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Cisco Umbrella vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (5th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), ZTNA as a Service (8th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st)
Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (14th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.2%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 10.5%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 8.9%, down from 11.9% 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%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps8.9%
iboss2.2%
Other78.4%
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

Featured Reviews

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
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.
Abdulrahman Muhammadi - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration with existing cloud workflows has simplified compliance and threat detection
Licensing cost is a significant concern. With Defender Plan 1, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comes with a pay-per-use model. Each feature has its own pricing when activated on VMs. For example, the vulnerability assessment has separate pricing, the base model including encryptions has separate pricing, and the compliance features have separate pricing. This applies to each VM and Azure resource individually. It is not straightforward where you can take one license and apply it to everything. Each feature has its own pricing model which can be tedious, as the costs keep accumulating. The only lacking feature currently is XDR (extended detection and response). Apart from that, I have only positive experiences with the whole Microsoft suite, except for the pricing structure.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"The iboss system is highly reliable. The false positive rates are small compared to some other systems we've experienced through other partner agencies who use competing solutions."
"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"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."
"The console is cloud-based, which is something I really appreciate."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"The single-pane-of-glass management is really important. In today's era, administration costs and operational expenses will cost you a lot, and it reduces that as well. You don't need extra resources to manage all your parameter firewalls, looking at every single device to allow resources internal access. By just introducing the single-pane-of-glass management, it has lifted the burden off of management, especially the network management."
"We run a real lean networking team, and cloud deployments are super easy."
"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."
"It enables us to go granular in the customization of blocking some categories on the DNS."
"The weekly reportings are great. The investigation is super and the application management is equally great."
"We use Cisco Umbrella for DNS filtering and as a secure gateway."
"Any time someone went off the network, the AnyConnect client had the Umbrella agent built in, and it would realize when their computer connected that they were not on the corporate network. It would monitor and they would have pretty close to the same rules that they had to follow when they were in the office, regarding what kind of website browsing they could do."
"The agent that gets installed on the endpoints or on people's laptops and devices is a Cisco AnyConnect Umbrella module. It's one of the most impressive things because you are able to protect your users anywhere they are."
"The feature that helps us in detecting the sensitive information being shared has been very useful. In addition, the feature that allows MCAS to apply policies with SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive is being used predominantly."
"Defender for Cloud Apps has given us good visibility regarding what we've allowed into our environment until now."
"All of the features are valuable because all of the features are related."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its monitoring."
"I like the alert policies because they are quite robust. It has some built-in templates that we can easily pick up. One of them is the alert for mass downloads, when a particular user is running a massive download on your SharePoint site."
"Threat detection is its key feature, and that's why we use this tool. It gives an alert if a PC is attacked or there is any kind of anomaly, such as there is a spike in sending emails or we see an unauthorized website being accessed. So, it keeps us on our toes. We get to know that there is something wrong, and we can isolate the user and find any issues with it. So, threat detection is very robust in this tool."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that we are primarily using only the Defender for Cloud on the Azure Cloud."
"Everything from Microsoft is integrated. You receive regular reports on them all. You can push your reports, logs, and security alerts, which are all integrated. It is crucial that these solutions work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment."
 

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."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"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."
"Its pricing could be better."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"Its price could be better."
"Looking at the full umbrella suite in the light of SASE, Secure Access Service Edge, they are clearly lacking in the inline CASB."
"The price could be better. The price is definitely a bit high, but we have to pay a premium for Cisco products."
"I would like to see DLP integration in the next release of this solution."
"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."
"We need to work on integration as it is very complex."
"Instead of creating a TAC case, it would be better if we could just call in and they could answer us immediately."
"In the future, they should combine some of the Cisco AMP features that they already have, for anti-malware purposes."
"We are having trouble with our continuous reporting configuration and struggling with configuring the collector properly with our log parsing."
"A significant improvement I would like to see is the integration into a single pane of glass, which would allow me to view everything in one place rather than having to switch between different areas."
"The documentation could be improved as it is not updated immediately when Microsoft makes changes. Users must wait a few weeks for the changes to be reflected in the documentation."
"I would like for it to be available on Mac and for it to support all of the features of Microsoft financing products. It is really for Windows."
"The technical support team has room for improvement."
"It takes some time to scan and apply the policies when there is some sensitive information. After it applies the policies, it works, but there is a delay. This is something for which we are working with Microsoft."
"We sometimes get errors when we create policies, which is somewhat annoying because some policies stop working due to misconfigurations. We find this challenging because it limits our options for troubleshooting an issue."
"I would prefer to have filtering options incorporated within the policies, enabling the solution to perform tasks beyond mere blocking or allowing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"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 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."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"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."
"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."
"The licensing part for Umbrella is really flexible."
"The price of Cisco Umbrella is a little higher than similar solutions, like Gateway."
"The licensing fee is paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"The pricing is pretty fair. It's 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."
"The price could be better and should be reconsidered."
"The pricing is in the middle. It isn't too cheap or expensive compared to other antivirus or security products. It is priced according to industry standards."
"It is a little bit expensive. When you want to have the complete package with Office 365, Defender, and everything else, it is expensive."
"The E5 license offers everything bundled. People are moving to Microsoft because you buy one license and it gives you everything."
"Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly."
"We utilize the Microsoft E5 licensing, which encompasses the entire Microsoft suite; however, it is costly."
"The product's pricing seems fair."
"This product is not expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business49
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise51
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

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 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 do you like most about Microsoft Cloud App Security?
It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notificatio...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
My impression on the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that it's fair. I do...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Cloud App Security?
An area of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps that needs to be improved or enhanced is the reporting function. In the ...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
 

Overview

 

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.
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
Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.