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.
Senior Network Administrator at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Provides good protection and quick support and is very stable
Pros and Cons
- "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."
- "Its price could be better."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What is most valuable?
The protection from users doing stupid things is valuable. The dashboard gives me the information I need.
What needs improvement?
Its price could be better.
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For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using it for about two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's very stable. I've never seen any problems with it.
How are customer service and support?
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.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
What other advice do I have?
It's a very good product. I'd rate it an eight out of ten. Overall, I am satisfied with the product.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Presale Engineer at Telekom Deutschland GmbH
Has good technical support and is scalable and easy to deploy
Pros and Cons
- "Cisco's technical support is pretty good. When a solution is available, they will find it. On a scale from one to ten with ten being the best, I'd rate Cisco's technical support at nine."
- "The locks and management could be better. The product is fairly new, and it may take some time to get all the features up and running."
What is our primary use case?
Our clients use Cisco Umbrella compared with SD-WAN or Meraki solutions. They use layer 7 firewall and web proxy in most use cases and fewer DNS security functionalities.
How has it helped my organization?
Cisco Umbrella has replaced on-premises firewalls in our client's branches. Our client had one central cloud solution, and now, they no longer need the local firewall.
What is most valuable?
Our clients have found that Cisco Umbrella increases its security posture because there is a central policy that fits everything.
Though Cisco Talos is usually part of the backend, it is mandatory to have a good solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been implementing Cisco Umbrella for three years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have not seen any issues with scalability.
How are customer service and support?
Cisco's technical support is pretty good. When a solution is available, they will find it. On a scale from one to ten with ten being the best, I'd rate Cisco's technical support at nine.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We sell both Cisco and Zscaler. If the client already has a Cisco solution, then Umbrella is usually a better fit. In cases when a customer already uses Zscaler, has another SD-WAN solution, or has a different vendor, Zscaler may be the first choice.
As a Cisco Secure reseller, we bring value to our customers through our technicians and engineers who consult with them and implement the solution. This is a benefit from our partner side.
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment is quite easy. It's internal, and with a few clicks, Cisco Umbrella can be up and running.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Cisco should make the solution cheaper.
What other advice do I have?
The locks and management could be better. The product is fairly new, and it may take some time to get all the features up and running.
Overall, I would rate Cisco Umbrella an eight on a scale from one to ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
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Cisco Umbrella
June 2025

Learn what your peers think about Cisco Umbrella. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
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Network Architect at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Easy to use and the categories are very clear
Pros and Cons
- "We are very new users of the solution and are still in the exploration stages, but we are happy with the product thus far."
- "I would like to see Cisco enable us to get objects from the internet. I would also like to be able to choose groups."
What is most valuable?
What I find most valuable about Cisco Umbrella is its ease of use. I also value the clearness of the categories. We have not experienced any issues or incidents with the categories. However, we are looking more deeply at the product now.
What needs improvement?
We are very new users of the solution and are still in the exploration stages, but we are happy with the product thus far. However, there are some features available in Fortinet and Palo Alto that are not available in Cisco, like objects, for example. I would like to see Cisco enable us to get objects from the internet. I would also like to be able to choose groups.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco Umbrella for two to three months now.
How are customer service and support?
For most of our technical support needs, we mostly go through our partner. However, for some infrastructure-related inquiries, we have had to contact Cisco's technical support and we were happy with the experience.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was simple. Deployment at our main sites took about three to four weeks.
What about the implementation team?
We received help from a local partner, NTT Global, during the deployment. They helped us set up Meraki and Umbrella.
What was our ROI?
We hope to see a return on investment with Cisco Umbrella. We have a big team managing the infrastructure, so we hope to save time in the day-to-day protection of the tower, which would be the return on investment.
Globally, we also hope to save time on the LAN. We aim for a single pane of glass management model with the dashboard.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
From what I remember about the pricing, Cisco Umbrella is a bit more expensive than the quotes we got from its competitors.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at several products, including Fortinet and Palo Alto. We experienced a bug with Fortinet during testing and ultimately ended up going with Cisco Meraki products. We have not had an incident yet with Cisco Umbrella.
What other advice do I have?
The solution helped us save time and this was a major reason we chose it. We expect to save 15% to 20% in time.
