Cisco Umbrella vs IBM NS1 Connect comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Umbrella and IBM NS1 Connect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks and others in Secure Web Gateways (SWG).
To learn more, read our detailed Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
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 features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices.""The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade.""On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator.""The solution is stable."

More Lookout Pros →

"The most valuable feature is the website protection capabilities because it prevents end-users from entering bad sites that potentially have malware or could be used for phishing.""DNS protection, domain blocking, SIP component, and the Cisco Umbrella roaming client are the valuable features of Cisco Umbrella.""​They have a wealth of articles in their knowledge base. This has given me the freedom to troubleshoot on my own time. ​​""It has improved our organization from a security posture perspective. We feel more confident now knowing that we can block phishing attempts or any type of malware that is DNS-related. This is a very nice feature that provides peace of mind.""The most valuable feature is the ability to filter malware sites that could infect clients or allow them to download infected files.""We like Cisco Umbrella because of DNS security. It's one step ahead of whatever we are using for regular web filtering. In that way, it's more secure than other web filtering products.""It has the ability to quickly block new threats.""For us and for customers, it's the ease of integration with Meraki. It's just a couple of clicks. That allows us to deploy very fast, and it doesn't change the way a customer uses his service. It's just more secure."

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"We find that the low latency access to DNS queries has a direct effect on the customer experience. Visiting a site, whether it's an AdTech-based solution or marketing tech, the fact that whatever we're rendering on a page can be rendered better than the industry standard, in terms of time, ensures a better user experience.""We leverage two things from Managed DNS that we couldn't do with any other solution. One is their filter chain technology, which allows us to shift some of the intelligence we need for the traffic steering to the DNS. The second one is data sources, which enables us to manipulate multiple records simultaneously using NS1's internal message DOS. In our case, we are trying to direct the traffic in over 150,000 different NS1 records to an arbitrary set of repeating responses.""The fact that it's an API-first platform for DNS and application traffic management is one of the reasons we looked into NS1. We use it for a lot of automation and metrics gathering and it's been great.""Monitoring is really important for us. We really care about reliability, and we want to make sure that we can remove some points of presence in our sector and in our edge network really fast when we experience any problems. So, monitoring that NS1 provides for DNS is really important for us.""Everything we download into our observability platform so that we can also track any changes in traffic behavior or things like that is also something that we use quite a lot. I'd say traffic management, the speed of updates, and observability are the top three things that we use.""Their Pulsar filters allow us to collect RUM metrics from our users so that we can determine the best paths for our users to take. That has been very useful in providing the best user experience, and for responding to and recovering from downtime of our multiple CDNs.""For starters, it integrates with Terraform and a lot of our infrastructure is effectively built out using Terraform. That makes all this stuff extremely easy... when we deploy, all the entries are created and configuration is done.""It massively speeds things up. Today, we allow developers to deploy services and have externally facing DNS scrapers that are created automatically without the addition of human intervention."

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Cons
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products.""We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now.""Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving.""The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"

More Lookout Cons →

"I think it's a very basic solution, and because of that, Cisco Umbrella would not be a suitable solution for large companies.""The rule-making process for blocking sites or for blocking characteristics can use some simplification.""There is room for improvement in the dashboard. It could stand to be a bit more detailed. I would also like to be able to customize the dashboard to focus more on what is important for my company.""If the virtual appliances could also gather traffic bandwidth reports, that would be great.""It could be improved by having a local data center and caching, which can provide protection support. I would like to be able to channel my intel and my network traffic to their clouds, and this feature is not available. Advanced protection or any malware file support, which might be required, is not available.""In the future, they should combine some of the Cisco AMP features that they already have, for anti-malware purposes.""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.""The reporting could be improved by way of the information that's displayed. For example, when you pull a report, it shows an internal employee going to many websites, but you can spin that right down by saying a lot of it is being cached."

