Cisco Umbrella vs Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway comparison

Cisco Umbrella vs. Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway

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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 Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

121

Ranking in other categories

Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)

Netskope Next Gen Secure We...

Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

12th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 17.3%, down from 20.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway is 2.2%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

Featured Reviews

Emilio Montoya

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.

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Ernst (Eric) Goldman

Owner at Antares Joint Development

Designed to enforce architecture governance, ensuring traceable SaaS traffic

Netskope provides vigorous policy enforcement for SaaS platforms based on how we configure it, but its vulnerability management and threat intelligence capabilities could be stronger. We rely on external sources to become aware of vulnerabilities in major SaaS platforms, which highlights a gap. It would be beneficial if Netskope offered more robust vulnerability management or integrated threat intelligence through in-house development or partnerships. This would allow for a better policy setup without needing external threat intelligence to configure Netskope. Adding these features would enhance its overall value. I would suggest making some minor improvements to the interface to make it more intuitive, but those are primarily cosmetic. In terms of actual features, the only significant enhancement I could think of, besides better threat intelligence, would be for Netskope to assess the general SaaS landscape. This could include a scorecard showing the security posture of various SaaS platforms based on their track record with breaches and vulnerabilities. I understand this could create friction with SaaS providers if some receive poor scores, which might impact their relationship with Netskope. If Netskope were to harness machine learning more effectively and share those models transparently with enterprise customers, this could include making traffic data they already collect available for deeper analytics, allowing customers to gain better insights into employee traffic patterns. It could also assist with network operations by helping to fine-tune performance based on traffic flow, even though the primary purpose of analyzing that data is security-related. Providing more advanced analytics using existing data could significantly enhance its value to enterprises.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I haven't needed to reboot the servers for years due to their excellent stability."

"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."

"My overall rating for Cisco Umbrella is ten out of ten."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is that it secures our network against blacklisted or malicious websites."

"The best possible thing is that it is very easy to deploy, easy to configure, and very fast to get onboarded with a customer because this is a cloud-based service."

"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 most valuable feature of this solution is its reliability."

More Cisco Umbrella pros

"Web filtering and DLP are good features."

"The solution's CASB, DLP, and threat protection features are very good."

"One of the valuable features of the solution is that everything is on the cloud. It has no on-premise hardware to deal with."

"It is for secure web trafficking, and it is doing what it needs to do. It allows customers to consolidate and eliminate multiple technologies onto Netskope and just kind of turn the dial and use more features, such as CASB, VPN. SWG is another feature. You can monitor and govern all the traffic."

"The solution offers good security functionality."

"As Netskope is a cloud-based application, it is possible to analyze and distinguish personal and enterprise instances."

"We've found the solution to be quite stable."

"The most valuable features of the solution are its three modules, which are SWG, ZTNA, and CASB."

More Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway pros

Cons

"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 DNS service does not support IPv6 query."

"Network connectivity was a bit of a challenge at the beginning, but we were able to get the right help from Cisco."

"In the future, they should combine some of the Cisco AMP features that they already have, for anti-malware purposes."

"They need to improve analytics so they report on more of the specifics of user activity."

"If the virtual appliances could also gather traffic bandwidth reports, that would be great."

"Client delivery and client updates should be improved. Client delivery was not as easy as expected. Another area for improvement is the integration of escalation procedures for security issues."

"My biggest concern, and I'm sure everyone's biggest gripe with TAC, is just turnaround time. If you open a case in the evening, you might get an agent in another region, and then your ticket cycle only goes from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM when you're out of work."

More Cisco Umbrella cons

"Improvement in the solution is required in certain areas where the product does not provide access to its direct end users, who use the portal as an administrator."

"The initial setup is a bit complex in that it takes a lot of time. In order to get the product to work as you need it to, there is a lot of configuration required."

"The solution could improve the features for Zero Trust Network Access. They should add more security components to that module."

"The stability of the solution to be very good. It is not the best and could improve but it is better than other solutions, such as Forcepoint."

"The accuracy could be improved."

"They should work on marketing material to put out their work with a little more effort."

"The solution needs to improve its on-premise detection technique."

"Netskope can only provide the high level related to threats."

More Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing fees are on a yearly basis."

"The licensing and pricing structure of Cisco Umbrella is in line with standard systems on the market, and we have no specific requirements in this area. Overall, we have found it to be an acceptable pricing model for our organization."

"Cisco should make the solution cheaper."

