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.

We use Cisco Umbrella to protect our DNS queries and the traffic going out.

Cisco Umbrella is transparent to my users; they are unaware of its presence. The documentation they use is solely for the IT staff. It is functioning exceptionally well, to the point where I no longer require extensive documentation for its operation.

It has reduced malware and mitigated risks associated with email links and various other factors, resulting in cost savings.

Cisco Umbrella helps secure our infrastructure, enabling us to effectively detect and remediate threats. Apart from host-based firewalls or malware attempting to bypass threat detection, we currently do not have any other alternatives. Although there may be competing solutions available, we have been using Umbrella, and it has served us well.

Cisco Umbrella helps free up IT staff time indirectly by reducing the number of calls we receive regarding malware or bad calls.

Our organization improved its cybersecurity resilience by effectively blocking threats with Cisco Umbrella.

We used one feature, which is aimed at protecting our users from accessing malware-infected websites and encountering associated problems.

I am unsure if Cisco Umbrella offers a Windows option for running the server. However, since I am not familiar with Linux, I had to rely on someone else to handle that aspect. I'm not completely convinced that using Windows would be a superior solution, as Linux is generally regarded as more stable. However, it would benefit individuals like myself who are unfamiliar with Linux.

I have been using Cisco Umbrella for seven years.

I haven't needed to reboot the servers for years due to their excellent stability.

For the size we have, Cisco Umbrella has worked out really well in terms of scalability.

The solution that was previously used was acquired by Cisco and turned into Umbrella.

I have seen a return on investment using Cisco Umbrella.

The pricing model is easier compared to some of the other solutions, and it is also competitive.

I rate Cisco Umbrella a nine out of ten.

I recommend that people try Cisco Umbrella because I believe it is the best option available.

I have never needed to utilize technical support because the solution has consistently functioned effectively.

On-premises

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.

I use Cisco Umbrella mainly for content filtering. We use it to ensure that my users don't access something they shouldn't be accessing. It's just like pushing and scan prevention.

There are a countless number of attacks that Cisco Umbrella prevented from happening in our organization.

Suppose we see a very silly entry where a bad actor tries to impersonate a good website or service we continuously use. They buy the domain, misspell it somehow, and then inject that in a link. Suppose my email scanning tools did not detect or notice that for one reason or another, and we identified it later. We immediately block impersonating users from accessing services over Cisco Umbrella-controlled devices.

iOS devices and mobiles are huge in my environment right now, and I cannot run them on Cisco Umbrella 24/7. Each user has one desktop but three or four mobile devices on two iPads, and a phone or multiple phones and an iPad, or vice versa. I'd like to turn on my Cisco Umbrella on the network level, at least on my office premise. However, my security team would like to keep all devices on-network and off-network to be connected or managed by Cisco Umbrella all the time. So their use cases are higher and stronger than my mobile ones. Sometimes we try to work around my mobile ones with MDM, but sometimes it would be way more flexible to have both running side-by-side.

Also, in the Apple services or the Apple space, between my Cisco Umbrella and between my Apple updates, something breaks. I'm not sure if it's because of a policy that my company did before I joined them or if it's something that's happening due to a conflict in the configuration somewhere. So we always have to completely get the device or the endpoint out of any filtration to get the policies. We get everything pushed properly from Apple to the device and provision it afterward. Then we add the Cisco Umbrella roaming client to it.

Cisco Umbrella has been running in my environment for about five years, and it was there even a couple of years before I joined my company.

We've never really seen any service outages or downtime with Cisco Umbrella. It is amazing for a product to be running such a long marathon for the amount of time that I have witnessed it.

Cisco Umbrella is very flexible. Before, after, and during the years of the pandemic, my environment went up and down concerning headcount and use cases. Since Cisco Umbrella is pretty flexible, it was able to scale with us.

On the technical side, we always get our questions answered in a reasonable turnover. There was an incident when I had two instances running, and I tried to research it first and run discovery with it. When I couldn't find the answer immediately, we called Cisco, and somebody over the phone was very helpful and told us within ten minutes that it wouldn't work for us.

Positive

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. The solution's documentation is great. My environment needed a little bit of customization to match the deployment configuration or documentation, and it worked fine.

We implemented Cisco Umbrella through an in-house team.

We have seen a return on investment with Cisco Umbrella regarding the working hours and the ticketing. The tickets do not have to get escalated to a network engineer or to a network person to look at. They could be worked on by someone on the app on tier one or tier two before needing an escalation if it even needs it.

I was onboarded to an environment where Cisco Umbrella was already running. I'm sure my predecessor evaluated other products during the same time, and then they decided to start and stick with Cisco Umbrella for the past six-plus years for its efficiency.

The security team deployed Cisco Umbrella in our organization. I deployed the solution briefly on my network infrastructure, and then we decided to switch that off because we noticed a conflict when we had it running at two different places.

I cannot really speak so much on the infrastructure because until recently, whenever we installed Cisco clients on a machine that's running a server, the machine broke. The reason for that is something that happens in the trust relationship between the server and the domain controller. We opened a support case with Cisco Umbrella, and they told us the server was not supported. Servers are not meant for browsing, and the environment that they are in should not be open to the entire world.

My network team is not that large. For content filtering, when a request comes in to unblock a website saying that it is misclassified, it's super easy to give enough access or limited access to the support desk agent or analyst that's getting your clients' calls. The turnover time is much quicker and much shorter. We do not have to deal with maintenance windows or change management times because it's easy to go to a portal or website and change it versus changing a configuration on a firewall. It helps a lot with hybrid environments, especially during the unprecedented times we had a couple of years ago when we all decided to work from home. My environment was 90% ready to work from home, and one of the reasons for that was Cisco Umbrella.

In a 2000-user environment, Cisco Umbrella has helped save at least 14 hours weekly.

Cisco Umbrella has changed the way that we have access to a tool. It helps us do content filtering. I do not need DNS servers running anymore on my network because I identify it on the Cisco Umbrella portal, and everybody gets the configuration within 30 seconds to a minute. I do not have to deal with DNS changes, especially for internal tools and websites.

Cisco Umbrella has helped our organization improve its cybersecurity resilience for the end clients by having that on-off network flexibility. I do not necessarily have everybody run on a VPN all the time.

The nearest product to Cisco Umbrella is not even comparable. Cisco Umbrella's feature richness and compatibility are becoming an industry standard. We do not ask if an environment has a DNS server running in it or not. Instead, today we ask whether that is a Cisco Umbrella environment.

Overall, I rate Cisco Umbrella ten out of ten.

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.