Cisco Secure Workload vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

Cisco Secure Workload and Cisco Umbrella are both solutions in the Cisco Security Portfolio category. Cisco Secure Workload is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.5, while Cisco Umbrella is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.9. Cisco Secure Workload holds a 5.8% mindshare in CSS, compared to Cisco Umbrella’s 13.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco Secure Workload users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Cisco Umbrella users who would recommend it.

Cisco Secure Workload

Read 15 Cisco Secure Workload reviews

5,931 Views
534 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco Umbrella

Read 125 Cisco Umbrella reviews

27,409 Views
1,370 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Cisco Secure Workload

Cisco Umbrella

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Workload and Cisco Umbrella based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cisco Security Portfolio solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Workload vs. Cisco Umbrella Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Cisco Umbrella

June 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 902,894 peers since 2012

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

Cisco Secure Workload

Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud and Data Center Security (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (18th), Microsegmentation Software (4th)

Cisco Umbrella

Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio

3rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

125

Ranking in other categories

Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 5.8%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 13.4%, up from 13.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cisco Security Portfolio Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella	13.4%
Cisco Secure Workload	5.8%
Other	80.8%

Cisco Security Portfolio

Featured Reviews

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This product does everything that you need it to do and more and does a lot to provide visibility in a network environment, save time and money, and make the organization IT operate in a much more streamlined fashion."

"The most valuable feature right now is to do with having visibility on the network — especially on our servers — and to be able to enforce some type of security measures."

"It's stable."

"The product provides multiple-device integration."

"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."

"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."

"The only use case I can see that makes sense is micro-segmentation. I think there are other use cases for it. The main purpose of the product is to do micro-segmentation by collecting IP. That could be done by installing an agent, and then you have all the communication coming in and out. You could also use some flow sensors installed in the network that receive a copy of the traffic and then report that back to the system."

"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

"Stability-wise, it's good. I have never encountered any bugs."

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

"In general, it increases the security level, helps us prevent threats from being accessed, and increases the visibility into internet-bound traffic, so overall it increases the internet security of the organization."

"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."

"Umbrella has been a godsend for that."

"Cisco Umbrella provides a cloud management system where we can manage every client from a single workspace in our portal, and the single pane of glass management is user-friendly."

"Web proxy adds an effective layer for security."

"If anybody is looking for DNS and IP reputation for protection and blocking, then this is the right product."

More Cisco Umbrella pros

Cons

"The product should be easy to use, but it is not. Comparing it to other products, it was very complex."

"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it."

"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem. The issue with the price comes from the fact that you have to have it with enormous storage and enormous computes."

"There's room for improvement when it comes to Cisco Secure Workload. A couple of internal areas could be refined a little bit. They are trying to solve it, depending on where you suppose the agent is. Suppose you have the agent on both the server and the client, which could be the front-end server or web server connecting to the. In that case, if those two are communicating on RPC, the server can look into its configuration. It could go down and find the configuration file on the FTP server and then set the policies to it. But there are a lot of different FTP servers out there. It's also a complex case for the tool to support all FTP servers."

"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."

"I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product."

"The problem is that we can only deploy the particular solution where we have the hardware with Cisco."

"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

"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."

"I would like to see more integrability with other products."

"Sometimes there are some lags, and I have to refresh multiple times to access parts of the dashboards. Sometimes the dashboard pages crash and I'm not sure why, so that's one area for improvement."

"It had the ability to do a lot of app control. So, every single app that went through that portal was registered, but there is a general issue with the whole app control. As soon as you add a mobile phone to your network, all of the apps get registered through the system, and you can approve, reject, or just let them go through. When I looked at it, it was impossible to manage app control. There was just so much data. I didn't apply that service because I just didn't have the time to manage it. It would be good if there was a way to categorize applications."

"The rule-making process for blocking sites or for blocking characteristics can use some simplification."

"iOS devices and mobiles are huge in my environment right now, and I cannot run them on Cisco Umbrella 24/7."

"There should be a way to monitor traffic at the user level."

"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."

More Cisco Umbrella cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

"There are no hidden costs with Umbrella. Everything is included in the package."

"We did a good negotiation, and at the moment, its price is fine."

"There is a subscription cost."

"The price depends on the use case, and it's a bit linear. But it depends on the customer's strategy and how Cisco plans to optimize the costs."

"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."

"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."

"It needs a better price point."

"The pricing is great and very competitive with the rest of the market."

More Cisco Umbrella pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cisco Security Portfolio solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

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	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

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

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?

CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Workload?

When we onboarded Cisco Secure Workload, the usual use case was to discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map for Cisco ACI. As the network team, we chose to implement A...

See all answers

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. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security functi...

See all answers

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-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...

See all answers

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 bundle with other Cisco purchases.

See all answers

Comparisons

Illumio Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 14% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 12% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 8% of the time

TrendAI Deep Security vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 5% of the time

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

Zscaler Internet Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 19% of the time

Palo Alto Networks DNS Security vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco Secure Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 5% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 4% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco Umbrella Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

June 2026

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Umbrella

June 2026

Download Cisco Umbrella product report

Also Known As

Cisco Tetration

OpenDNS

Overview

Cisco Secure Workload offers advanced auditing, micro-segmentation, and network visibility, automating policy presentation for improved security. It enhances application dependency mapping and provides comprehensive telemetry with strategic policy enforcement.

Cisco Secure Workload specializes in automating micro-segmentation, data center management, and traffic analysis. Its capabilities facilitate application dependency mapping and enhance internal micro-segmentation, providing invaluable network visibility. Users find its automation in policy presentation and strategic enforcement beneficial, along with granular control and scalability, despite needing improvements in scalability and integration capabilities. Enhanced notification features, troubleshooting options, and an efficient interface are desired for seamless deployment, along with stronger multi-tenancy, redundancy, and monitoring functions. Broader platform support and integrated cloud connectivity are desired for unified management across tools.

What are the most important features?

Auditing: Provides in-depth network analysis and security auditing capabilities.
Micro-Segmentation: Enhances network security by automating segmentation at a granular level.
Application Dependency Mapping: Visualizes connections and interactions between applications.
Network Visibility: Delivers comprehensive insight into network activities and dynamics.
Policy Discovery: Streamlines policy creation through automation and reduces manual intervention.
Comprehensive Telemetry: Offers complete coverage and insights for better security assessment.

What benefits and ROI should be evaluated?

Enhanced Security Measures: Offers robust features for network security improvement.
Automated Processes: Reduces manual efforts through automation, increasing efficiency.
Scalability: Adapts to growing network demands with flexible scalability options.
Granular Control: Allows detailed control over network policies and enforcement.

Entities in finance, gas, and oil sectors utilize Cisco Secure Workload for networking site management and compliance maintenance. It integrates into extensive Cisco infrastructure, aiding routers, switches, and endpoints, thus supporting auditors in network synchronization and auditing needs.

Cisco

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

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

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

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Cisco Umbrella

June 2026

Free Report: Cisco Secure Workload vs. Cisco Umbrella

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Workload vs. Cisco Umbrella and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Cisco Secure Workload vs. Cisco Umbrella report.

See our list of best Cisco Security Portfolio vendors.

We monitor all Cisco Security Portfolio reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.