware or Hyper-V and you have a big compute, you can manage two VMs from that. It's not an extra cost.

We have four people who have access to Cisco Umbrella. However, it doesn't require much administrative work. It does its job, and only needs a one-time concentration, afterward, all that needs attention is checking to if there are any blocks on anything.

If Cisco Umbrella blocks a user, they will notify the user. The user will get a message that they are locked under this condition and this category. The user will then notify us and complain that they have been blocked. We will check the status on the Cisco Umbrella portal and proceed to whitelist it if, it is a legitimate request.

The technical support is quite good. This solution itself is not complex and everything is cloud-based. If there are issues or if something indicates that you cannot manage two portals, you can just open a claim with Cisco Umbrella and they will support you. 

The only concern is that if something goes wrong, or, something is getting blocked and if something is not as per your requirements, you don't have any visibility. You will never know what was done to correct the issues. Because it is cloud-based, they will not show you what they are doing on the server level. Without having the visibility for the solution itself you will never know what actual solution is working behind the scene.

Before Cisco Umbrella, we were using the Infoblox solution. It was not an easy or flexible solution. Infoblox is an on-premises solution that requires a VPN, or all of the users need to connect to a VPN, just to get the DNS resolutions. This was not easy, and it was not easy to implement.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. When you subscribe to the Cisco Umbrella services they give you some public IPs. With these IPs you have a few options:

• You can copy these IPs and user features for the DNS and the communication will happen directly through the cloud. 
• You can install the VMs in your corporate environment having all of the communication through the VMs and the VMs will communicate to the cloud. 
• You can install a Cisco Umbrella application on your PC and install the external script that has the public IP for the DNS for the Cisco Umbrella.

The deployment strategy was straightforward, and it took approximately two days for deployment.

Because we had over two thousand users, we created a script on SSCM. This is a software center manager for Microsoft, making the script accessible to all of the users. This script changed all the DNS IPs to the Cisco IP addresses. Once this was complete, we installed the Virtual machines, which are the DNS proxies for Cisco Umbrella and we configured the public IPs for Cisco Umbrella. These were the only two steps that were required, taking two days for two-thousand-plus users. It was quite simple, but, if you had to do it manually, it might take some time having to do one at a time for more than two thousand users.

If you have some automation, it is quite easy.

It has a public cloud and it is like a hybrid type of deployment. We have umbrella VMs installed in our enterprise areas, in DNS, in our remote offices, and our main HQ.

These VMs, are like proxy DNS servers. They will save a URL resolution and has a policy-based engine as well. For example, if you are searching google.com or something that is being searched quite frequently, it will store that data, and it doesn't communicate to the cloud every time, giving you a faster response with limited cloud access.

Our service provider is Cisco. They have their Telos Cloud, hosting the Cisco Umbrella Solution.

After this deployment, you need to do quite a lot of fine-tuning because there will be many false positives blocks, especially if you're using the malware engine. It will keep blocking some ADME files that are used in your corporate environment, or if it's an in-house developed application, it will be blocked because the code of the application is not registered with the Cisco Umbrella Cloud, It will keep on blocking, until you whitelist that code and whitelist that UUID, just to have this application running.

We did the implementation ourselves with some assistance from Cisco support. We didn't have any on-site engineer to do the deployment or implementation.

It only took two people for the installation process. I was on the network and phone system side and another colleague was installing the service on the Cisco Umbrella Solution.

We require four people who maintain Cisco Umbrella. 

This is a good solution, and there are many advantages to this solution. 

There is a return of investment. 

If you have this solution you don't need a big firewall or many security solutions in your environment. Because it's a cloud-based solution, you can access this over the cloud anywhere in the world. You don't need to build a big infrastructure. It will give you more return on the cost than you are putting on it.

We have Cisco ELA, it's an enterprise agreement, which covers everything under security, that is offered by Cisco Umbrella. With this, we have the complete Cisco Umbrella portfolio. We have everything related to security from Cisco Umbrella. This also includes the Cisco Umbrella suites.