"It has a reasonable price. It is certainly not as expensive as it used to be. It is in line with other offerings on the market. There are a number of different flavors of Umbrella. They could bring Umbrella SIG down a bit because its price is a little bit high for what it does, but I also understand why its price is high."

"The pricing is pretty fair. It's good."

"Cisco has a model called ELA. With ELA, if you buy the solution you will have the complete security portfolio and you can pay it yearly or after three years, it depends on the contract."

"The price could be lower."

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

More Cisco Umbrella pricing and cost advice

"The product is cheap."

"The price is average. Because the license is user-based, you can increase it as per the user quantity."

"We pay a licensing fee of $10,000 on a yearly basis."

"The solution's overall cost is cheaper than regular web security solutions."

"The license model is based on the number of users. You have the possibility to have 10,000 users if you wish."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.

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864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

Which lesser known firewall product has the best chance at unseating the market leaders?

Netscope, Zscaler if they continue route they are on now. FIrewalls needs great deal of automation on each end, datacenter and endpoint. In between you have branch office. So blending EPP and firew...

Which lesser known firewall product has the best chance at unseating the market leaders?

Those firewalls that allow extend the perimeter. Nowadays, there is a issue with the static perimeter and all is going to change in the next semesters. In my opinion, solutions like Netskope are of...

What do you like most about Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway?

There are a lot of features, but the groups that are created for the policy groups available with Netskope are already relevant to any industry. So grouping the policies is the easiest part and a v...

Zscaler Internet Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Comparisons

Compared 16% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco Secure Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 7% of the time

Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 5% of the time

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Zscaler Internet Access vs Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway

Compared 16% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway

Compared 16% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate SWG vs Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway

Compared 12% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

Menlo Secure vs Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

More Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Umbrella

Download Cisco Umbrella product report

Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway

Download Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway product report

Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway report

Also Known As

OpenDNS

No data available

Overview

Cisco Umbrella delivers rapid DNS security with over 30,000 customers, providing outstanding threat protection and handling more than 600 billion requests daily. It's recognized for high threat efficacy in the SSE domain and integrates elements like SWG, ZTNA, CASB, and more.

Cisco Umbrella is renowned for its effective DNS-layer security against ransomware and phishing. It offers flexible content filtering and integrates seamlessly with existing networks while providing single-pane-of-glass management for centralized monitoring. Its robust threat intelligence and customizable policies are central to its appeal. Users highlight room for improvement in areas like WHOIS data inclusion, malware enhancement, and reporting analytics. Integration with other threat feeds and better client support are requested for more comprehensive coverage.

What are the key features of Cisco Umbrella?

DNS-Layer Security: Blocks malicious domains, preventing ransomware attacks.
Web Content Filtering: Allows users to manage lists for strict content control.
Seamless Integration: Blends with systems like Active Directory and Meraki.
Remote Protection: Keeps remote users safe across different locations.
Single-Pane Management: Facilitates effective monitoring and reporting.

What should users expect in reviews about Cisco Umbrella?

Threat Intelligence: Provides comprehensive malware and attack data.
Customizable Policies: Enables tailored security measures for users.
Integration Options: Works with diverse systems for holistic security.
Ease of Use: Offers a straightforward experience for administrators.
Remote Worker Security: Ensures protection outside traditional networks.

Industries implement Cisco Umbrella primarily for DNS-level security, web filtering, and protecting remote employees. It strengthens cybersecurity frameworks by blocking malware and avoiding access to harmful sites. The tool is widely integrated with Active Directory and Cisco Meraki, providing consistent internet security for employees.

Cisco

Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway is a comprehensive cloud-based security solution that provides advanced threat protection, data loss prevention, and web filtering capabilities. It offers real-time visibility and control over web traffic, enabling organizations to enforce policies and protect against web-based threats. The solution uses machine learning and behavioral analysis to detect and block advanced threats, including malware, phishing, and ransomware. It also provides granular control over web access, allowing organizations to block or allow specific websites and applications based on user, group, or location. With Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway, organizations can ensure compliance with industry regulations and protect sensitive data from unauthorized access or exfiltration. The solution is easy to deploy and manage, with a user-friendly interface and centralized policy management.

Netskope

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

Arrow, Cloudrise, Sainsbury, Evalueserve, Stroock, Apria, Ather Energy, CSA, AVX Corporation Nuna, City of San Diego Case, Genomic Health Case Study, Oak Hill Advisors, MaRS Discovery District.

Cisco Umbrella vs. Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway