Cisco Umbrella Reviews

Securing the remote worker is their predominant use case, as clients are using it for securing the remote worker to securely access both internet and private applications, and DNS security is part of that.

The most beneficial feature is that Cisco Umbrella has moved to something called Secure Access, which is a full-fledged SASE solution. It is a cloud-delivered service where you can have firewall as a service, CASB, and there are multiple options and solution sets for this. The best possible thing is that it is very easy to deploy, easy to configure, and very fast to get onboarded with a customer because this is a cloud-based service.

Cisco has Talos threat intelligence feeds, which come free with any of the Cisco security products. If the customer has Cisco security products, they get Talos threat intelligence feeds free of cost, and through these feeds and AI-driven updates, the organization is protected as they receive information on the latest threats updated on a daily basis.

If you are experienced enough, then it is simple to install, but if you don't have much experience, then it may become a little difficult. That is why we deploy it in our COE first and then go and deploy it at a customer location, but overall it is not that complex.

I have been selling Cisco Umbrella for two to three years now.

Cisco Umbrella Secure Access is pretty stable in my mind, and we have not seen many glitches that would have interrupted services at customer locations.

It is a scalable product. You can scale up as your users grow and buy more licenses quite seamlessly.

Cisco is pretty good, and I would rate their support as good.

Positive

It is a value for money product for sure. However, it does not have that kind of awareness plus brand within the customer, as they are influenced more by brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet. Cisco is a big brand in the networking domain, but in security, they are pushing a lot and improving day by day, though still, Palo Alto or Fortinet are more sought after.

Typically it is the Cisco solution we sell most, which is the NAC solution called ISE, so from a NAC solution perspective, most of the customer locations we have sold Cisco solutions.

We sell Cisco Secure Access, we sell their endpoint solutions, and we sell XDR, so we are a big partner to Cisco as well.

Cisco security products are quite competitive, but it depends upon the time of the day. If you ask them at a quarter end, you get pretty attractive pricing.

I have heard about AI features in Cisco Umbrella, but I will have to possibly study a little bit more about it. Nothing comes to the top of my mind at the moment, but I can provide further insights later.

The integration capability is pretty good. It is very good and comparable to other peer groups.

I would rate my overall experience as a reseller with Cisco Umbrella as a seven to eight.

Public Cloud

Other

The primary use case for Cisco Umbrella is DNS security.

The most valuable feature of Cisco Umbrella is its DNS security. It is beneficial for end-users, particularly mobile users, as they benefit from the enhanced security posture provided. The solution helps in improving the security posture mainly because mobile users benefit from security.

I do not interact with the product on a daily basis, so I will not be able to provide detailed insights into potential improvements. However, the prices need to go lower. The price of technology is just crazy.

I have been working with Cisco Umbrella for more than five years, at least five years.

I will give stability a score of seven out of ten, as there are some glitches from time to time. 

I would give the scalability a score of seven. It seems adequate for our needs.

Technical support from Cisco is okay. I do not have a problem with it. However, sometimes, it takes a while to get a response, and the team can be very rigid.

Positive

The setup process was simple and not too complex or complicated.

The prices need to be lower as the current pricing is exceedingly high.

The main competitor for Cisco Umbrella on the market is Netskope Security Cloud Gateway. I prefer Netskope Security. Its security capabilities are more favorable to me.

Overall, I rate Cisco Umbrella an eight out of ten. 

While my use case is primarily for mobile users, the entire enterprise can benefit, whether they are mobile users or not. The benefit is across the board.

Hybrid Cloud

Other

I have implemented Cisco Umbrella for one of our customers. I did an installation of two virtual appliances onsite, on-premises, and all the DNS redirection is done to the Umbrella cloud. The customer uses it primarily in the office for their DNS queries to the Internet and also internally, as the virtual appliances redirect to the internal DNS servers.

