We performed a comparison between Cisco Umbrella and Netskope CASB based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Umbrella is widely considered the leader in the marketplace. Users feel the process of restricting access or filtering out what content end users can view or go to (including blocking known malicious sites) and the comprehensive monitoring of user activity make Cisco Umbrella a complete solution. Reviewers feel Netskope currently lacks visibility with user endpoint devices and should have better integrations with other third-party products.
"It is a good cloud-based solution for DNS security."
"One of the great advantages of Umbrella DNS is that it's really simple to deploy. It's easy to install, the users do not notice that it's there, and it doesn't interfere with your work. The simplicity and transparency are great advantages of Cisco Umbrella."
"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."
"The primary advantage of Cisco Umbrella is its ability to safeguard our users no matter where they are working from - whether it's in the office or remotely, as per the new work model that has emerged globally. This integrated security solution has simplified our lives by combining all the necessary security measures in one product. Additionally, deploying the product is all it takes to protect all our users."
"The most valuable thing is how easy it is to deploy. We did it with 9,000 users at my last job, and it took a week to get to all the endpoints. Doing that without having to physically touch all those endpoints was very simple."
"The insight into what our users are doing via Cisco Umbrella is valuable. Knowing that we're protecting our users as they leave our network is also valuable now because we've got more hybrid working."
"If it didn't have a single pane of glass, we would not be using it. The single pane of glass gives you a one-stop shop. It's like going to Home Depot. You find all your stuff there. You can see all your threats and your endpoints. It's a very important feature and makes things very simple."
"I was able to implement it myself. It was really easy to install. You could install it on a server locally if you want to. If you have the biggest site, you would do that, but for my site, it was just directing all the traffic out through the Cisco Umbrella DNS. It was really handy. When the owners of the company went overseas, I knew that they would be secure because even if they were not on the company network, they would still go through the Cisco Umbrella servers. It was a complete solution for protecting the company with outgoing data."
"The detection capability is very nice and lightweight."
"The solution offers a better understanding of the real scenario and identifies the cloud apps that are being utilized."
"The most valuable feature of Netskope is protection."
"A feature that was valuable was the built-in website classification or safety ratings. Different websites would be rated according to analyses that the Netskope team had done, and we built policies on some of those scores. If the website scored less than a certain percentage, then we would have a different user experience around how the site would interact with the clients."
"Amazing reporting and tracking mechanisms."
"Netskope is a really good product. I cannot segregate which features are the most valuable. We find most of the features to be valuable. It gives us what we are looking for."
"In Azure, we have multiple subscriptions and with every subscription, we add some kind of instance ID. We can work with the instance ID so that we allow all of the instances containing nodules. Everything else, we block. This way, if you go to outlook.com and check your email, if you log in with your company account, the instance ID will show. The network will take action according to the instance ID and say, "You are using the enterprise email. I'll let you surf. I'll let you see your email." But when you try to log in with your own email address, like Hotmail or Gmail, the instance ID will be different. This way we are not completely blocking Outlook, but we are blocking people from accessing their Outlook. We are only allowing the enterprise-level emails, and we are not allowing user-based emails."
"The most useful feature of this solution is Cloud Control, which allows me to schedule cloud uploads."
"I'd like to see this solution more closely integrate with other products Cisco has in its portfolio."
"I would like to see Cisco enable us to get objects from the internet. I would also like to be able to choose groups."
"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."
"Their support should be improved. It is necessary that the support is efficient. It is not really easy to get a resolution for an issue from Cisco support. They should be faster and more efficient."
"I would like to see more integrability with other products."
"If we're trying to deploy it to a Mac through Meraki, it's impossible. The method of deployment for a Mac, and the features available in Meraki, are not compatible at all."
"Its on-prem rollout is quite challenging. It needs better coordination with the Internet Service Provider. It is a cloud-based solution, and any endpoint that connects to it has to go through all the gateway ISPs, but some of the ISPs block HTTPS-based DNS. That's where the challenge occurs with Umbrella."
"It could be more secure. It would be better if they provided a transferring proxy as an add-on and more integration."
"The CSPM model needs to improve."
"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."
"Support services could definitely be improved. Support is the one area that can always use improvement. It's an evolving thing, so based on demand and based on market requirement and the way market is moving towards."
"Netskope CASB can improve by working more similarly to a VPN technology instead of a proxy. They then could have visibility on the endpoint device. Most clients have some tools where they check the endpoint health or other things, such as the security posture, or if they want to access the resources. For example, if they should have antivirus running, this kind of posture check should be available but it is missing."
"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."
"Deployment and policy tweaking were two areas where improvement needs to be made."
"The configuration and user behaviour analytics can be improved."
"There could be room for improvement in the subscription process."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 48 reviews while Netskope is ranked 3rd in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 10 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Netskope is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "We can see all of our locations in one place and only have to make changes once for all our locations". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netskope writes "Network proxy that provides visibility during deployment and allows you to control PII". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security, Fortinet FortiGate SWG and Azure DNS, whereas Netskope is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma SaaS by Palo Alto Networks, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Skyhigh Security. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Netskope report.
See our list of best Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) vendors and best Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) vendors.
We monitor all Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) 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.
