Cisco Umbrella Reviews

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, we get 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.

Cisco Umbrella is very simple to administer, and that's what our customers really like. They don't want the complexity that's normally associated with security.

Cisco Umbrella definitely reduced our clients' mean time to repair. It does what it says it does, and it does it effectively.

Cisco Talos is the secret sauce. It's the threat intelligence that feeds security solutions such as Cisco Umbrella. You can have a security solution, but if it is not backed by an organization like Talos and has not been fed, watered, and looked after, then it will be pointless.

Our clients have been able to consolidate applications and tools related to DLP, CASB, web proxy, and SSL decryption. These are natively built into the Umbrella platform. We're now on the cusp of looking at SASE and, maybe, migrating away from the traditional on-premises firewalls and merging more toward the cloud. In the future, as we start the transition to zero-trust network architecture as well as SASE it will certainly help our customers consolidate a lot of their existing tools.

The firewall capabilities could be better. Cisco is starting to introduce some layer 7 capabilities now, but there's still some room to grow. They should continue with the development of Umbrella so that it is a full-blown cloud-managed firewall solution.

We've been using and selling Cisco solutions since Cisco acquired OpenDNS.

We like to use technology first ourselves. It makes it easier to talk about it and sell it. Also, it's a good reference for customers to see that we actually use it internally. Umbrella has been a fantastic solution for us and our customers.

The initial deployment could take a couple of days depending on the deployment model. Cisco Umbrella could be up and running quickly. You can instantly point your DNS servers to use Umbrella's DNS as its recursive DNS, and immediately, you'll be protected by Umbrella. You can take it further and get more granular controls by using AD integration, which can take a little bit longer. From an engineering point of view, it's a very light touch, which is unusual for security solutions. They're normally pretty complex. Cisco Umbrella, however, is a simple but powerful solution.

Given that it's a cloud-delivered platform, Cisco takes care of the upgrades. It requires a pretty light touch in terms of maintenance.

I think Cisco Umbrella is priced well. We have a mix of customers with different verticals such as education. We have clients in the commercial space as well. Umbrella is at a good price point for all of our customers.

We choose to sell Cisco because it has done phenomenally well in terms of some of its acquisitions and the way they've integrated Umbrella. It could be a flagship security solution for Cisco. It's been a game-changer for us and has opened up new avenues and new revenue streams as well.

As a Cisco Secure reseller, we're able to articulate the benefits of the solution to the customer because we are a technically-led organization. We've got a lot of in-house skills within the cybersecurity space. We don't sell for the sake of selling. We want to provide the right solution, and Umbrella is absolutely the right solution as far as we're concerned. It is the leader, especially from a DNS level protection.

Cisco Umbrella is a phenomenal security solution. It's got the right balance between complexity and ease of use. Therefore, I would rate it at nine out of ten.

We are using the Cisco Umbrella proxy product. Cisco Umbrella is part of our ongoing project for moving, more or less, to the full Cisco suite. We have Cisco ISE, DNAC, and SD-LAN. We are getting the new SD-WAN from Cisco. It's part of the whole portfolio we are getting from Cisco.

The integration features within, for example, the Cisco VPN product and the Umbrella module are valuable. The new features, mainly the security ones, are also valuable. It improves our security, and it's much more integrated and better than the one we have from Zscaler.

The main issue that we have is with the final steps or the full integration and getting rid of Zscaler. The company still has to fall back to Zscaler when something in Umbrella is not working as expected, such as when we enable SSL inspection. When something is not working 100%, the company is falling back to Zscaler. We have very good support, and I don't know whether this can be improved, but that is one thing to do for the final steps to get rid of the other product.

Its scalability could also be improved.

I've been using this solution for two years.

The stability of the solution is very good.

It could be improved mainly because the proxy is based on countries, and when you have no point to connect in a country, you can create issues. So, the spread around the world could be better.

We have 80,000 end users, and it's all over the globe.

Their TAC support is very good, but it always depends on people. So, there is no in-general there, but the people we are dealing with are very good. I'd rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

For proxy services, we have been using Zscaler, and for SD-WAN, we have been using Nokia Nuage. For the SD-WAN solution, we made a switch because we had a lot of issues with Nokia Nuage. Don't use Nokia Nuage. It's pretty bad.

For proxy services, we are replacing the Zscaler solution with Umbrella proxy services, but I'm not sure about the reason. It's probably for more security features where using Cisco Umbrella helps us improve our security within. It's much better than the one we have from Zscaler for securing our infrastructure from end to end.

