Blue Coat ProxySG [EOL] vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

Broadcom and Cisco are both solutions in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category. Additionally, 83% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Cisco users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Blue Coat ProxySG [EOL] and Cisco Umbrella compete in the cybersecurity space focusing on web filtering and secure internet access. Cisco Umbrella holds the advantage due to its alignment with modern cloud-based needs, offering comprehensive, scalable coverage.

Features: Blue Coat ProxySG [EOL] offers strengths in on-premises deployment with features such as robust web filtering, SSL decryption, and data loss prevention. Cisco Umbrella, adopting a cloud-based architecture, provides DNS-layer protection, secure web gateway capabilities, and advanced threat intelligence integration, making it well-suited for remote and hybrid workforce environments.

Room for Improvement: Blue Coat ProxySG [EOL] needs advancements in cloud integration, scalability, and automated policy management. Cisco Umbrella could enhance its support for non-DNS threats, increase integration capabilities with third-party solutions, and enrich its reporting features for more granular insights.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Umbrella is cloud-native, facilitating quick deployment with minimal on-premises requirements, supported by a highly responsive support infrastructure. Blue Coat ProxySG [EOL] involves complex on-premises deployments, requiring significant resources, with solid but less efficient support due to its end-of-life status.

Pricing and ROI: Blue Coat ProxySG [EOL] offers a lower initial cost but may incur higher long-term expenses due to maintenance challenges and scalability issues. Cisco Umbrella, despite a potentially higher upfront investment, promises better ROI through enhanced operational efficiency and cost-effective scalability, which aligns well with its extensive feature set.

To learn more, read our detailed Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Report (Updated: June 2026).

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

iboss

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula

Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support

The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.

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Suhas Suryavanshi

Information Security Engineer at M.Tech

Granular control over website access has lead to decreased bandwidth and increased performance

If you have previously worked on the product then it is quite simple. However, if you are new to it then the implementation is a little bit tricky. On the Cloud Proxy, the deployment takes less than one day. If you are using the ProxySG or the on-premises solution, it will take one to two weeks depending on the policy configuration, the size of the organization, and what kinds of policies are needed. The number of staff you need to maintain the solution depends on the size of the organization, and how many changes occur on a daily basis. If you have one thousand employees then you need at least one employee to look after it.

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Suresh-Sharma

Sr. Technical Executive at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Has required extensive customization for non-technical users and still needs better simplification

Customization for basic users can be complex, as it is targeted toward only technical users. It would be beneficial if Cisco simplifies the customization process while still ensuring strong security to prevent unauthorized access. Simplifying the customization part could enhance Cisco Umbrella, but overall, it is a good solution for me.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."

"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."

"The console is cloud-based, which is something I really appreciate."

"This product is solid, fairly easy to use, and reliable."

"iboss is definitely very good in terms of service."

"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."

"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."

"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."

More iboss pros

"Customer Service: Blue Touch support is top notch and very responsive when I opened service requests."

"Since the implementation of this solution, the bandwidth has decreased and the performance in terms of Internet access has increased."

"Proxy Solution and ADN, specifically its integration capability with Blue Coat Director to apply seamless policy across all of Blue Coat, along with intuitive proxy policy deployment using VPN and the ability to forward-chain your proxy, make it overall a good solution though growth requires automation support."

"We were able to monitor users' social media behavior and control certain activities to be allowed on the social media, which helped to prevent data loss and other activities that could result in a negative impact to the organization."

"It features intuitive proxy policy deployment using a VPN."

"Proxy Solution and ADN and their integration capability with Blue Coat director are positive features."

"The functionality of this solution is one of the best, and it is leading the market."

"It's a great solution for high load enterprise infrastructure to protect company networks from web threats."

"Umbrella is the best product available as of now."

"It is a good cloud-based solution for DNS security."

"Umbrella offers protection against malicious websites by stopping users from visiting them."

"It has helped reduce my unit's security events."