We are paying yearly for all of the Cisco Umbrella applications and appliances.

Cisco has a model called ELA. With ELA, if you buy the solution you will have the complete security portfolio and you can pay it yearly or after three years, it depends on the contract.

It's a subscription-based solution. If you're running multiple solutions it is more cost-effective. For example, currently we have Cisco Umbrella, IronPort, WSA, Cisco CWS Cloud, and we have Cisco's FTD solution. If we were running these solutions separately it would be more expensive. 

If you are doing a VM deployment and you have a VM appliance, you will need some compute. 

The only additional cost will be for a server.

We evaluated another solution but the Cisco Umbrella solution is much more compelling. It doesn't have the on-premises appliances or any restrictions for the user to connect through the corporate environment.

If the user is anywhere and the user is connecting to the internet, they will make a micro VPN through the cloud and it will connect to the VMs in our corporate environment automatically. It doesn't require any manual configuration nor does the user have to initiate anything on the PC.

The other solution has a touch button application, on the PC. If you click it, it will create a channel with the appliance in your HQ or your remote office and then you will be able to connect to the internet or you can resolve DNS with queries. 

As this solution was not flexible, the management chose not to go with it.

If somebody is looking toward the Cisco Umbrella solution or if they have an NGIPS, NG firewalls, next-generation firewall solutions and if they are looking for DNS-based security, and if they are implementing it then Cisco Umbrella is a good solution.

Keep that in mind that it will make a lot of noise, users will be blocked at the beginning and many of the URLs will be blocked. It will need to be fine-tuned.

The fine-tuning is required one month after implementation. You will need to fine-tune the OpenDNS Cisco Umbrella database, just to have all the URLs there for your corporate environment, because there will be some false positive blocks. These issues will have to be fixed yourself. You will need to make sure that you are doing it. Other than that, it is a quite straightforward solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

If the suggestions are implemented I would then rate it a ten out of ten. They would be one of the first companies on the market doing this. You will not find anyone on the market with any DNS security solutions like this for Cisco Umbrella. They are the market leaders for DNS-based security at the moment. If they have these suggestions in their portfolio it would be the best solution, covering every point of its endpoint security.

We are a system integrator, and we implemented this solution for one of our clients in Morocco. It helps to protect the network against ransomware and phishing attacks. 

This solution integrated with eBay, and we use it to check statistics.

The most valuable features are the protection against ransomware and phishing.

This solution is easy to use.

This solution is difficult to configure.

I would like to see a graphical representation of the entire network. For example, the network topography that shows connections to the server, as well as the communication that is coming into and going out of Umbrella.

We have not seen any bugs, glitches, or crashes. It is a very nice solution.

Scaling this solution is easy once you have the licenses.

There are three people using this solution. They are network and system administrators, and the ECC.

This was the first solution that we implemented for our client.

The initial setup of this solution is not complex. It is easy to configure and use as a whole. The deployment took approximately one day, which involved configuring the access.

One person is enough for deployment and maintenance.

We had a consultant to assist with the deployment.

Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis.

Depending on the needs of the client, we consider several solutions. I have worked with Symantec PGP, CyberArk, Cyberwatch, Skybox, and Fortinet.

This is a very important solution, especially if the client does not actually supervise the tool.

My advice for anybody implementing this solution is to make sure that it is configured properly for your network. Depending on your environment, you need to set up access for people who are both out of the office and out of the local network.

This is a very good solution and my clients are impressed with it.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten. 

We use this solution as a web security gateway, block malicious domains and making sure that people don't go to websites that they're not really supposed to.

We are still in the proof of concept stage, which is a small test environment of approximately one hundred users. We will be purchasing it, and it will potentially replace our existing solution.

The most valuable feature is that it secures our network against blacklisted or malicious websites. If we do have an instance of malware then it is unable to home back to these types of sites.

This solution is very easy to use.

While technical support is good, there are features in the backend development side that were initially promised but are not there yet.

