Cisco Umbrella Reviews

We were looking to solve multiple challenges, from DLP all the way through to regular content filtering offsite for our hybrid and remote employees.

Using Cisco Umbrella has brought us into compliance with our customers on a number of points.

Also, it's very important that the solution helps support hybrid work. That was one of the main reasons we got it. About 45 to 50 percent of our employees are either fully remote or hybrid. We needed a solution that would follow them home.

In addition, it's very helpful for securing infrastructure from end to end and detecting threats. It's blocking a lot of stuff, so we don't even have to remediate. It's blocking things before they get to us.

Resilience in cyber security is very helpful and this product has increased our security posture quite a bit.

The most valuable features for us include

• Tenant lock
• Content filtering 
• DLP solutions, looking for PII and information being exfiltrated.

Also, the policies are applied wherever you go, and that's good.

There are a couple of different pieces that have different portals. I know they're working on getting them all into one portal, but that's probably the biggest thing that needs improvement right now. It's not a single pane of glass yet.

I've been using Cisco Umbrella for about a year.

We haven't had any issues with the stability of the product.

The scalability is very good and that's another one of the reasons that we chose this product. You can slowly ramp up the policies. You don't have to build it all at once. We started small and have been deploying more and more of the features of the full SIG Essentials package that we have. We can add more users when need be. It scales on a policy and a user and a deployment basis.

We have about 400 end-users and five sites. We use the AnyConnect module on the local workstations.

The solution's technical support has been very good. I haven't had to call them very much, but the technical support has been good when I have needed it.

Previously, our users were only in-house and we had internal firewalls that were doing a lot of this work. But now that they're hybrid, we had to come up with a new solution.

We evaluated Prisma because we have Palo Alto firewalls, but it was more expensive and more difficult to set up.

I don't think our workers like it all that much. It has actually made employee morale worse because we block a lot of stuff. But that's not really the product's fault. It's our policy. It makes things a little bit more cumbersome for them, but it definitely makes us feel safer.

I would tell leaders who want to build more resilience within their workplaces to do it. It's important because one hack and your business is done. Your reputation is everything in this day and age. Being resilient and being able to recover from that type of stuff before you're actually exfiltrated is a big deal.

Overall, Cisco Umbrella is pretty easy to use, pretty easy to deploy, and it does what we want it to do.

We use it for DNS filtration across all data centers, offices, and remote users.

The blocking of all the non-malicious traffic from DNS request queries has been huge. DNS is very important from a security perspective. Securing this layer, specifically for the remote users and the remote workforce that we're seeing today, is definitely a big gap that needed to be filled.

The DNS Umbrella agent is already installed on the core machine. So from day one, when our CEO sent all employees to work remotely, all we had to do was flip a switch to have a DNS filter on all core machines.

The visibility that Umbrella gives us into what a user is doing, versus what we want to block, is huge. It's not that we're policing things. It's just a matter of watching and having visibility. We're definitely not going to block every domain, but having visibility is very big.

It enables us to go granular in the customization of blocking some categories on the DNS. 

Also managing all the DNS aspects from one portal is definitely great from a security perspective. Sometimes we get a malicious URL in a phishing campaign on the email side. Blocking a domain across the whole company in one minute is definitely great. To block a DNS request very quickly you just add the domain to the Global Block List and in one second it's blocked.

Another feature that is good in Umbrella is applying and maintaining network connectivity consistently across all workplaces. You can go through the categories and do templates based on the sites, such as a data center or a branch and apply policies based on that.

Having ready-to-go templates with best practices is definitely something that would be an improvement. Deployment, from day one, is something that definitely needs to be improved for Cisco customers.

I have been using Cisco Umbrella for four years.

The stability is a 10 out of 10.

The scalability is also a 10 out of 10. We use it across all the company's offices and data centers. We have 1,500 users.

The Umbrella service itself is great. Sometimes, with technical support, we go through "tag" problems, but otherwise, it's pretty smooth.