"I would describe the experience deploying Cisco Umbrella overall as super easy. It was awesome. It was lovely to deploy it."

"Cisco Umbrella scales incredibly with the growing needs of my organization."

"The insight into what our users are doing via Cisco Umbrella is valuable. Knowing that we're protecting our users as they leave our network is also valuable now because we've got more hybrid working."

"The most valuable feature of Cisco Umbrella is its DNS security."

More Cisco Umbrella pros

Cons

"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."

"Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You feel that you are running into that support wall."

"iboss can be improved because the integration could be better; you need to import all the sites that you access today, and there are a few problems whenever you import thousands of websites, making the integration process messy for the users."

"The reporting feature needs improvement. It doesn't give you the expected results. It is quite difficult to get the specific reports needed, and it is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform."

"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."

"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."

"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."

"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."

More iboss cons

"There were benefits but the evolution is slow, hence wanting to move on with the product."

"We cannot automate the product since the IP address can only be assigned after acquisition of the serial number."

"They need to improve the intellectual analysis for APT vectors from web."

"Blue Coat advertises the ProxySG as a WAF, but it really isn’t."

"The GUI works, but could be better."

"It lacks deployment over multiple platforms and integration with SDN architecture."

"It would be great if the product had inbuilt queuing for Quality of Service."

"They need to improve analytics so they report on more of the specifics of user activity."

"It should have a real-time malware classification engine. It should check the malware on the website. It would be good if it had a real-time malware check for the websites because currently, it just compares the DNS queries of the blacklist. It should also have malware control over file execution and the types of files that the users are allowed to download."

"The design of the screens could be improved. Sometimes you're trying to look for information, for what you think is critical that should be on that first screen of the dashboard so that you can quickly take screenshots to have people help out, but you have to hop between screens to find little pieces of evidence."

"I don't have an answer for how Cisco Umbrella can be improved, as it has been some time since I've worked with it."

"Its on-prem rollout is quite challenging. It needs better coordination with the Internet Service Provider. It is a cloud-based solution, and any endpoint that connects to it has to go through all the gateway ISPs, but some of the ISPs block HTTPS-based DNS. That's where the challenge occurs with Umbrella."

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

"For us, as an MSP, the initial licensing changes were a roadblock, and they still could be a lot clearer. Specifically, it's an honor-based licensing system. We'd like it to be more specific to our traffic or our users so that we can make sure that the customer is paying for all their licensing."

"I would like for them to continue building on IPS and IDS functionalities."

More Cisco Umbrella cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."

"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."

"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."

"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."

"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."

"Additional features, such as Flash Proxies, have their own licensing fees that depend on what the requirements are."

"The pricing was marvelous."

"The price should be slightly lower than the current price because if you look at the whole solution, it is simply a threat intelligence solution to block blacklisted things. The price should be lower looking at the features provided by the solution. The price isn't too high either, but it could be lower."

"In the region I'm from, that of EMAR, Europe, the Middle East, Eastern Asia and Africa, our organizations do not have many liquid cash assets, so the price could be better."

"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."

"We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good."

"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."

"In terms of licensing, we're not able to be extremely clear with the customer because it's based on their reporting. It's not based on the actual traffic. If they say they have 50 users but they have 80, we'll just buy for 50 users. That's something where we'd like to have more flexibility."

"The price could be lower."

More Cisco Umbrella pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

No data available

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Non Profit

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	9

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	50
Midsize Enterprise	31
Large Enterprise	52

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?

The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent ...

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What is your primary use case for iboss?

We used iBoss mainly for Internet Access by having an Agent on Windows laptops Primarily because when we try to use i...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?

I am not involved in pricing, but as per the information I have, during that time, the Blue Coat proxies we were usin...

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Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?

Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zs...

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Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?

Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-nat...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Umbrella?