We are aiming to consolidate our entire network and LAN infrastructure with Cisco Umbrella. We are on the way to achieving that with this solution.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Great end-to-end detection and saves our IT team's time
Pros and Cons
- "I also think that the dashboard view is really helpful. Whenever sites get blocked, we get the details and the users who are connecting to them."
- "There is room for improvement in the dashboard. It could stand to be a bit more detailed. I would also like to be able to customize the dashboard to focus more on what is important for my company."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case for Cisco Umbrella is DNS filtering. We also have virtual appliances installed at almost all of our sites.
We refer our end users to the local VAs and also to the public Umbrella DNS. We mostly use it for the guest network. For internal users, we have dedicated virtual appliances installed at every site. We have a number of offices globally and each major site will have one VA.
How has it helped my organization?
Thanks to Cisco Umbrella, we are better able to respond to malicious attacks and block those domains right away.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features in my opinion are DNS filtering, filtering details, and the ability to block certain web pages. However, we mostly use DNS filtering. I also think that the dashboard view is really helpful. Whenever sites get blocked, we get the details and the users who are connecting to them.
What needs improvement?
There is room for improvement in the dashboard. It could stand to be a bit more detailed. I would also like to be able to customize the dashboard to focus more on what is important for my company. This would be particularly important for the customized dashboard we create for the leadership team. This would help us get information to them quickly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco Umbrella for the last three to four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Cisco Umbrella is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We use Cisco Umbrella across multiple offices so it is scalable. For the smallest offices, we use data center VAs and even in that configuration, it is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
Cisco's tech support is OK. I have had only good experiences with them.
They could work on getting on the calls more quickly because it can be difficult to reach them sometimes. This is particularly true during P1 outages.
On the other hand, they do really well with giving us helpful suggestions and additional information when we need it. The documentation is particularly good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not previously use a different solution. We were blocking things through the Cisco firewall.
Migrating from our previous firewall configuration to Cisco Umbrella was not so difficult. We did not additionally configure the normal firewall policies. All we did with this solution was add an additional layer of security.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not simple. It is quite difficult and cannot be implemented by everyone. You need to have some basic understanding of the product to deploy it. You need to understand DNS filtering and domain blocking and have a working knowledge of DNS and how it works. You should also have experience with virtual machines and VM detecting because Cisco Umbrella is on a VM.
What was our ROI?
We have seen a return on investment from Cisco Umbrella. We have seen many benefits.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We are Cisco partners so we get a discount on the licensing. With the discount, I would say the pricing is OK.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate other options. Ultimately, we landed on Cisco because it is more user-friendly than its competitors.
What other advice do I have?
End-to-end detection is mostly used for end users. We make use of it and it works well for us. It helps us find malicious attacks and identify other breaches. Cisco Umbrella is helpful when it comes to remediation as well. Whenever there is a new attack, we receive a notification and we block the domains through the solution.
Cisco Umbrella frees up time for our IT staff, particularly the network operations team. They use this product to find attacks and users who access non-allowed pages. However, I cannot say exactly how much time is saved because it all depends on the day. We have offices across the globe and each is impacted individually by the solution.
Cisco Umbrella has not caused our organization to consolidate tools.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Network Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
It is user-friendly and very easy to manage, but their support should be more efficient
Pros and Cons
- "It is user-friendly. It is easy to manage the solution."
- "Their support should be improved. It is necessary that the support is efficient. It is not really easy to get a resolution for an issue from Cisco support. They should be faster and more efficient."
What is our primary use case?
We are using it for user navigation. We have another solution for the server, and Umbrella is used for the people in the company for web access and security purposes. It helps to avoid security problems and authorize different types of access to the users for different web services.
How has it helped my organization?
I am a network administrator, and for me, it is the best solution because it is easy to manage. It is also effective for web access for the users.
With the old solution, we had a lot of restrictions because it was old technology and it was very important to provide different types of access. Umbrella is a cloud solution, and we can add access to new services or websites. It is a good product.
It is totally transparent for the users. When you have Cisco Umbrella on your computer, you cannot really see the product. It is very important for the users to not see the product.
It is very easy to manage, which is really important. We do not have time to manage this solution, and it is really important to have a good performance without any action or monitoring from my team. We work with Umbrella every day, but we don't need to make any changes on Umbrella because it is working.
It is easy to maintain network connectivity consistently across all workplaces, and it has been a good experience for our employees.