Neutral

We did not have a previous solution. We used to use CWS, which was Umbrella before it was named Umbrella.

The ROI is visible in the portal through the executive reports. They show how many times we block malicious sites. Management definitely gets a view of the fact that we're blocking a lot of malicious domains with Umbrella.

We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good. We take many security products in one agreement, so we have no complaints about the price.

From a DNS perspective, Cisco Umbrella is the number-one technology now.

One of our purposes for acquiring Umbrella was to block phishing links that we get in emails and to manage risky websites. We're using it for our internal network and the roaming client for external users.

Blocking malicious websites and preventing users from going into them, as well as the phishing attacks that usually come with malicious links, were the challenges. With Umbrella we can block them.

We use it in our Active Directory domain and for about 175 users. We use it on desktop computers and on laptops for external users. It's all on-premises, protecting servers and workstations.

It has improved our company a lot because we now see where the users are going and prevent them from going to malicious websites. It has reduced, by a lot, the chances of hackers getting into our organization.

With Umbrella, it's our IT staff who we feel secure. Sometimes the end-users, our clients, don't fully understand the purpose of the tools when we install them, such as the roaming client. And sometimes they get false positives and they don't fully understand why. But for us, as IT admins, we feel a lot more comfortable with the tool in place, because we know that it's unlikely our users will go to a malicious website. Umbrella is protecting us.

Umbrella has also helped us remediate threats more quickly. It's really good for securing our infrastructure from end to end. Umbrella's footprint is really small. If you want to secure infrastructure, such as servers, you don't have to install an agent. You just have to use DNS forwarders and point them to the umbrella servers. That's easier. It helps us protect our infrastructure for sure.

The Global Block List is one of the most valuable features because it's really easy to block domain names as well as URLs. Sometimes you don't want to block the whole site, you just want to block one URL. The Global Block and Allow Lists are the best features for us.

Cisco Umbrella also provides a single pane of glass for management. It's really helpful and it's important for us because we have multiple locations. Without a single pane of glass, if you want to block websites you have to go to every location, in each firewall, one by one. But when you have a single management portal, it's a lot easier.

The user experience is good because, as IT and admins, it's easy to use. But that's not only for admins, it's also true for the clients because they know the reason a website is blocked. The user experience is pretty smooth because they can report a false positive or a malicious website that has not been blocked in Umbrella. We are happy with the user experience.

And when it comes to applying and maintaining network connectivity consistently across all workplaces, Umbrella is excellent. We can track, among the different locations that we have, where the users are trying to get to. That means the risk of disruption is reduced by using Umbrella. And in that way, Umbrella contributes to maintaining network connectivity.

The user interface is pretty nice. Once you know how to do tasks, it's easy.

There are some situations where we would like to block things for specific user groups. I know that Umbrella does that, but it's not that easy. When you go to the Global Allow and Block Lists, that's the easy part. But when you want a specific task for specific rules and policies for user groups, you have to go three levels down in the menu, and it's hard to find where you do that task.

Also, the policies are not that easy to manage.

I have been using Cisco Umbrella for around a year and a half.

The stability is really good. They have about 99.99 percent uptime. I can't think of a significant disruption in the service.

We are a small organization, but from what I have seen, it is very scalable.

We have never requested support.

The initial deployment was straightforward.

The solution is on-premises but the management is cloud-based.

We did it all by ourselves.

We have seen return on investment by reducing the risk we had in the past. That has saved us from having to invest a lot of time in support, which is something we had to do when a user didn't know what they were doing and got infected. We now spend less time on end-user support.

The pricing is pretty fair. It's good.

In my former company, we used Area 1 for DNS protection, not Umbrella. I knew OpenDNS before it became Umbrella. In fact, I used OpenDNS for my personal accounts. In my current company we evaluated Area 1, but in the end, we loved Cisco's support and that is one of the reasons we went with Umbrella. But, obviously, the features in Umbrella are pretty good.