It was very complex because of a little bit of immaturity of the Cisco Umbrella solution in the beginning. All the features were not already enabled. In addition, we also had a moving target where we said, "We would like to have this, and we would like to have that," and when it was not there, we insisted to have it in. It was very difficult and challenging.

We are using BT. I would define our experience with them as big trouble. It's in the name.

On our side, we have three to five people, but it depends on following the sun. We probably have five people worldwide who are supporting this solution.

I'd advise looking into your needs and then comparing those with the features that are really valuable. It has been improved over the last two years, but just look at your needs and what the solution can really deliver.

I'd rate Cisco Umbrella an eight out of ten.

It's for the VPN nomad connection. We capture all the DNS requests, log them, and check them in case of troubleshooting for security or malware issues.

Through Cisco Umbrella, we managed to deploy our M365 system and our connection. It was very good for deploying access to those cloud systems. It was a very important requirement to check all the connections from outside when the laptops are remote, and we managed to capture all the DNS requests. It was a security requirement.

It hasn't saved us time, but we managed to deploy the connectivity to the cloud system such as Azure or M365.

We can have a full overview and a quick overview of all the DNS requests. For us, it's quite important.

Cisco Umbrella is a good solution. It meets all of our needs. They can maybe simplify the configuration. For example, sometimes, the proxy part is quite difficult, and that's why we didn't deploy that.

We've been using it for two years.

We have no issues at the moment. It has been two years, and we did not have any issues. So, for us, it's quite good.

We have about 6,000 devices. So, I have no problem with scalability.

Their support is very good. We have a lot of feedback from our partners and our Cisco contacts. They get in touch to be sure that we are using the product correctly and whether we have any questions. I have had no problem with them. It's super good. I'd rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We didn't use any other solution previously. It's the first time we are using such a solution.

We were already using Cisco AnyConnect, and for us, it was a simple plugin. We didn't spend much time. We did some tests. We worked with a local French team, and after that, we deployed it. For us, it was very simple to deploy.

We deployed it ourselves with the help of a partner in France. The partner company is called Nomios, and we had a good experience with them. They know a lot of Cisco products, which is very good. They are into security and network architecture.

We haven't yet seen an ROI.

Its price for us is quite expensive because it's a subscription, and we just use it for the DNS log. So, for us, it's quite expensive.

We didn't evaluate any other solution. We went for Cisco Umbrella because we already had Cisco AnyConnect. We just used the plugin, and it was very simple for us to deploy it.

I'd rate Cisco Umbrella an eight out of ten. For me, it's quite a good product. 

Cisco is a very efficient and on-point solution that controls the whole network and settings on one page. We can monitor the entire network.

The solution could be faster as the process is very slow.

I have been using Cisco Umbrella as a reseller for four to five years.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight and a half out of ten.

We have deployed it to small businesses.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward and takes few hours to complete.

I rate the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

ROI is pretty good. I rate it as eight out of ten.

You need to buy an additional license for customer services. The licensing is moderate.

I recommend the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution as eight and a half out of ten.

Cisco Umbrella improves web security posture.

Meraki features and cloud-based functionality are advanced and easy to manage centrally.

Reporting is a separate product. However, other features are embedded within the devices themselves. So, if you have one box, everything is included, which is good.

A more user-friendly interface like Kaspersky and lower costs including licensing, support, and renewals would be beneficial.

My company has been using it since 2005. 

It is a stable product. 

It is a scalable product.

The customer service and support are excellent, exceeding expectations.

Positive

I used Sophos, FortiGate, and Palo Alto firewalls.

Cisco Umbrella is manageable and well-supported by various vendors and partners, including Cisco Direct. It offers diverse technologies and features. However, now Sophos and FortiGate offer better tools and firewalls than Cisco.

Forti excels in SD-WAN services and integrates various functionalities like FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer, and Wi-Fi controller within a single device.

It is easy to implement. It is not straightforward, but it is easy. It is easier than before. 

The licensing cost is very high. We have to pay for support, renewal, and maintenance. FortiNet is cheaper compared to Cisco Umbrella. 

Consider your budget. If you can afford it, Cisco Umbrella is a stable and scalable solution.

It's a strong Cisco product.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine 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.

Our primary use case was to first replace the solution we had since it wasn't able to give us security outside our premises. Also in terms of configuration, we had to have extra configurations in our Active Directory to identify the users and the equipment. Cisco Umbrella gave us a chance to do it in a more clean way, without having extra software working on our domain controllers.

Cisco Umbrella is deployed as a cloud solution with an on-premises server so that it can make the connection through our Active Directory to identify the equipment.

The most value we've seen after using it for a month is the ability to identify more clearly the usage of any device.

