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Cisco Umbrella vs NordLayer comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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 Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
6th
Ranking in Internet Security
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (7th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Ranking in Internet Security
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (3rd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
NordLayer
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
33rd
Ranking in Internet Security
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (22nd), Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (21st), ZTNA as a Service (24th), ZTNA (20th), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (32nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (23rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.2%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 9.5%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NordLayer is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella9.5%
iboss3.2%
NordLayer1.3%
Other86.0%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
KamranJameel - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of IT at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Secure browsing has protected users from DNS threats and improves malware defense
The major issue is that sometimes when you install the client, it shows you protected and displays that it is live with the backend servers and everything. However, in reality, it was not getting any feed from the main client and is just sending your traffic to open DNS, which sometimes causes an issue because the protection you have implemented can be breached by users. The primary thing that Cisco Umbrella lacked most of the time is their client. Previously, they had a separate Cisco client. Now they have merged everything into the Cisco Secure Endpoint client—one client for everything, for Cisco Endpoint, for Cisco AnyConnect, and for Cisco Umbrella, which they did probably in 2025.
Christophe Derdeyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner delaware Singapore at delaware Singapore
A convenient and easy tool with an incredibly high number of dialing points
The solution is convenient and easy. It has an incredibly high number of dialing points for pretty much every single country in the world. It has a few additional security features. It has a function that prevents unsecured access if my connection were to drop for any reason. It’s something I like. It has threat protection features. It can protect my web connection and files against malicious downloads and trackers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"The main advantage of iboss is its cloud-based security centralized policy management, which helps organizations protect users working from different locations, secure access to cloud applications, and reduce security risks."
"This product is solid, fairly easy to use, and reliable."
"I would say iboss is a very good product; its scalability is very good, and it's seamless for the user."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent."
"I recommend iboss for organizations looking for strong cloud-based web security and centralized access control."
"The feature that we find most valuable is to be able to filter out those web requests that you don't want."
"Cisco Umbrella performed very well compared to Zscaler and other solutions."
"Cisco Umbrella is a totally different solution; they are the first to come up with this idea of security and it's a totally new concept of security for everybody, for every time, real time, perfectionism."
"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."
"Cisco Umbrella offers DNS layer security, a secure web gateway, and cloud access security broker functionality."
"We've found it to be stable and good for our customers."
"I had worked for Juniper support before and I worked for other tech support teams and I feel that Cisco's type of support is the best."
"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 solution is convenient and easy."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"I have heard they are doing DDoS filtering, but I am not certain if they are implementing it correctly."
"I appreciate that iboss's single pane of glass console gives centralized visibility into web traffic, user activity, security policies, and alerts from one dashboard, allowing us to quickly investigate incidents and monitor policy violations without switching between multiple tools, improving operational efficiency; however, the dashboard customization and reporting could be more flexible."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices; it is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents, and that is where in 2025 we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform."
"Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc. It is easy to gain access if, for example, hackers obtain my username and password."
"Cisco Umbrella can be improved in terms of limited coverage and wind vulnerability. The product can only shield a small area, making it less effective for larger spaces or multiple users."
"Actually, we recently switched over to Zscaler because it has more features and it's more scalable than Cisco Umbrella."
"It should have a real-time malware classification engine. It should check the malware on the website."
"I think there is some room for improvement with regard to the Windows client."
"From my perspective, I would Cisco Umbrella to give more exposure to my sales engineers. I know I can call them whenever I have an issue, however, more frequent meetings would be awesome."
"The pricing is a bit high. Being outside of the USA, we have issues with the exchange rate."
"I would like for their support to be faster."
"Basically, it is not fully mature, which means it's not yet ready to replace the WSA, however, over a period of time, it could to a certain extent."
"The tool is not perfectly stable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"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 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."
"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."
"It needs a better price point."
"Our costs were negotiated, and they are okay."
"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."
"The pricing was marvelous."
"The price is quite good."
"We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business51
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise51
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
iboss could be improved by making the dashboard more user-friendly, providing more detailed real-time alerts, and imp...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
iboss is primarily used for cloud security, helping to protect users when they access websites and cloud applications...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
The pricing and licensing for iboss were reasonable for the security features. The setup costs were manageable, thoug...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Umbrella?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing reveals that the pricing is acceptable, but it is marginally a ...
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Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.
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
Hostinger, Shutterstock, USMobile, Soundcloud, Calendly, whatagraph.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Fortinet, Zscaler and others in Secure Web Gateways (SWG). Updated: October 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.