Once our end-users understood why we use Umbrella, that it was for improving our organization's security, it improved their morale. Nowadays, they are aware of cyber threats and they know that Umbrella is one of the tools that we use to prevent a breach. They feel more secure now.

Resilience helps a lot in cyber security. One of the things that makes Umbrella great is that you don't have to detect threats by yourself. Wherever in the world a new threat is detected, it's in the Global Block List of Umbrella and we don't have to manage those threats one by one.

That kind of resilience is more and more important for our organization every day. Fortunately, our C-level now understands the risks and what the organization could lose. They understand the impact. With the support of management, cyber security is really important for our organization.

I would tell the leaders of other organizations who want to build more resilience that cyber security is more important now because we are serving our internal and external customers. The problem with a cyber security risk, a threat or a disruption in IT services, is that it will probably cause us to stop producing what we produce. Our customers will have a bad experience, and that means it is not only a financial issue but one of reputation. I would tell such leaders to always keep cyber security in mind because it's not just about your IT guys, it's for the whole organization.

It's an excellent product. It has worked really well. The only reason I don't give it a 10 out of 10 is, as I mentioned, that there are some tasks that could be done more easily.

In general, we use it for the security of our network.

We wanted to get an idea of what's happening outside of our network and what's coming to our network. We had no way to know before and we were just sitting there waiting for something to happen. At least now we can be proactive.

It has helped us to be more secure. Cisco Umbrella allows us to see threats in real time. We can also see if there are any bad actors inside of our network who are trying to do malicious things. It gives us a quick glance at the situation, at where we are and how vulnerable we are.

Another definite benefit is that it has helped us to remediate threats more quickly.

It's very important that the solution helps support hybrid work. In the past, we might have had one or two people who were working from home because of illness or pregnancy. Now, with 60 percent of our people working from home, Cisco Umbrella has really helped us out with threats that they might not even know exist on their side. We can monitor them and be proactive about them.

Also, if it didn't have a single pane of glass, we would not be using it. The single pane of glass gives you a one-stop shop. It's like going to Home Depot. You find all your stuff there. You can see all your threats and your endpoints. It's a very important feature and makes things very simple.

Another point is that it's very easy to maintain network connectivity.

I have been using Cisco Umbrella for about eight years.

The stability of Cisco Umbrella is very good.

I haven't had to scale it, but I would assume the scalability would be good.

We haven't contacted them from the time we were up and running.

We did not have a previous solution.

The deployment was straightforward.

I used an integrator, Harness LLC, and the experience with them was all good.

Our ROI is due to the level of threats that we don't have to deal with, threats that are being blocked by Cisco Umbrella.

There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost.

We looked at Trend Micro, but that was several years ago.

Look for programs that have a track record and that are proven. No matter what any individual might say, that person can't do it by themselves. They have to have support, and Cisco Umbrella is a good support.

Resilience in cyber security is like raising kids. You really can't stop. You have to be resilient continually. Every day is a different challenge. Just because you're good on Tuesday doesn't mean you're going to be good on Wednesday.
Cyber security resilience has been key for us, with people going home to work or to other places to do their jobs. That resilience keeps them working and keeps our network safe.

I love it. It's almost like trying to look at WiFi. You can't see the WiFi signal with your naked eye. It's the same with threats. You can't see them by just walking around the building. With a tool like Cisco Umbrella, you can see what you have and how to fix it.

For our employees, it means that their systems are working. They have no idea what we're doing behind the scenes to keep their systems working, unfortunately. I wish I could say, "Hey, guys, today Cisco Umbrella stopped 84 threats."

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. 

Our primary use case is for filtering and security reasons. We send our DNS queries to Umbrella. It will see if we go to a site that has malware or a virus and it will stop it. It detects if the URL has malware.

The multilayers of defense have improved my organization. We have a lot of defensive layers and DNS queries from Cisco is one of them. 

The most valuable feature is its ability to detect if a URL has malware or is vulnerable.  

I would like for their support to be faster. 

We have been using Cisco Umbrella for six to seven years. 