It provides resilience on all the sites. We have five sites, and all the sites have Umbrella.
What is most valuable?
It is user-friendly. It is easy to manage the solution.
What needs improvement?
Their support should be improved. It is necessary that the support is efficient. It is not really easy to get a resolution for an issue from Cisco support. They should be faster and more efficient.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for about three to four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable. I do not have a problem with this. We only had one bug three months ago, and we had a problem with the support, but before that, it has been a good experience.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable. We deployed it on different sites of the company. We use it for a lot of different services.
We have about 600 users, but we have 1,000 licenses. We might increase its usage.
How are customer service and support?
Cisco Umbrella's support is not really efficient. When we have a problem, it is difficult to have good support. It is not really easy to resolve a problem with Cisco support. Three months ago, we had a problem with it, and the support was not very efficient. I would rate them a six out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We had a French solution. It was an old solution, and it was not sufficient for the company. Cisco Umbrella has been the best for our company.
How was the initial setup?
It is not really easy, but because we have experts with us, it was not complex for us. We did this in one month because it was really important to give good services to the users.
What was our ROI?
We have seen an ROI, but it is hard to provide metrics.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We did a good negotiation, and at the moment, its price is fine.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I didn't look at other options. I only tested Cisco Umbrella.
What other advice do I have?
It has probably helped us to remediate threats more quickly. It is a good solution for user devices but probably not for servers.
I would rate it a seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Network Administrator
Video Review
Saves us a lot of time and a lot of effort in isolating the actual issue
Pros and Cons
- "A single pane of glass saves time... This does have a lot of options available for us to see who's doing what, what trends, what errors. We can set up our alerting through it as well. It is definitely a great dashboard."
- "Something on our end that might make it better is alerting going to our ticketing system. It's not something that we have discussed, but that would be a proactive option for us to provide a learning experience for the staff."
What is our primary use case?
We use Umbrella to monitor user activity and make sure that our staff isn't clicking on malicious links. We also use it to protect us by being more proactive on links that are already known to cause harm or potential hacks. Overall, it's keeping everything in a safe box.
How has it helped my organization?
We had a lot of challenges with staff clicking on ad links, random Google search links. Most staff want to shop during the day or in their downtime and were clicking on random links and then causing potential network issues, bugs, and causing network downs. Umbrella has helped us limit that.
It has provided our organization with more stability. Even though staff would like to shop using certain links, it gives us the option to educate them: "Hey, some of these links, just don't click on those." We are pretty lenient. We understand people want to shop and do other things at work. We try to keep it work-related, but safe.
Everyone really just wants to be able to click and do what they do, just like at home. But for the IT side of it, it does benefit us by limiting all of the extra activity. It does give us some comfortability that we aren't going to wake up, or even come in in the afternoon, and the whole network is down because someone went to buy some shoes or they clicked on a malicious email and caused a chain reaction.
It's very important for our organization to support the hybrid workers because we're a health clinic. A lot of staff are going to be away, but with the COVID numbers still out there, we want to be able to provide the same support that we did before COVID. We want to give the same flexibility, the same availability to our patients, that we had in the past. Being remote or having hybrid, it does give us a different range of opportunities to implement different workflows. They can reach out with more telecommunication, more video conferencing, rather than having a patient drive out to a site to seek support. We can do remote assistance and, with Umbrella, it still gives us the opportunity to be secure through those communication links.
We don't really have metrics at this particular time for it, but just [anecdotally] from past troubleshooting, having to diagnose maybe five different areas, this saves us a lot of time and a lot of effort in isolating the actual issue. We can just open up Umbrella, go to the specific area that we feel is impacted, or just look at one of the key dashboards that are on the portal and identify the issue.
It's very easy to maintain network connectivity with Umbrella. Before, we were having a lot of issues, but since Umbrella has been implemented, we really haven't had to touch it. It's kind of self-sufficient.
The solution is a lot more proactive. It does have its own features where it constantly uploads known threats and blocks those. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of our environment, but it also gives us an opportunity, if there are some questionable links, to diagnose those without it impacting the environment.
What is most valuable?
The best feature is the visibility. We're able to see the specific user names of whoever clicked on a certain link. It also gives us a threat detection level. It allows us to maintain more [awareness of] who's doing what they shouldn't be doing. The most valuable asset of it is giving us the ability to categorize who should have access to what type of sites.