The most valuable aspect is that it is hosted with Cisco and can detect any new anomalies, acting almost like an XDR. It provides zero-day protection by detecting any new suspicious DNS queries. Another key aspect is its DNS layer security, which helps in creating scheduled reports and allows access to these reports through the Umbrella dashboard. I can export the reports to PDF, CSV, or Excel files, and even generate reports as needed. Furthermore, Cisco Umbrella has improved the security of my customer's organization because all DNS queries pass through the platform. They are able to see reports and get ratings of different sites their users try to access. If a machine is attempting to access compromised sites, it can pinpoint the machine to prevent it, thus narrowing down the attack surface.

The channel of support needs improvement. It is not under normal Cisco support, and I cannot simply call for support. Instead, I have to write an email to Umbrella support to get assistance, unlike the other products where I can call the Cisco technical assistance center and get an engineer.

I have not faced any challenges with Cisco Umbrella. As long as DNS is pointed to Umbrella, everything runs as expected.

The scalability is good. I have no complaints.

Getting a response takes a while, so I would rate the support a seven. The support channel isn't like the usual Cisco support where I could call instantly for a hardware issue like a router or switch. Umbrella requires me to write an email.

Neutral

The only problem with Cisco Umbrella is the support. The product itself has good performance, a user-friendly interface, and excellent scalability. I rate Cisco Umbrella a nine out of ten.

On-premises

We use Cisco Umbrella to detect malicious URLs, DNS queries, data exfiltration, and DNS tunneling. It is particularly effective in showing DNS queries and providing visibility for external DNS queries, especially in communications to malicious sites from internal systems.

The DNS data exfiltration and the blocking of DNS tunneling are the most effective features for threat prevention in our company. The DNS layer security provided by Cisco Umbrella is very effective for our security posture, offering us vast improvements in visibility over DNS queries and potential threats.

We need to work on integration as it is very complex. Making it more flexible and easy to deploy, particularly when integrating with other technologies like Active Directory and proxies, would be beneficial.

I have been working with Cisco Umbrella for the last three months.

Cisco Umbrella is stable, and I would rate its stability at nine out of ten.

Cisco Umbrella is scalable for our company. I would rate it nine. We are in the POC stage with twenty users, and once we purchase and deploy it, the number of users may increase.

I am satisfied with Cisco support. I would rate customer support ten out of ten due to the excellent assistance throughout the POC process.

Positive

The initial setup was complex, requiring two months for deployment due to the challenging integration process.

Currently, we have not been provided with the financial terms. We are evaluating our internal environment before proceeding with an RFP for a quotation.

The main concern with solutions is financial. Whichever solution gives us a good financial deal, we will consider it. All solutions have similar features yet vary slightly in deployment and workflows.

I recommend using Cisco Umbrella at full capacity with all features. My overall rating for Cisco Umbrella is ten out of ten.

Cisco Umbrella enables all of our end users to browse the internet and internal networks securely. It can block different things like sites and applications that they shouldn't access according to company policies. For example, we can block different applications or specific site categories.

We also use Cisco SecurePort and SecureX, which is a platform for integrating various Cisco products. We have already integrated Cisco Secure Endpoint and Cisco Umbrella through SecureX, which offers a single pane of glass so you can see all the problems. We have also integrated our Meraki firewalls and access points. We have 500 users, and each of them has the Umbrella agent installed. If you're working in the office, you don't need it because every computer is protected by Umbrella. 

The main benefit of Cisco Umbrella is to prevent the end users from becoming victims of phishing attacks or malicious links in an email. It isn't necessarily about making the users more efficient or productive, but it could help with that. For example, if someone mistakenly clicks on a link and their device is infected, we may need to take it offline for a day or two in order to resolve it. We don't have these incidents, so we can ensure that users won't be affected by any malicious activities and can continue doing what they're doing without worrying about other departments getting infected.

