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Cisco Umbrella vs Netskope vs iboss comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 10.5%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of iboss is 2.2%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netskope is 14.9%, up from 13.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Umbrella10.5%
Netskope14.9%
iboss2.2%
Other72.4%
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

Featured Reviews

Emilio Montoya - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Benjamin Naranjo - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides secure remote access and web navigation protection with highly customizable features
The most helpful features in Netskope are the data loss prevention module, the anti-malware module, and the integration that it has with Information Rights Management from Microsoft. It has better categorization and more granular features regarding web protection, as it allows me to control HTTP methods. I can publish WhatsApp web for my users as read-only, for example. Other providers cannot; they are only on and off, and do not have the granularity for a website to be read-only. That comes with a downside, which is that they need to regularly update their controls to support those features in those websites.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Global Block List is one of the most valuable features because it's really easy to block domain names as well as URLs. Sometimes you don't want to block the whole site, you just want to block one URL. The Global Block and Allow Lists are the best features for us."
"Umbrella, being one pane for managing, being all-encompassing, allows us to quickly go in, make a change, and it applies to either every location, if we want it to, or we can have policies in place that only apply to certain users or certain computers."
"The feature I appreciate most about Cisco Umbrella is the dashboard and how easy it is to see the reporting, what is blocked and allowed, and it makes it very user-friendly."
"I have found the malware protection feature valuable. It is helpful and deliverable and is able to protect my entire organization from getting compromised. It also prevents us from visiting any malicious sites which are not visible to the users."
"It is a good cloud-based solution for DNS security."
"Cisco Talos threat intelligence significantly influences my company's ability to act against emerging threats, giving us the chance to patch our side or take precautions when zero-day vulnerabilities emerge."
"One of the most important features is the security posture check which Umbrella offers when a user accesses any website. That is one of the most unique features that it offers."
"​They have a wealth of articles in their knowledge base. This has given me the freedom to troubleshoot on my own time. ​​"
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"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."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"From a use-case scenario, what I like the most is the plug-in. I like the fact that we can do the filtering of these devices offsite independent of the network they are connected to, and we do not have to have traffic coming back inside our network."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"The cloud enablement feature helps eliminate on-premises infrastructure by adopting Netskope."
"The automation offered by the product is pretty solid."
"The detection capability is very nice and lightweight."
"The most valuable features were related to discovery, data protection, and ensuring compliance with regulations."
"The initial setup is straightforward"
"The most valuable features of the solution are that the support is very good and the dashboards are easy and intuitive to use."
"Technical support is good. They are very helpful and quick to resolve any issues we have."
"Technical support is pretty good."
 

Cons

"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."
"We need to work on integration as it is very complex."
"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."
"Cisco Umbrella can be improved in terms of limited coverage and wind vulnerability."
"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."
"The pricing could be improved."
"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."
"I would like to see a graphical representation of the entire network."
"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 is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"One thing I would like to see differently with their Zero Trust platform is that some of the AI aspects related to high-risk activities have more false positives."
"Fold that in with the risk intelligence they're getting from all of the different subscriptions they are a part of. Now, these security companies subscribe to things like emerging threats, databases, etc. You can fold all this intelligence to decide what's happening on an endpoint. I would love to see them start moving into that space. That would compete directly with Microsoft. Maybe that's why they haven't. Having that ability native within the solution would be great. The other area in which I would love to see improvement is more detailed descriptions of why they block websites."
"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers. This type of encryption is tough for any appliance in a BYOD environment."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."
"There is currently no DLP on-premises."
"It needed some fine-tuning on core business sites that we used, which were sensitive to what we term a man-in-the-middle certificate by design. Some sites were not tolerant because they presented as potentially malicious. So, we just had to make some tweaks so that it would bypass or interpret it."
"Accuracy could be improved."
"Third party integration with other cloud applications could be improved. Sometimes the API won't be working, but Netskope is taking it seriously. They accept all the feature requests, and they are trying to provide whatever we ask from them."
"I would like to see the product improved, especially in monitoring and security monitoring. It should be more effective so we can better identify cloud access and understand how users are accessing it. We need better visibility on security and cloud storage access."
"In terms of improvements, enhancing support, particularly for OEM support with quicker response times would be beneficial."
"Deployment and policy tweaking were two areas where improvement needs to be made."
"The initial setup is complex and should be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"Its value exceeds its pricing."
"The licensing fee is paid on a yearly basis."
"Pricing depends on the automation requirements of the organization."
"Cisco should make the solution cheaper."
"The pricing model is easier compared to some of the other solutions, and it is also competitive."
"Cisco solutions are generally perceived to be rather expensive. We have constant internal discussions as to whether we should offer lower-priced security solutions from some of the competitors."
"You get what you pay for if you break the solution up into tiers."
"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."
"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 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."
"The price of the solution is fair but it depends on your use case."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"Pricing is a little expensive but it is affordable."
"There is a license required for this solution and there are many licensing models available. For example, what applications are covered as part of the license."
"Licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The price is in the middle range compared to other solutions."
"I wasn't involved in the initial discussions about its cost. However, within the next year, by around June, I'll need to review the vendors' quotes. Typically, our procurement team handles the process by issuing an RFP to vendors to get quotes. From there, we evaluate based on pricing and may conduct a proof of concept to assess value."
"The tool's pricing is not too cheap or expensive. However, it can be costly for a small business."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business49
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise51
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
What needs improvement with iboss?
For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company Exxon...
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...
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...
Which is better, Zscaler internet access or Netsckope CASB?
We researched Netskope but ultimately chose Zscaler. Netskope is a cloud access security broker that helps identify ...
What do you like most about Netskope CASB?
The product's analytics part is pretty fine.
 

Also Known As

OpenDNS
iBoss Cloud Platform
Netskope CASB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
NetApp, Genomic Health, Caterpillar, Apollo, Pandora, Continental Resources, Fractal, infinera, Tesla
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Netskope and others in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB). Updated: August 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.