This solution does give us a single-pane-of-glass for this particular instance. We do have several products implemented that we manage, which this hasn't integrated with yet, but we have just been made aware of the SecureX implementation and we are looking into implementing that and bringing that into another single-pane-of-glass, but with more options available.
A single pane of glass saves time. It saves effort and the headache of having to open up multiple links and go to different dashboards for troubleshooting different areas. This does have a lot of options available for us to see who's doing what, what trends, what errors. We can set up our alerting through it as well. It is definitely a great dashboard.
The dashboard, the single pane, is very helpful, it's very visual. Everything is straightforward there; it's definitely important for management. Even when we bring it to upper management and explain why this product is beneficial for us, this gives us a good breakdown and makes a lot of details available for us.
What needs improvement?
So far, I haven't seen any areas that need improvement. As far as what we need it to do, it's doing just that. It's comfortable for us. It's working beyond our expectations. Something on our end that might make it better is alerting going to our ticketing system. It's not something that we have discussed, but that would be a proactive option for us to provide a learning experience for the staff.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've had Umbrella implemented for about two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is very great. Once it's deployed and you do your due diligence to make sure that everything is communicating and in sync, we've hardly had to touch it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
For our environment, it doesn't seem to have any issues with the amount of users and staff. We have been constantly growing since we deployed it without any impact. No negative impact is forecasted.
How are customer service and support?
The support has been really good. I have only had to utilize support about three times. It's been more of a training area: "How do I get to this area?" and "What does this actually do? How can this benefit me?" From there, it still has been stable and smooth and doing everything that we expected it to do.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We had a different overall firewall solution, which was a Sophos firewall. But since we migrated away from that, we implemented the Firepower firewall and, in addition to that, added in Umbrella.
The reliability wasn't really there, with Sophos always having issues, even from the endpoint perspective. We had issues across the board and it was management's decision to look into a new solution.
How was the initial setup?
We just did one deployment through a virtual machine and that manages all of our routers and all of our users. We haven't had to do multi-site configurations or deployments. It goes towards the organization, uploads all of our users, and all of our statistics, and maintains things from there.
What was our ROI?
I'm not sure of the actual cost that went into it, but it's definitely a productive product for us.
What other advice do I have?
The solution doesn't require almost any maintenance, unless you're doing triple checks, upgrades, or just being proactive in different areas. But for the most part, once it's deployed, you just give it about a week or two to check your levels and make sure everything is the way that you intend the product to work.
As far as the IT infrastructure team goes, we're all happy with the product. It definitely takes a lot of load off of our plate. We don't have to deal with certain sites being blocked. We have been able to set expectations, where these particular users have access to these types of sites, and certain sites are just blocked. That's just the company standard. From the staff perspective, they want to be able to browse freely, but we were able to set those expectations and guidelines and that we're working in the best interests of the site.
I'll rate it a 10 out of 10. It's been functioning very efficiently and effectively, and it's doing everything we need it to do. It takes a lot of load off of our team.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Sr. IT Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Works perfectly and provides a secure and fast connection to our corporate network from anywhere
Pros and Cons
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
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.
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
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.
How are customer service and support?
I haven't been in touch with them because it's just working.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
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.
How was the initial setup?
I work for customers, and this was set up by our internal IT department.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
CEO / Owner / Network Specialist at NSCON Network Services & Consulting GmbH
Has good documentation and its general ability to detect and remediate threats is quite good
Pros and Cons
- "The documentation is good, and we have been able to resolve any issues ourselves."
- "It would be good to have more extensions to third-party products and a client for other device types."
What is our primary use case?
We use it for DNS security.
It is deployed on the Umbrella cloud dashboard.
How has it helped my organization?
Cisco Umbrella helped to improve security by detecting and prohibiting threats.
What is most valuable?
I like the API. I also like the way Cisco Umbrella uses DNS to block malicious sites before they are opened.
Its general ability to detect and remediate threats is quite good.
The documentation is good, and we have been able to resolve any issues ourselves.
What needs improvement?
It would be good to have more extensions to third-party products and a client for other device types.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been working with Cisco Umbrella for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not had any issues with stability.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very easy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price is fair, and the licensing cost is based on the number of users. We have seen a good ROI.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, on a scale from one to ten, with ten being the very best, I'd rate Cisco Umbrella at nine.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

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