Cisco ScanSafe Web Security SaaS [EOL] vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

Cisco ScanSafe Web Security SaaS [EOL] and Cisco Umbrella are both solutions in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category. Additionally, 100% of Cisco ScanSafe Web Security SaaS [EOL] users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Cisco Umbrella users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 2025

Cisco ScanSafe Web Security SaaS [EOL] and Cisco Umbrella are competing in cloud-based security solutions, with Cisco Umbrella seen as more favorable due to its advanced features and perceived value.

Features: Cisco ScanSafe Web Security SaaS [EOL] included web filtering, anti-malware protection, and basic web security suitable for many businesses. Cisco Umbrella extends security with DNS-layer protection, comprehensive threat intelligence, and an advanced feature set, offering a modern approach to security.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco ScanSafe featured a straightforward deployment process and satisfactory customer service, appealing to those in need of quick implementation. In contrast, Cisco Umbrella offers a more streamlined deployment experience, enhanced integration, and scalable solutions, which are beneficial in dynamic environments needing flexible and rapid deployments.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco ScanSafe was recognized for its cost-effectiveness, providing strong ROI, particularly for smaller businesses aiming to manage security costs effectively. While Cisco Umbrella might entail a higher setup cost, it delivers significant ROI through its extensive security offerings and advanced protection, deemed worthy of its premium for businesses seeking robust security solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Report (Updated: October 2025).

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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

Matt Crockford

Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water

It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless

One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured

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Enrique-Diaz Jolly

Principal Consulting Engineer, Founder, Own at Jolly Security Inc

Super stable with huge capacity but is retired so is no longer supported

The solution is scalable and has a huge capacity. You may experience delays if you are sending requests outside of websites because the proxy has to download and provide content. Speed is dependent on many factors including the combination of networks, tasks, locations, and networking services. Things have become a bit more complicated than with classic website models where the server contained content so there was a straight connection. Now there are distribution networks and other services that are all configured to work differently in various directions. At the end of the day, URLs are still URLs so their categorization remains the same.

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Emilio Montoya

CTO at PROA

Ensures internet navigation safety and boosts productivity

The features of Cisco Umbrella I prefer most are DNS protection and traffic redirect. With Cisco Talos's threat intelligence, we reduce the impact of malware traffic in our network, and we currently see the behavior of equipment and choose the correct sites. Cisco Talos has helped us reduce the impact of malware traffic. We can see the behavior and choose the correct sites. We're currently testing secure access with Umbrella in order to secure access to core applications. It's a product that the user doesn't even know is there, even though it is protecting them. It's not hard on the equipment. And, for us, it centralizes everything, which improves productivity. With the Experience Insights feature of Cisco Secure Access, we've seen impacts on the management of user connectivity by allowing us to deliver safe connectivity. We are testing the Secure Access product with Cisco Umbrella to improve our connectivity with our users in order to secure access to the corporate applications. Cisco Umbrella is in the cloud, which is nice.

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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."

"We chose iboss for both zero trust and proxy (SWG) because their SWG was superior."

"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."

"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."

"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."

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

"We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times."

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

More iboss pros

"It is valuable to be able to block whole categories or groups at one time."

"The web security is great."

"The cyber security features they offer are most trusted"

"The most valuable features are the protection against ransomware and phishing."

"The interface is well organized, so you can easily find everything. Even if you don't have much experience with Cisco, you can easily navigate the solution and find your way around. Everything has been done well, from the deployment to monitoring."

"It has excellent resilience in cybersecurity. Cybersecurity for my organization is very important because we are a banking organization. We need this security to protect the personal information of our clients. This is very important for our security."

"I like that it integrates with the infrastructure. I also like the kind of data and intelligence that's built-in. It helps create innovative reports for security."

"We've found it to be stable and good for our customers."

"Its simplicity is most valuable. I can install it and get it up and running, and it can be pervasive across my business within a business day. It is pretty simple and straightforward to install and configure. Its remit is reasonably clearly defined. When you look at solutions like Darktrace and Carbon Black, the mission objective isn't as clearly defined. Cisco Umbrella, Sophos Central, or some of the other solutions have a more standardized approach to antivirus, which includes enhanced response from the machine learning or deep learning perspective."

"Reports provide insight into internet usage and information helpful in creating QoS rules."

"It offers good visibility for the Administrator. The administrator has full visibility of what is blocked or has the knowledge of where users go when they are surfing the internet."

More Cisco Umbrella pros

Cons

"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."

"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."

"The reporting feature needs improvement."

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

"Its pricing could be better."

"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."

"The dashboards for local use could be better."

"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."

More iboss cons

"The licensing could be better."

"The solution is not supported well because it is legacy."