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"We use our client in our infrastructure to communicate with NS1. This client is a bit complex in the way that it is set up. NS1 has their own client solution that you can deploy into your platform to do this, but even that is a bit complex. So, I would like a very simple, thin, light API agent that we can deploy into our platform to communicate with NS1. That would be welcome.""We use the geo load balancing functionality and there are a couple of things that are helpful there. But the language itself is something we had to get used to a little bit. Some of my folks made a few mistakes in rolling out the Filter Chain...The Filter Chain setup is a bit hard to grasp at first. It would also be nice to have a way to simulate changes in addition to staging.""The Filter Chain simulation is really good in the UI, but it would be nice to have something similar in the API so that we could simulate and test things before we deploy them.""I would like to see the UI updated to allow me to do finer searches. I would also like to have the ability to get reports that can sort based on various metrics. For example, I would like to be able to say, "Show me the top 10 records by total queries" in an easy-to-digest format.""There could maybe be additional ways to manage traffic. There are no major improvements we're looking for. It's a very complete solution.""We care about monitoring and telemetry work, and NS1 provides a pretty good system for monitoring. We can monitor our endpoints and points of presence around the world. If there are any issues, we can easily remove them from our network, but this area needs some improvement because it is not always reliable in NS1. In the past, we had a number of false-positive cases when the monitoring system told us about some problems in our infrastructure that were not true. NS1 is improving the system, and we are constantly talking about this with them. I know that they are releasing a new version of their monitoring system, which is really important for us, but this is a different area where we would expect them to improve.""When we first deployed, we flipped the switch, and it didn't work as well as we expected. It wasn't a complete outage, but we had issues in some places with some customers. The NS1 team went out of their way to resolve it on Thanksgiving. We have a post about it on our blog. We called it "Black Thursday."""I would love to see improvement in the testing capabilities they provide. They have a simulate-filter feature so that you can simulate how your traffic would flow, based on their Filter Chains. I believe that was shut off for quite some time. Having that as a way to test our load-balanced CDN structure would be fantastic."

More IBM NS1 Connect Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The pricing is fair; it's comparable to our previous solution, and we carried out multiple POCs and POVs (proof of value). The product is worth the money we pay for it."
  • "Lookout is definitely on the lower end when it comes to price point and that seems to be the only differentiator. The technology is in place in this space and it's really about who is coming in at the better price point now."
  • "In terms of feature performance versus cost, they're a good value."
  • "The licensing costs are good. Prisma has much more options and support for security, but it has a higher cost. For example, Lookout costs 2/3rd of Prisma's licensing price."
  • More Lookout Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "​The pricing is fair."
  • "You can request an evaluation license​."
  • "It needs a better price point."
  • "The product is pricey compared to Cisco Firepower."
  • "The price could be lower."
  • "There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."
  • "Our costs were negotiated, and they are okay."
  • "Our licensing fees are on a yearly basis."
  • More Cisco Umbrella Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The cost of this product is one of the reasons that we chose it."
  • "NS1's pricing is much more aggressive than its competitors in the market and you get more value out of what you pay for it."
  • "We pay about $30,000 a month. We used to pay about $20,000 with Dyn every month, for lower volume than we're doing right now, but it had none of the features that we have available with NS1, so it was worth it for us. It seems competitive for us, given that we're doing 4.5 billion requests."
  • "Everything can always be cheaper, but as it is today the pricing is fair."
  • "From a cost standpoint, it's certainly not the most expensive out there, and it's also not the cheapest, but it does well to balance the cost and the functionality/reliability."
  • More IBM NS1 Connect Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The licensing costs are good. Prisma has much more options and support for security, but it has a higher cost. For… more »
    Top Answer:The solution could improve identity integration as well. Zero trust, it's a good start as a zero-trust solution… more »
    Top Answer: Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried.… more »
    Top Answer:Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native… more »
    Top Answer:Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
    Top Answer:For starters, Managed DNS from NS1 is an easy way to get the job done. Whether you're a novice or a pro, Managed DNS… more »
    Top Answer:The reporting metrics are great from an API standpoint, but it would be a little bit nicer if there was some type of… more »
    Top Answer:We basically use their NS1 Managed DNS service as a secondary DNS server. So essentially they front end all of the… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    CipherCloud
    OpenDNS
    NS1 Managed DNS, NS1
    Learn More
    Overview

    Lookout is a well-established and powerful secure web gateway (SWG) solution that protects more than 200 million users from threats that can result from the penetration of unsecured web traffic into their networks. Lookout is designed to enable organizations to work remotely while maintaining a tight blanket of security over their confidential business data. It provides administrators with security that extends from their endpoints to the cloud service that they are using to run their organization’s network. 