With Cisco Umbrella I am able to manage DNS resolutions on our devices both when they are inside and outside our network, supporting a hybrid work environment.

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.

Soon, our IT staff will be able to save time because we'll be able to automate some security functions. The dashboard is very clean and user-friendly. Thus, at a glance, we will be able to see a lot of information that will help us identify more directly the sources and the root causes of security issues.

It's easier for us to have support features with companies who are Cisco representatives, but sometimes, it's hard for us to get the help we need without having to use our contacts within Cisco.

We've been using Cisco Umbrella for nearly a month.

We have not had any issues with stability, but we've only had the solution for one month.

The few times when we had to contact Cisco's technical support directly, we had perfect interactions with them. Therefore, I would give technical support a rating of ten out of ten.

Positive

We were using another solution for DNS security. It was not as complete and  would only allow us to manage security inside our network. We weren't able to get to the endpoints when staff were not working on-premises. We did a proof of concept with Cisco Umbrella and two other solutions for three months and chose to go with Cisco Umbrella because it gave us the features that were more suited to our organization.

In our environment, it was straightforward and simple to implement Umbrella. We had SCCM for the end devices for mass deployment. Our domain controllers were connected to the server. The initial parameterization only took us three days. Currently, we are in the most difficult part of fine-tuning the solution so we can take full advantage of its features.

Our Cisco partner helped us with the implementation.

Pricing and licensing of Cisco Umbrella is a bit confusing because you have to separate the DNS solution and the full-feature solution. Cisco in Portugal helped us understand which one was the right one for us.

Since Cisco Umbrella has given me better performance and extra features that I didn't have previously, I would give it the maximum rating of ten out of ten.

I'm a principal consultant for one of the energy sector companies, which basically extracts oil and gas and also deals with solar energy. We are dealing with anything related to energy. It's a supply chain as well.

We have been using Cisco Umbrella for more than one year. Basically, after the COVID situation, when the hybrid model came, we needed to give work-from-home options to the employees and look into cybersecurity. We had to get some cloud security. That is why we have introduced Cisco Umbrella.

We chose Cisco Umbrella because it's a better option industry-wide. It can inspect all the web traffic from anywhere. When traffic is generated from any local internet, it might be anything. It doesn't qualify for cyber security for any company. That's why you have to have something to inspect all the traffic. Cisco is a good vendor for us. That's why we chose Cisco Umbrella.

By using Cisco Umbrella, you are sure of inspecting all the traffic. Whenever the user machine is connected to your network, it is inspected. That's the best thing. It means you are sure that nothing is being exported or imported without your choice. That is the best feature.

It generates alerts, and you can integrate it with your ticketing tool. When it's integrated, it can also generate a ticket. That means you know when something is wrong or what's going on. It has helped a lot during this hybrid model, and I don't think that this hybrid model is going anywhere. So, you can simply say that Cisco Umbrella is a good tool for the future as well.

It hasn't freed up our IT staff for other projects because no one thought about this work-from-home model before COVID. There were many alerts after Cisco Umbrella was installed, which means many staff members were invested, but its automation, such as automatically generating alerts and automatically assigning tickets to a queue, has helped a lot. We don't need to do any physical or manual inspection. It's being done automatically, which is a good point, but it hasn't decreased any resource hours.

It's the best tool to inspect everything. We can inspect all the user traffic generated from anything.

If you wish to inspect all the traffic and it's integrated with Cisco AnyConnect, all the traffic basically goes through Cisco AnyConnect, which is not a good idea. That means you need to have more internet capacity as a data sampler, so in the case of a split tunnel, we cannot inspect the traffic that is being migrated through the local internet. I'm not sure whether there is a possibility wherein Cisco Umbrella can also inspect the traffic that is outside the AnyConnect tunnel.

We have been using Cisco Umbrella for more than one year.

We are a Cisco premier integrator, and I've worked for Prosperity for approximately seven months now. We just set up a new networking team predominantly servicing clients within the financial services industry.

We offer various products within the Cisco Secure product line, for example, Cisco Secure Firewall, AnyConnect, and Umbrella. As a Cisco partner, we predominantly deploy Cisco equipment, be it LAN switching or routers. Deploying Cisco Secure products makes sense because then we have one vendor in the network.

When we're deploying Cisco Umbrella, we're predominantly utilizing the DNS Essentials or the DNS Advantage license. We use it as a first layer of defense on the network because everything relies on DNS these days, so if you can capture that traffic and analyze it or analyze those DNS requests, you can very quickly start filtering out things like Command-and-Control and whether there's malware on the environments or shadow IT, for example. So, it can capture and categorize the apps that people use, and if you were to block something, you can very easily block it.