I have never experienced a stability issue where the site went down. 

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. 

Support doesn't always get back to me right away but they'll send me an email with the solution. It's not critical. I don't have an issue with it. I would rate their support an eight out of ten. I took two points off because it can take a day or two for them to get back to me. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy. There is good documentation. I can deploy it within a day or two. There's a page that shows you the health of the agent. It makes me more comfortable knowing that my configuration is healthy. 

I did the deployment myself. 

We have definitely realized ROI through the protection Umbrella offers. 

The pricing is decent. The price is user-based, per month. 

I would rate Cisco Umbrella a nine out of ten. I also use it on a personal level. It helps me to protect my endpoints so that they won't go to a malicious site. 

I'm doing business for customers. I'm building customer networks. We have Cisco Umbrella and Cisco Secure Endpoint, and the use case is that we connect to the company network from all over the place, and we need to do it in a secure way. 

We are just a small company with about 300 employees. Everybody is using these products to securely connect to the corporate network. From there, we support our customers. It needs to be really secure so that no security problems spread from our network to the customers' network. This is something we absolutely need to avoid. That's why these products are really good for us.

For me, it's quite good for daily work. Mainly, I work from a home office, so I have it running all day. It's okay for me. There is not much noise about it. I don't need to pay a lot of attention to this. It's just running in the background, and that's what I need.

It enables mobile work from anywhere. If you are at home, at a customer, or traveling, it enables a secure way of accessing the corporate network.

As a user, everything is there for securing our infrastructure from end to end to detect and remediate threats. There's nothing else that I need.

It saves time for sure. It doesn't require much attention. Everybody can use it. The end-users don't need to have any special skills. It's just perfect. I don't have the metrics on time savings because it isn't easy to know how much time you would have spent if you had an unstable product or if you had to take care of all this. 

For me, it's important that I get a connection to my corporate network in a secure and fast way. This product just runs in the background and doesn't need any attention. For me, as a user, it's perfect. 

Overall, I'm quite happy with Cisco products, but there could be one place where you can check what's going on. There could be one place where you get all the information about these products so that you don't need to look around. You get the status, information about what lately happened, and if there was anything on the machine in one single place.

We've been using Cisco Umbrella for about a year and a half, and we've been using Cisco Secure Endpoint for somewhat longer. It has been about three years.

I haven't been in touch with them because it's just working.

We used other products such as separate virus scanners. Using all the products from Cisco simplified things. You don't need to worry about whether it's compatible or whether you need to do something special on the antivirus side. It simplified things for me.

I work for customers, and this was set up by our internal IT department. 

I would advise seriously looking into it because, for our users, it's just working perfectly. 

I would rate it a 10 out of 10. There are no complaints.

Most of the time, it's for security reasons in terms of looking at what DNS requests are being done and other things like that.

It has certainly saved us time. If we go and look at what's rejected on the requests from the hospital itself, it has saved about 5% or 6% time.

It's there to keep everything secure. Hospitals are a very nice target for attacks. We have been under an attack from Russia once, which was a DDoS attack.

It secures our infrastructure from end to end so we can detect and remediate threats.

The protection from users doing stupid things is valuable. The dashboard gives me the information I need.

Its price could be better.

I've been using it for about two years.

It's very stable. I've never seen any problems with it.

It's perfect for the things we have with it. There is a quick resolution. There are no problems at all. I'd rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

I've not used a similar solution. We went for Cisco Umbrella because they are delivering good products. We also have all Cisco switches in place, and then we have Cisco ACI and DNA Center. We only don't have Cisco firewalls.

I am not aware of any tools that we could consolidate or get rid of by using Cisco Umbrella because it was installed about five or six years before I came here.

Cisco is expensive. For example, we are looking at Nexus Dashboard, and it's costing about 250,000 euros. I ask, "What do I get from it?" I'm still not convinced that we have to spend on it, so pricing is a problem.

It's a very good product. I'd rate it an eight out of ten. Overall, I am satisfied with the product.