Umbrella lets you inspect client Internet traffic as if it were flowing through a traditional data center security stack. The main thing you can do is check the destination they're trying to access, but you cannot inspect the package. You can see the URL, but you cannot fully inspect the way we're actually using it. The primary goal is to block or allow specific URLs. We don't do any inspection or use any proxy to inspect traffic. 

I would say that we save money using this product because it's easy to use, so you don't need an expert to operate it. It requires some expertise, but it's simple to monitor and maintain. Also, when we want to set up offices in new areas, it's easy to integrate. 

Umbrella is constantly discovering new vulnerabilities. The solution's ability to discover zero-day attacks without significant changes to the platform is crucial. For example, we prohibit certain categories of websites like gaming or gambling, and the categories are constantly updated. We don't need to update the categories to add new websites or constantly check those reports because we know that Umbrella does what it's supposed to. 

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. 

Cisco Umbrella hasn't integrated customized reporting yet. With Cisco Secure Endpoint Hub, I can see a report on user downloads and set it up to constantly get an email alert. Based on my understanding, Cisco Umbrella can't do that. You can set it up with third parties, but it would be better if that were built into the platform. 

I joined this company a year ago, but they had already been using Cisco Umbrella for more than three years. 

I have never experienced any outages or downtime. It works all the time.

I rate Cisco support nine out of 10. We had to open a ticket because we had some issues installing the agents, but we haven't had trouble since then. The technical team responded and fixed our issues quickly.

Positive

I used a similar SaaS solution by Palo Alto, but Cisco Umbrella seems to be quite unique because it's a DNS layer. I'm not sure if any other company is doing the same thing. We integrate Cisco Secure Endpoint and Cisco Umbrella to provide end-user detection and prevention. It does what it's supposed to do with most of a lot of admin work. It's a gateway.

I wasn't part of the deployment, but it seems to be straightforward based on what I have seen. It requires a few adjustments to the firewalls and some integration, but it seems relatively simple. We needed to help the users working from home install the agents for Umbrella and AnyConnect, and this was also straightforward to deploy with Kandji, our MDM system.

After deployment, Umbrella doesn't require much maintenance because it's a SaaS application like Gmail. You don't have to do anything except the admin work, such as adding websites or categories. However, Umbrella uses an agent, so we need to update the engine. We can automate all these things, so the maintenance is minimal. 

It's hard to quantify a return, but the cost of a malware attack or customers losing private information is potentially very high. I don't have the numbers for those things, but Cisco Umbrella helps us to avoid those issues. A breach can harm our reputation and damage the entire organization.

Cisco Umbrella is reasonably priced for what it does. I don't have any numbers to compare it with because I don't recall what the other solutions cost. 

I rate Cisco Umbrella nine out of 10.

We're using that solution to essentially sort DNS attacks. We also use it to add that increased layer of protection at the DNS level for our customers. That's what we're using it for right now. We're trying to cut back on cyberattacks, malware, phishing, man and control callbacks, et cetera.

We had a fairly large DNS attack and that made us realize we needed basic DNS protection in place, however, we wanted something that was a little more advanced. That really pushed us over the edge for that enhanced DNS protection. It's got that ease of installation and billing along with just being a great product that's been tried and tested. That made our decision.

When we had that DNS attack, we saw a huge spike in issues. It's definitely gone down by a fair amount since implementation. We're seeing 800 fewer trouble tickets compared to the previous year. We can see (via the dashboard now) that we have billions of threats coming in every day. We're adding that extra layer of security for our customers. We're breathing a little easier now as it's actively protecting against all these threats that are coming in every day.

It helps us lead processes and blocks malicious DNS queries daily, which is very beneficial. We've seen a reduction of about eight hundred trouble tickets compared to the previous year. The customers are having a better overall experience as less bandwidth is being taken up by DNS acres. We're not having to constantly police that part of our network. It's a little bit of a better process and a better experience for our customers. 

We use the Easy Connect product, which works well.

The solution enables you to extend data protection to devices and remote users or distribute the locations. However, most of our use for the product is at the DNS level for our entire network and not really at the device level. We do have another added layer from a different company for the device security component.