    Users of Lookout are able to proactively detect threats and keep themselves secure from a field of threats that constantly evolves. IT teams can protect their organizations without having to rely on any other security solutions. This singular solution can run on multiple kinds of mobile devices. The privacy of individuals is preserved while keeping compliance rules intact. Additionally, users gain access to a number of tools that enable them to prevent security breaches from taking place.

    Lookout Benefits

    Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by deploying Lookout include:

    • Ease of deployment. Lookout is a solution whose design makes it easy for users to deploy it. It provides users with simple, step-by-step instructions that remove the need for organizations to devote extensive amounts of time to make sure that it is properly set up. Anyone can quickly set up the solution without undergoing technical training. 
    • Built-in support. Users of the Lookout application have access to built-in demos that can teach them how to use various solution features. Instead of spending time trying to figure out the application, users can watch the demo that is most relevant to them and see for themselves how that particular feature is used.
    • Easy-to-use user interface. Lookout’s user interface is laid out in an intuitive way that makes it easy for administrators to navigate. This interface is present in both the mobile and desktop versions of this solution. 
    • Settings customization. Lookout has a built-in settings customization menu. This makes it possible for administrators to easily customize their settings so that they best conform to their needs. 

    Lookout Features

    • Activity monitoring and activity tracking. Lookout’s activity monitoring and activity tracking capabilities enable users to keep a close eye on the activities that are taking place in their networks. IT teams and administrators have the ability to watch their networks for any unusual activity. These features ensure that organizations can keep ahead of any potential threats. They provide the kinds of insights and warnings that make the jobs of those IT teams and administrators much easier and more streamlined. 
    • Encryption. Organizations that employ Lookout can encrypt their networks and keep crucial business data from being read by unauthorized parties. This feature keeps the secrets organizations are trying to keep out of the wrong hands.
    • Anti-virus tools. Lookout provides users with tools to block threats from harming their networks. These tools can successfully block 99.6 percent of threats without raising false alarms. 

    Cisco Umbrella offers flexible, cloud-delivered security according to users’ requirements Cisco Umbrella includes secure web gateway, firewall, and cloud access security broker (CASB) functionality all delivered from a single cloud security service. Cisco Umbrella’s protection is extended to devices, remote users, and distributed locations anywhere. As company employees work from many locations and devices, Cisco Umbrella is the easiest way to effectively protect users everywhere in minutes.

    Cisco Umbrella uses machine learning to search for, identify, and even predict malicious domains. By learning from internet activity patterns, this DNS-layer security solution can automatically identify attacker infrastructure being staged for the next threat. These domains are then proactively blocked, protecting networks from potential compromise. Cisco Umbrella analyzes terabytes of data in real time across all markets, geographies, and protocols.

    Cisco Umbrella works with leading IT companies to integrate its security enforcement and intelligence. Built with a bidirectional API, Cisco Umbrella makes it easy to extend protection from on-premises security appliances to cloud controlled devices and sites.

    Cisco Umbrella is suitable for small businesses without dedicated security professionals, as well as for multinational enterprises with complex environments.

    Why use Cisco Umbrella?

    • Simplify security management: Cisco Umbrella is the fastest and easiest way to protect all users within minutes and reduces the number of infections and alerts sent from other security products by stopping threats at the earliest point. With no hardware to install and no software to manually update, ongoing management is simple

    • Reliable reporting: Cisco Umbrella reports show activity for each device or network in the system. Users gain a more complete picture of the security risks facing their organization and can take action to remedy them.