As a Cisco partner, the value we bring to our customers is our years of experience, and our customers can rely on us. We've got a saying in our company that if we look after our clients, we look after our colleagues, and we look after our customers, then we'll all prosper; hence the name Prosperity 24/7. That's our sort of motto, but it's very true. Our customers can trust us. We've got the experience. We've got the links to Cisco. We do all the training, so customers don't have to worry. It's about wrapping the customer up in a blanket and going, "Everything's going to be okay. We're here."

The benefit we get from our Cisco partnership is credibility within the marketplace because everybody has heard of Cisco, and it's probably one of the most deployed network manufacturers in the world involved in so many verticals. There's always a product there. I've been looking at so many products this week at Cisco Live, for example, that anything you can think of is there. There's always new innovation. It's an innovative company.

The feature that we find most valuable is to be able to filter out those web requests that you don't want. In a corporate environment, it can be damaging. It can be damaging to organizations as well. You don't want people going to certain sites. Also, the malware side of things and the Command-and-Control side of things are valuable because you can have serious reputational damage to your organization if there's malware in your environment. To be able to block that at its source is very important.

Umbrella is a constantly evolving product set in terms of what they had maybe four years ago compared to now. The number of features they're developing and facilities within that cloud platform are amazing. Things like data loss prevention (DLP) have been released in the last couple of years. It probably has remote browser isolation (RBI) as well, but I'll have to check that one. So, it's a constantly evolving product set. Our clients might start off on a lower tier of the Umbrella, but over time, they'll go, "Actually I want that feature." And then they'll go from DNS Essentials to DNS Advantage, and then they might start looking at Secure Internet Gateway (SIG), for example, which is just the secure web gateway (SWG). So, there's something for everybody, and as a layer of defense in your network, it's a great product.

With any Cisco product, it's the licensing side of things that needs improvement. Licensing changes and Cisco typically doesn't make it easy for us, but it does evolve. What's good now is that predominantly across the different product sectors within Cisco, you start off with DNS Essentials, Advantage, and even the Catalyst switches. That's now ubiquitous across the Cisco line. They've got to keep it simple on the licensing side so that when I go and talk to clients, I can say, "Right, here you go. With this license, you get these features, but you can always scale up." Once the customers experience Cisco Umbrella, then typically, they start thinking, "What else could I be doing?" You may start off with the DNS Essentials, but then you might move to SWG eventually.

Umbrella's availability is second to none. I remember attending Cisco Live in Barcelona where I went to one of the sessions, and they said that they've had a hundred percent uptime since forever basically, so I don't think they ever had an outage. They've got two DNS servers. They use Anycast, so it's available around the world. It will speed up your web browsing because you'll go to the closest data center. Umbrella pairs with the service providers, so it'll speed up your general web traffic as well.

In our customers' environments, in terms of scalability, absolutely, it's a very simple product to deploy. It's cloud-based, so we don't have to worry about deploying resources locally. Networks rely on DNS anyway. The whole Microsoft stack, whether you open a web browser or use Teams, relies on DNS. So, it's the first step in any web transaction.

I like working with Cisco products because I get excellent support. If it's four o'clock in the morning, I'm in a data center, and something has stopped working, I know I can just reach out to TAC, raise a TAC case, and get help. That's a comfort blanket that surrounds all of us Cisco engineers. We know we can call somebody, and we know we can get through to somebody who will have the answers for us.

I would give Cisco support a solid eight or nine. It's probably difficult to give a 10 because sometimes it depends on who you get as well, but with Cisco TAC, you can always escalate cases as well. So, there's always somebody within Cisco TAC who can help you.

Positive

In the typical deployment model, we integrate it with, for example, the Meraki product line for using Cisco Umbrella directly within the Meraki dashboard. So, you can link it to an API. That's a nice integration. You're not having separate Meraki access points or Meraki MX. You can bring it all together in one place, so you've got a single dashboard. Typically, we've done that. In the bigger organizations, we have done deployments of the virtual appliances because essentially, you want to be able to identify individual users at that point. By using the VAs, you should be able to identify users on the network, and then you can deploy policies based on those user groups.

Cisco Umbrella can be deployed in minutes. In its simplest form, all you need to do is point at the Cisco Umbrella DNS servers, and that's it. It can be literally deployed in minutes. If you want to go to a different use case, for example, where you've got to deploy VAs, that's a bit more difficult, but there's something for everybody. It can be as simple or as complex as your environment requires.

I've always worked with Cisco. I've been working with Cisco products for the last 20 years. We do have other products that we can sell for a lower price point, for example, but typically, I like using Cisco products.

