Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco Umbrella vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 2025

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 Umbrella
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Infoblox BloxOne Threat Def...
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 22.4%, down from 25.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is 4.8%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Umbrella22.4%
Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense4.8%
Other72.8%
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

Emilio Montoya - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2703357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Analyst at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
Valuable analytics integration improves data insights but needs fewer restrictions
What is valuable about the Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is especially the monitoring and reporting, which provides valuable information. The integration with any SIEM is very valuable for getting DNS query analytics, and this is very important. The threat analytics tools in the Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense improve security response through integration with another platform, allowing you to gain insights on your own data happening within your own Infoblox BloxOne.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature for us is the DNS-based protection."
"We can have a full overview and a quick overview of all the DNS requests. For us, it's quite important."
"It will protect, give you more robustness, and faster responses, compared to any firewalls or any of the proxy web servers."
"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."
"When it comes to hybrid work it's pretty effective. We've got the agents. We can protect people inside our building and, when they're using their laptops out in the field, they're still protected. It's working well."
"Meraki features and cloud-based functionality are advanced and easy to manage centrally."
"Using this solution has meant that we've needed to make fewer firewall changes."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Umbrella is its DNS security."
"Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense furthers the existing security posture rather than replacing or trying to replace any existing products."
"Overall, I would rate the Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense as 8.5 out of 10."
"BloxOne provides automatic sharing of network context data, which affects our speed of threat response and provide real-time threat intelligence. Our security operations needs this to do their work. It makes us feel safer."
"Using the reporting, we can tell that we have gained an extra layer of protection. Just by looking at it, we can see what is being blocked before it even makes it to the firewall. It is definitely working."
"Our ability to detect data exfiltration was minimal before Infoblox and the cloud portal was instituted for us. In terms of DNS security as a whole, we had some capability with our firewalls, but this is a lot more specialized because we're sending all of our DNS requests to Infoblox. I'd say we improved 100%."
"The product is stable."
"When it comes to helping to detect DNS threats, BloxOne is good on all fronts. The number of false positives is very low, close to none. More than once it has detected new names or lookalike names and protected us and saved us from bad characters."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the granularity for which you can categorize what you want to block versus what you don't want to block."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see improvement in its overall integration with all the other platforms. There's some integration between Umbrella and Meraki, but an overall Cisco problem is that there are so many different tools, and finding easy, seamless ways of connecting everything together is always a challenge."
"Missing a real data leakage prevention solution."
"Instead of creating a TAC case, it would be better if we could just call in and they could answer us immediately."
"It would be better if there was a little bit of flexibility for organizations that don't have SD One in their environment. Because of the complexity of the environment, it's not easy to actually turn on the feature of the secure internet gateway for our users. We have not been able to explore that option yet."
"iOS devices and mobiles are huge in my environment right now, and I cannot run them on Cisco Umbrella 24/7."
"A feature I would appreciate seeing enhanced in Cisco Umbrella would be the ability to add or remove agents that we have, instead of just relying on how long the devices have been connected to the platform."
"We need to work on integration as it is very complex."
"Security, overall, can always be improved."
"I have faced quite a few problems in my eight months of experience with the product in GTS, despite it being a relatively short period."
"The product is slightly more expensive compared to other DNS solutions."
"The documentation needs to be improved because there are a lot of different models that it can be deployed in, and it's somewhat confusing determining what you need and how to set it up to best cover your use cases."
"We would like to see more reporting capabilities that are now offered only with the on-premises reporting appliance."
"The setup was horrible. About a year ago, Infoblox made us re-enroll all our on-prem DNS servers by a set date to a specific version, or it would stop working. I told my colleague, "Oh, here, we have to upgrade the servers and reconnect them to the CSP." That did not go well at all."
"A lot of their documentation needs improvement."
"Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is quite expensive, especially due to the significant increase in the subscription fee after the first year. This unexpected increase was a problem for us."
"Endpoint solutions need to improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Cisco uses subscription models for the pricing and there are three subscription plans."
"It was a little bit expensive on a per seat basis, but the company I was running was only a midsize Australian company, and it was a reasonable budget per computer for that system. It started off being a free product, and then Cisco bought it, and it went to a reasonable price. I was using Cisco AMP as well. So, my per computer cost was reasonably high, but for a small company, it was within an acceptable level."
"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."
"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."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"The price could be lower."
"In my opinion, Cisco Umbrella now has a good price in the basic packages. When it comes to Cisco Umbrella SIG Essentials package and Cisco Umbrella Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) Advantage package, it depends on whether the project has a good price or not"
"When you buy the subscription, there are no additional costs to add any additional buttons."
"The licensing is set up such that you pay for the number of active users that you're defending at the moment."
"There is a significant charge for this product but I think that it's worth it when we look at what it's able to prevent."
"Infoblox BloxOne offers pretty good documentation. Check its documentation, then do a PoC. Infoblox is very good at providing PoCs."
"It is a very expensive system. You need to go over the licensing before purchase to make sure you're getting what is needed, not anything extra."
"If you only wanted the DNS filtering and none of the other products built into Threat Defense, it would be nicer if they could do that a la carte since we are not really using a lot of the solution."
"It's a pricey solution because it's for the advanced kind of customer."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Domain Name System (DNS) Security solutions are best for your needs.
876,419 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

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 Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

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. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security functi...
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...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
What do you like most about Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense?
The most valuable feature is policy redirecting and security reports.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense?
Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense can be expensive for the commercial sector, particularly in Egypt, as this sector does not have a huge budget compared to banking or oil and gas, as the regulations ...
What needs improvement with Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense?
If Infoblox invests in network observability, especially from the perspective of DNS and IP address observability, it could be a significant improvement.
 

Also Known As

OpenDNS
BloxOne Threat Defense, Infoblox ActiveTrust, Infoblox ActiveTrust Cloud
 

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
Council Rock School District, EagleView, Schneider Electric, Baptist Memorial Health Care, American University
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
876,419 professionals have used our research since 2012.