More granularity in the product would be helpful.

The reporting functionality should integrate better with SIEM products because it lets us report in PDF, but we want more flexibility.

Support for multiple domains is important to us.

It hasn't been fully deployed, but the stability has been good so far.

This solution is very scalable.

We have dealt with technical support extensively and they are good. We have had issues because of functionality that it didn't support at the time, which is why it has not been fully deployed yet. The functionality has since been introduced, but there are still some kinks that we're working out.

Our current solution isn't working very well and keeps breaking.

The initial setup is advertised as pretty easy, but we did run into some kinks. It shouldn't be that hard, it's just that we had some issues.

We worked with a Cisco partner, PCMD, who provided us with support.

Our licensing fees are on a yearly basis.

Other products were evaluated, but I was not part of that process and do not know which vendors were on the shortlist.

My advice for anybody researching this solution to make sure that it fits in your environment. Reverify the limitations. Our new department has different divisions and the way our Active Directory works causes some problems.

The ease of use is fantastic, but there are things that have to be fixed.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use this solution for DNS and IP reputation, for blocking.

Using this solution has meant that we've needed to make fewer firewall changes.

The most valuable features of this solution are the blocking function and its ease of use. The integration with other systems is helpful, as well.

I would like to see DLP integration in the next release of this solution. Including this would give us headroom with some of the infrastructures that we have today.

The stability of this solution is fantastic, and we have no interruptions whatsoever.

There are no limitations when it comes to the scalability of this solution. It's fantastic.

When I have had contact with technical support, I've always had a fast response time.

We implemented this solution because we had a gap in the visibility of our DNS protection, and this was able to remedy that.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward.

I performed the deployment myself.

Within six months we had ROI for this solution.

Our costs were negotiated, and they are okay.

We did evaluate other options before choosing this solution. We selected this one because we were able to merge it into an ELA (Cisco Enterprise License Agreement), which was beneficial.

If anybody is looking for DNS and IP reputation for protection and blocking, then this is the right product. This is a good solution that is easy to manage, easy to configure, easy to operate, and easy to support. It's very simple.

I really like this solution, and rate it a ten out of ten.

We act as an MSP for our organization, and we use this solution as part of the service. We are the parent company and we acquire insurance agencies. Typically, these agencies have between twenty and one hundred and twenty people. We do not force them to move onto our system; However, we show them what value they will receive by us taking on their network infrastructure. This includes the firewall, switches, IP phones, email platforms, etc. 

This solution allows us to manage our four hundred locations under the same umbrella, with the same configurations. It makes it easier to troubleshoot and provide the same solution to everyone.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its reliability.

Security, overall, can always be improved.

The stability is good, and we have had very few problems with the equipment. The problems that we've had have been with our carriers. I can, pretty much, put a solution in place and not even worry about it.

My impression is that this solution is very scalable. It allows us to grow. We can add fifty sites per year, easily, and not really have to redesign from the ground up.

When we need technical support, they're usually very responsive. I usually get a solution or an answer between thirty minutes and a couple of days, depending on what the technology is, and whether the issue is critical or not.

The smaller sites typically use non-enterprise grade equipment, and we switched because it is easier to manage the solution, especially when it's set up to our standards.

The initial setup can vary in complexity depending on the size of the agency, as well as other factors including what they already have in place.

We do all of our integrations in-house.

We have most definitely seen ROI. In most cases, when we take over, we're always saving on monthly costs. The turnaround investment is usually under a year.

There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user. Our fees end up being about $150,000 USD per year.

We have one vendor, and interoperability is not an issue when we use Cisco.

This solution had been pretty good and it fits our needs. If we have business needs change then we will look at whether the current solution can do it. If not then we have to reach out and find something else.

My advice to anybody who is researching this type of solution is to do their homework when it comes to comparing products. Compare apples to apples, and ensure feature parity. I would stress that the support organization behind the product is very important. For us, any of the other products that we've used just haven't performed up to the standards of what we are doing.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.