To any customers who want to evaluate Umbrella, the first thing I would recommend looking at would be the product sheets within Cisco. Understand the technology, understand the features that are available, and then decide what level of Umbrella or what licensing level you require to meet your business requirements. If it's just protecting some guest WiFis, for example, then it'll be a very simple deployment. If you've got Meraki kits, you can easily link those two pieces together.

Talos receives so much traffic. I did one of the sessions yesterday with the guys from Talos, and the amount of web traffic that comes into Talos for them to analyze is huge. So, as a repository of what's going on and a view of what's going on the Internet with this new malware, they're very quickly going to be able to react to that. Even with just the behavioral type analysis in terms of what constitutes bad behavior on a network, they can very quickly analyze and deploy a new solution. They update things like Umbrella, and as a central repository, it feeds into Talos, and then Talos can inform the rest of the security community about what's going on and what things you might need to block, so Talos overall has a positive effect for our clients. For them to do it themselves would be impossible. You need somebody on the Internet, and Talos provide that service. It's about control and visibility, and those certainly are the features that Talos can bring to the table.

I'd rate Umbrella a solid nine out of ten. It's probably difficult to get any product in a 10, but they are always constantly developing it. So, if you come back in a year's time, there'll always be new features than what's available today.

I am a Solutions Architect in a mining company, and the size of the company is around five to 10,000 employees.

We wanted to replace an existing solution and give a better experience to our users, and we wanted to have a superior solution that could give us insights into how secure our users are and what their browsing behaviors are to track down and narrow down issues. Of course, the first and foremost use case is protecting our users. Cisco Umbrella gave us all those things in one and having it integrated into our environment was a very seamless process, and we're very happy using it right now.

It gives you a single pane of glass to see what's going on with your environment and your DNS queries. It has consolidated a lot of previous efforts into the visibility of what's going on.

It saves time. You're protecting your users in a manner that you don't need to do anything after. If, for example, somebody tries to open a malicious website or tries to download something, it just won't allow that. That's it. Previously, there were loopholes and ways for users to get around the proxy, which gives you more work. In that sense, we're saving the support team's time. When you're investigating a problem, it quickly gives you insights into what you're looking for as simple as possible. You can see when a user was accessing a website, was it blocked or was it allowed? Of course, you could test connectivity for specific users and computers. That saves time in troubleshooting. It saves hours per week in comparison to the previous solution. 

The agent that gets installed on the endpoints or on people's laptops and devices is a Cisco AnyConnect Umbrella module. It's one of the most impressive things because you are able to protect your users anywhere they are.

Its reliability and the response time of the support team can be better. 

In terms of features, I know Cisco Umbrella has a lot of potential, and I'm not sure if we're using it to its full potential. I'm not aware of all the functionality, and for the functionality for which we're using it, it has been great. There probably is one place for improvement. We'll love to see any new features, new functionalities, and maybe better integration with other cloud platforms, but for us, it's good as it's now.

We've been using Cisco Umbrella for around four and a half years.

In terms of availability, we've seen it down a couple of times. It has become very stable recently, but we've seen it down. Maybe that's one area that they can improve on. It was not for a long time, but it caused a little panic among our users.

Scalability is happening with ease with Cisco Umbrella because you're either deploying another appliance in your branch office or another office, or you're pointing the endpoints to the existing appliances in your head office or any other place, and you're good to go. It's very scalable and easy to use, and you can have a new office ready in a day or less.

It's great. We've had some cases and issues, but they were resolved quickly and in a timely manner, and we're happy with it. I'd rate them an eight out of ten. They could be a little quicker, but technically, they're great.

Positive

The previous solution was a proxy solution. I'd not state the name of the solution, but it was a proxy solution. It was heavy. It was slow, and there was no easy way for tracking old things. And of course, you can't protect your users outside of the company environment.

I found it easy to implement. Cisco Umbrella has great documentation and great support teams, and implementing it was very easy for us. We just deployed the appliances, and we got through the initial basic policies. We were prepared to do it, so for us, it was very easy.

We did it ourselves. The documentation was good. We're experienced architects and network-oriented guys, so for us, it was just a great experience doing it.

The return on investment is in terms of time savings. It saves time and helps focus on other important things instead of digging into problems with users.

Because we're mostly Cisco-oriented, the solution was obvious. It was already integrated with all of our equipment. We already had Cisco AnyConnect, so it was just a matter of adding the module to it. We're Cisco-oriented, and that was just an obvious choice.

Do your math and check the competitors, but in the end, you won't find a much better solution that's already integrated with your Cisco environment. If you are a Cisco company, that's the way to go.

I'd rate Cisco Umbrella an eight out of ten.