    • Manage and control cloud apps: Umbrella provides visibility into sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services in use across the enterprise. Users can uncover new services being used, see who is using them, identify potential risk, and block specific applications easily.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Cisco Umbrella stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of the major ones are its DNS-based protection, ability to protect users no matter where they are located, stability, and high performance.

    Daniel B., a network specialist at Syswind Kft, writes, “We primarily use the solution as cloud security for our branches. It protects us from direct internet outbreaks. It makes for good flexibility. The solution is very easy to manage. We found the initial setup, for example, to be quite simple. Efficient protection on the DNS level and even higher. The sandboxing feature analyses and handles the complicated security risks.”

    Victor M., SOC & Security Services Director at BEST, notes, “It provides security for the remote workers and it helps to improve enterprise security in a very easy way. We mainly enjoy web software protection capabilities. It prevents the end-users from getting into bad sites or sites that potentially could have malware or could be phishing. It helps end-users avoid the wrong sites. The solution works very smoothly. The user interface is good.”

    OpenDNS is a part of Cisco providing a suite of consumer products aimed at making the internet faster, safer, and more reliable.

    IBM® NS1 Connect is a managed service for authoritative DNS and traffic steering that improves application performance and network resilience.

    Revenue-generating applications require authoritative DNS resolution to keep critical applications and websites online. Unless your DNS infrastructure is always-on and resilient, network reliability and user experience will suffer.

    IBM NS1 Connect provides fast, secure connections to users anywhere in the world with premium DNS and advanced, customizable traffic steering. NS1 Connect’s always-on, API-first architecture enables your IT teams to more efficiently monitor networks, deploy changes and conduct routine maintenance.

    For enterprises looking to further optimize DNS performance, IBM NS1 Connect offers rich DNS data analytics to streamline the identification of the root cause of anomalies within traffic.

    IBM NS1 Connect Features

    Global anycast DNS network: Enjoy fast connections to consumers around the globe through an anycast network with 26 points of presence (PoPs).

    100% uptime SLA on DNS resolution: Maximize uptime and revenue generation with resilient, always-on, authoritative DNS.

    API-first architecture: Integrate and automate workflows with NS1 Connect's well-documented API.

    Real-time user monitoring-based traffic steering: Use real-time intelligence on network performance and availability to
    direct DNS connections to the best available application resource.

    Built-in resilience: Add a single-tenant, redundant DNS layer and manage it from the same portal as your primary DNS.

    Managed DNS for China: Improve performance for the Chinese mainland by segmenting traffic with NS1 Connect’s Managed DNS for China.

    DNS insights: Get a better understanding of DNS traffic patterns by mining your DNS data to identify security issues, misconfigurations and performance issues.

    DDoS protection: Cap your query-based spending with protection against unexpected surges in traffic from distributed denial-of-service attacks.

    Uptime monitor: Quickly identify issues and automatically adjust DNS traffic steering configurations with native health check alerts.

    DevOps tool integrations: Preconfigured integrations with leading DevOps tools including Ansible and Terraform to help automate routine maintenance, manage data sources and feeds.

    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
    Avast Software, Bloomberg L.P., BBC, Carfax, CNBC LLC, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Disney Streaming, Dropbox, EBAY Inc, Gannett Media Corp, Salesforce, Wayfair, Workday
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Educational Organization16%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company57%
    Media Company29%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    University7%
    Company Size
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise62%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise39%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise55%
    REVIEWERS
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise73%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise60%
    Buyer's Guide
    Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks and others in Secure Web Gateways (SWG). Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews while IBM NS1 Connect is ranked 7th in Managed DNS with 11 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while IBM NS1 Connect is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM NS1 Connect writes "Balances cost and functionality, speeds up provisioning, and reduces the DNS maintenance work drastically". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and Fortinet FortiGate SWG, whereas IBM NS1 Connect is most compared with Cloudflare DNS, Akamai Edge DNS, Amazon Route 53, Neustar UltraDNS and BlueCat Integrity.

    We monitor all Secure Web Gateways (SWG) 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.