The solution is pretty flexible.  

With the reduction of trouble tickets, it would be reasonable to say the solution has saved us money on security operations. 

Umbrella discovers new vulnerabilities every year. That's absolutely important to us. As our technology changes, the way we're attacked changes and will continue to change. It's important for us to be made aware of new threats and protect against them. 

The pricing could be improved.

I've been using it for almost a year, since February 2023.

I did not previously use another solution to this extent. 

We've seen an ROI with our trouble ticket call volumes going down. We've saved an estimated $30,000 so far this year.

Start working with your rep early and budget well in advance. Billing is fairly straightforward, but can be expensive.

We're customers and end-users.

We do not plan to purchase any additional security solutions in our environment in the near future. We have other layers of products in place already. 

For someone who's researching threat detection and prevention solutions, I'd have them consider Cisco Umbrella. You can see the threats that are being blocked, and you can help customers understand that you're doing everything you can to make sure that their online experience is safe and protected. People are working from home. People are doing telemedicine. There's a lot of more sensitive information being shared online. That in and of itself is a good selling point. You want to make sure that your customers are as protected as possible.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use Cisco Umbrella as a security layer for all our employees. We deployed it two years ago as a security solution in order to cover our roaming workforce. Our employees are scattered throughout more than 20 locations, including homes and hotspots, and we had to cover the security gap. We needed to be sure that regardless of the location our employees would be covered by the security features.

To provide connectivity to our members, we use Cisco Meraki. When our employees are within the co-working space, we use the integration with Cisco Umbrella security and the Meraki network.

The reports and notifications are the most useful part of the platform. As soon as you deploy the security layers, the reporting is very comprehensive. It helps you to have, at a glance, a clear view of what's going on.

The integration between Cisco Secure solutions is pretty good. We have been able to deliver the solution in a few days. The integration of Umbrella and Meraki is literally one click away from the customer.

One of the reasons why we chose Umbrella was its capability to perform end-to-end detection of malware and web traffic. In the last two years, we have been covered, detection has been faster, and we have been able to contain some potential threats along the way. We use the Umbrella stack from DNS protection to web and content protection. Our workforce is made up of 150 Macs; thus, we use Mac as a client. We have some PCs and integration with the network in our co-working spaces.

Utilizing Cisco Secure has helped us save time. Being a nimble organization, we don't have IT staff who are fully dedicated to security. The maintenance is also not very time-consuming. In terms of the amount of time saved, it would be half an FTE a year, given the fact that we are informed and notified when threats arise.

In terms of operating expenditures, we have been able to negotiate a better cyber insurance rate with our insurance company due to the fact that we are covered by Umbrella.

Another benefit of using Cisco Umbrella is application scanning. We have been able to understand how many other applications we were consuming in the cloud, address them, and save money. Without Cisco Umbrella, we would not have realized that we had so many cloud applications in the company.

We have been able to close at least four or five applications that were duplicates of others that we were already using in the company. We have realized approximately 10,000 to 12,000 euros a year of immediate savings in an organization of 150 people, which is quite significant.

Client delivery and client updates should be improved. Client delivery was not as easy as expected. Another area for improvement is the integration of escalation procedures for security issues.

In the next release, I would like to see the addition of notification flows like SMS and popups.

Cisco Umbrella is stable. We have had some issues, for example, when deploying from home or from slow networks, but 99% might be covered by a backup deployment of the client.

The moment Cisco Umbrella is installed, it scales. It's a matter of deploying policies. You can scale from one to thousands or tens of thousands of clients very quickly.

We are mainly supported by our partner. We escalate to Cisco's technical support when needed, and they are always outstanding. I would rate them at ten out of ten.

Positive

In my environment, the initial deployment was not as easy as we expected it to be. The delivery of the client in a Mac environment was not that easy, and the fact that we do not have a directory made things a bit more complicated. On the other hand, as soon as we were able to deliver the client, everything went well. We were able to deploy the solution in one week.