"Setup is not that difficult, but it really requires proper technical training."

"We faced an issue regarding virtual appliances (VAs) during deployment. They could improve the quality and management of the virtual appliances offered right now. You can't see much because it is a Linux machine, and they have customized it. You don't have any route access to the machine, only seeing limited things in it. When we opened a ticket, they didn't know much about VAs themselves. So, that is where it is lacking right now. I know this will improve in the long run."

"I'd like to see this solution more closely integrate with other products Cisco has in its portfolio."

"The only thing I can think of is that I'd like to see a little more flexibility in policy creation. The way that policy is currently structured is like a "first hit succeeds" kind of policy. It would be nice if it were more hierarchical."

"The solution is very expensive in Brazil."

"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."

"Missing a real data leakage prevention solution."

"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."

"It would be good if the more complex versions of Umbrella are simplified so that we can offer them in a more standardized way. We, as a telco, do not operate the same as a traditional integration partner would, who can sell all its services. We try to have a standardized approach as much as we can so that we can sell the solution with as many services added to it as possible. If you look at the structure of businesses in Switzerland, 95% of them have 10 persons or less, and they do not have a security specialist. Therefore, the higher the automated and standardized features, the better it is for them."

More Cisco Umbrella cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

Information not available

"Cisco has a set price for a single license up to 100, but whenever we get over 100, we have to ask for a quote."

"The licensing fee is paid on a yearly basis."

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

"The price could be lower."

"The pricing is fair."

"Licensing with Cisco can be a little complex, but I think it's comparable with that of other similar products. It's always hard to put a price on security, but the price is fair for the value it provides."

"You can request an evaluation license."

"There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."

More Cisco Umbrella pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

No data available

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	5

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	49
Midsize Enterprise	30
Large Enterprise	51

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?

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

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What is your primary use case for iboss?

Previously when I used iboss, we did the POC for iboss for ExxonMobil. Four or five people wanted to move from our ol...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?

Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern. There are cheaper alte...

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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 do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?

Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.

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Comparisons

Netskope vs iboss

Compared 14% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs iboss

Compared 13% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs iboss

Compared 13% of the time

Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) vs iboss

Compared 8% of the time

Cloudflare One vs iboss

Compared 6% of the time

More iboss Competitors

No data available

Zscaler Internet Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Secure Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 8% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 7% of the time

Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco Umbrella Competitors

Product Reports

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iboss

October 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

October 2025

Cisco ScanSafe Web Security SaaS [EOL] report

Download Cisco ScanSafe Web Security SaaS [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Umbrella

October 2025

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Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform

ScanSafe Web Security SaaS

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

Cisco ScanSafe is a cloud hosted web filtering service which enables you to create, enforce and monitor Web usage policies. Layering real time rule-based filters with up-to-date and accurate categorization database, Web Filtering enforces your organization's acceptable usage policy, protecting you from the legal liabilities of inappropriate content, reducing bandwidth congestion and improving employee productivity.

Cisco

Cisco Umbrella delivers rapid DNS security with over 30,000 customers, providing outstanding threat protection and handling more than 600 billion requests daily. It's recognized for high threat efficacy in the SSE domain and integrates elements like SWG, ZTNA, CASB, and more.

Cisco Umbrella is renowned for its effective DNS-layer security against ransomware and phishing. It offers flexible content filtering and integrates seamlessly with existing networks while providing single-pane-of-glass management for centralized monitoring. Its robust threat intelligence and customizable policies are central to its appeal. Users highlight room for improvement in areas like WHOIS data inclusion, malware enhancement, and reporting analytics. Integration with other threat feeds and better client support are requested for more comprehensive coverage.

What are the key features of Cisco Umbrella?

DNS-Layer Security: Blocks malicious domains, preventing ransomware attacks.
Web Content Filtering: Allows users to manage lists for strict content control.
Seamless Integration: Blends with systems like Active Directory and Meraki.
Remote Protection: Keeps remote users safe across different locations.
Single-Pane Management: Facilitates effective monitoring and reporting.

What should users expect in reviews about Cisco Umbrella?

Threat Intelligence: Provides comprehensive malware and attack data.
Customizable Policies: Enables tailored security measures for users.
Integration Options: Works with diverse systems for holistic security.
Ease of Use: Offers a straightforward experience for administrators.
Remote Worker Security: Ensures protection outside traditional networks.

Industries implement Cisco Umbrella primarily for DNS-level security, web filtering, and protecting remote employees. It strengthens cybersecurity frameworks by blocking malware and avoiding access to harmful sites. The tool is widely integrated with Active Directory and Cisco Meraki, providing consistent internet security for employees.

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.

Arup Group, Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha, K&L Gates, New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Transplace

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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October 2025

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