The pricing for Cisco Umbrella is fair compared to other platforms out there for DNS security. We acquired it as a bu...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

iboss

July 2026

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Buyer's Guide

WAN Optimization

June 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Cisco Umbrella

July 2026

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Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform

No data available

OpenDNS

Overview

Iboss offers a comprehensive cloud-based security platform valued for its scalability and autonomous features, ensuring robust security with easy deployment and management capabilities.

Renowned for its robust security architecture, Iboss integrates seamlessly within diverse networks, delivering efficient granular filtering and advanced content categorization. Its single pane of glass console provides ease of management, allowing rapid scalability suitable for rapidly deploying environments. Operates in BYOD setups due to inline filtering without device installation. Integration with cloud-based applications enhances user control, and features like SASE, SSL inspection, and ChatGPT risk protection stand as highlights. Despite its strengths, users have pointed out areas for enhancement like direct navigation in reports, SSL decryption, and better cloud integration while having room to improve data loss prevention.

What are the most important features of Iboss?

Scalability: Supports rapid deployment across diverse networks.
SASE: A consolidated approach to secure access.
SSL Inspection: Ensures safe data transmission.
Granular Filtering: Detailed control over accessible content.
Single Pane Management: Unifies control through a centralized console.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Cost-effectiveness: Offers competitive pricing with robust features.
Autonomous Operation: Reduces management overhead.
Responsive Support: Provides assistance when needed.
Flexible Deployment: Available for both cloud and on-premises environments.

The usage of Iboss spans educational institutions, specifically K-12, to enforce internet policies, protect data, and support remote work environments. It provides web filtering and security frameworks to ensure safe browsing. Its platform-as-a-service model offers flexibility for both cloud-based and on-premises requirements, integrating seamlessly to deliver enhanced security features suitable for various deployment needs including zero trust, CASB, and network security for work-from-home setups.

iboss

ProxySG appliances provide complete control over all your web traffic, delivering world-class threat protection. Robust features include user authentication, web filtering, data loss prevention, inspection, and visibility of SSL-encrypted traffic, content caching, bandwidth management, stream-splitting and more.

Broadcom

Cisco Umbrella provides fast-deploying DNS-layer security with powerful threat protection capabilities. Trusted by over 30,000 entities, it ranks highly in DNS security and effectively supports secure remote work environments.

Cisco Umbrella offers comprehensive DNS security, web filtering, and ease of use, enhancing network security through robust threat protection and malware prevention. It processes over 600 billion requests daily, making it a leader in its field. The seamless integration with existing infrastructures and cloud-based nature makes it suitable for remote and distributed work environments, ensuring consistent security throughout. Management is streamlined with a single-pane interface that simplifies administration, while in-depth reporting capabilities provide valuable insights for continuous monitoring.

What are the key features of Cisco Umbrella?

DNS Security: Provides leading protection by managing DNS queries and blocking malicious sites.
Web Filtering: Offers granular control over web content to safeguard internet usage.
Ease of Integration: Fits well into existing infrastructures, simplifying deployment and use.
Intuitive Management: Single-pane management streamlines administration and enhances usability.
Cloud-Based Flexibility: Supports secure remote work environments.

What benefits can users expect from using Cisco Umbrella?

Superior Threat Protection: Reduces risk by effectively detecting and preventing cyber threats.
Consistent Security: Provides uniform protection across network environments.
Efficiency and Visibility: Leverages comprehensive reporting for better security insights.
Easy Deployment: Quick and straightforward setup with minimal disruption.

Cisco Umbrella is widely adopted in industries requiring advanced DNS-level security to counteract malware, phishing, and cyber threats. Its ability to monitor and protect remote and roaming employees makes it an attractive option for sectors highly dependent on cloud services. By managing DNS queries and blocking harmful sites, Cisco Umbrella enhances cybersecurity across networks, providing an added layer of protection for businesses worldwide.

Cisco

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.

Global Technology and Material Manufacturer

Chart Industries, City of Aspen, Eastern Mountain Sports, FLEXcon, George Washington University, Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, Ohio Public Library Information Network, PTC, Richland Community College, Smart Motors, Tulane University, VeriClaim

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