We were supported by our partner both on the network side and the security side. Being a solution focused on the client, we involved the partner for support on the endpoints, which are the critical part of the delivery.

Our experience working with our partner was good because they know our organization and our needs. When you increase security, you may see a higher number of false positives. Our partner played a key role resolving any issues that arose for the customer during deployment.

Cisco Umbrella is not a cheap product. However, it's not a matter of the cost; it's more a matter of the value of security. It is easy to measure this value when you have a security incident. I think the price is a good trade-off for a product that can help you avoid security threats.

You can try to partner as much as you can with insurance and other companies. It can help you reduce acquisition costs.

We had several reasons for choosing Cisco Umbrella, including the rise in attacks, the need to be careful with our customers' information, and our desire to have an extra layer of information security.

The main reason for going with Cisco Umbrella versus other competing solutions was its capability to integrate with our network. The first deployment we did was pure DNS and was a client deployment. Then, we were sure that we wanted to have a deeper integration. The fact that we are 100% running on Meraki infrastructure helped us to have this blended architecture, which is very efficient from the point of view of the client, service, and security.

If you're considering Cisco Umbrella, my advice would be to take your time and have 10% to 20% of your company pilot the solution. It's a solution that is easy to pilot in a specific environment, even with very deep integration with the network. I would advise you to go with a good use case, pilot the solution, and then move forward with a broader deployment.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cisco Umbrella at nine.

I had an agreement with OpenDNS which was the original owner of the solution, and I was selling it as an MSP. In Spain, I offer it to a company called Ares Capital. At the start, it was designed to filter URLs for sites that management didn't want the people to access, such as adult sites and social media sites that may cause a loss of work time. A few years later, the solution introduced the ability to filter malware sites. We used that not as an accessory characteristic, but as the main characteristic. We moved from filtering unwanted sites to filtering malware and virus-infected sites. We still use some filtering for unwanted sites, but mostly for security reasons.

Cisco Umbrella was designed to allow hybrid work. When the COVID pandemic started, we didn't have to do anything at all because the computers were already set up for remote work. With Cisco, it doesn't matter where the computer is as long as the computer is using the DNS servers that Cisco Umbrella works with. If it's part of a laptop or wherever you are in the world, it works exactly the same as being in the office. 

It is very important the solution provides a single pane of glass management for our organization in order to help manage the complex software and programs that companies use. This saves a lot of time for managers.

The single pane of glass management optimizes the user experience by allowing the user to access restricted sites much faster and easier from a centralized location.

Cisco Umbrella helps us remediate threats quickly. The solution doesn't work with our internal network, it instead works with the DNS servers that are located all around the world. This means Cisco Umbrella doesn't have any effect on our network whatsoever. In fact, Cisco Umbrella is totally different from other solutions that are locally based, which filter on routers or firewalls. The solution acts as an outside firewall. The rules that are set up on the Cisco Umbrella management site affect the connection between the computers everywhere, but it doesn't slow them down.

The employee morale has improved with Cisco Umbrella because they don't need to be as cautious when visiting sites knowing that the solution is taking care of their security for them. The only thing that could happen to an employee is that they may need to access a site that is blocked and they have to report that blocked site. When a site is blocked for an employee, a page appears on their computer and they can report that blocked site from there. The employee can send the administrator a direct message requesting access. A blocked site occurs infrequently and the administrator can unblock the site quickly.  

The most valuable feature is the ability to filter malware sites that could infect clients or allow them to download infected files.

Cisco Umbrella is one of the best solutions in the market because it's very simple to use and very simple to set up. We require some knowledge of filtering rules, but it doesn't take that long to get familiarized with them. We can manage all the working locations, even if they are far away from a single point and the solution is easy to use. The vendor is a pioneer in the central management of security compared to other antivirus companies.

Cisco Umbrella provides a single pane of glass management.

 Cisco Umbrella doesn't slow the network down because it filters outside of the network.

Cisco Umbrella is not a solution that we can rely on for everything, but for the cost, it is a valued layer of defense that we can depend on. Cisco Umbrella's resilience complements any antivirus solution well. The main advantage of Cisco Umbrella is that it stops attacks from happening before they reach the antivirus solution.

Cybersecurity resilience is important to our organization because we provide software-driven services. We need to contact people from all over the world, We need to be able to navigate through many different sites safely. This gives peace of mind to our customers. We visit thousands of websites every year and it is important to have a solution that takes into account that we are not visiting the same websites repeatedly.

The rule-making process for blocking sites or for blocking characteristics can use some simplification. For example, types of malware. This would make it easier to use because it has a learning curve.

There is a possibility of creating users that have explicit permissions to access sites that nobody else should access. This process can be cumbersome and it would be helpful if there was an easier way to create users and assign roles to special users.

Cisco could ease the process of defining the number of licenses and the price considering the number of licenses we require. Currently, we have to get a quote for anything over 100 licenses.

I have been using the solution for ten years. Before the solution was acquired by Cisco it was OpenDNS Enterprise.

The solution is extremely stable. 

Maintaining network connectivity is very easy. We have not had any downtime in over 10 years. Cisco Umbrella doesn't work directly through the network. It works with the DNS servers that are outside of the network. The network itself doesn't affect it at all. Cisco Umbrella doesn't affect the internal workings, hardware, software, switches, or routers. As long as we have set up the DNS correctly in the computers, either locally or through Active Directory, everything works no matter what happens with our network.

The solution is scalable. We started off with around 40 computers and now have over 200.

I contacted technical support two or three times by email because I had doubts about a rule, but it was pretty straightforward. They responded back within 24 hours. I'm not sure if we can contact them now by phone because I have only used the email method.

Positive

Previously, we were using an antivirus company for antiviral protection. The problem with antivirus is that it's reactive. It does not proactively avoid infection. Cisco Umbrella is proactive because it blocks sites before we may get an infection. We don't react to infections; we proactively avoid infections. Although there are solutions now that do the same, Cisco Umbrella was the first to market.

The initial setup is straightforward and only required one person. Setting up the solution usually takes between 30 minutes to an hour. However, the rules are always changing, so we never truly finish setting it up. We're always changing the configuration of the sites by blocking or allowing or adding new sites to the blacklist or whitelist. 

To change the local DNS settings to use the Cisco Umbrella service, we only need to make a few changes. If the computers are connected to Active Directory, we can deploy the configuration through Active Directory so we don't have to mess with anything else. The solution is based on the cloud, so we get a lot of detail and granularity in what sites the computers can access. However, if we want more detail, we can install a small agent on the computer so they can report to the servers.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have definitely seen a return on investment given the low cost of the solution.

Cisco has a set price for a single license up to 100, but whenever we get over 100, we have to ask for a quote. Sometimes requesting quotes makes the process a little harder because people's trust waivers when having to ask for quotes. We want to see the prices upfront.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

The solution is very good, one of the best in the market because it is so easy to use and so easy to manage even from far away distances. The company has four locations, one in Madrid, one in Valencia, another in Alicante, and one in Barcelona. The solution allows me to manage all the sites from one location easily.

Given the rise in attacks and virus infections all over the world recently, it is important to have layers of security. The less intrusive solutions are better for us. I believe that Cisco Umbrella is a solution that everybody should have because the solution is easy to set up and manage. Cisco Umbrella gives us peace of mind, which is why I believe it is a great solution. I had problems in Spain when I tried to set up Cisco Umbrella for other companies but this was because people didn't know about the solution or trust it as much as they should.

Initially, we implemented the solution for the central branch in Madrid, and after that, we implemented it in the regional branches. We then differentiated between departments, and in the end, we were managing departments and offices.

Public Cloud

Other