We performed a comparison between Cisco Umbrella and Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"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."
"When we have laptops that leave the building, they could connect to public WiFi before they establish a VPN connection back into the company. For that duration or that period of time when they're not docked in the network or on a VPN, they effectively don't have that full layer of security that I provide inside the building. This tool stands in during that period of time, and we extend the security settings through their basic firewall or their cloud-based firewall at that time. So, we do content filtering and control access, but they also are looking at new domains, IP addresses, and bad requests. They're blocking them on my behalf when a laptop is not sitting behind our security appliances."
"It has certainly saved us time. If we go and look at what's rejected on the requests from the hospital itself, it has saved about 5% or 6% time."
"I like the original functionality, which allows for providing secure DNS services."
"The single-pane-of-glass management is very important. We have a very small team. We can't spend a lot of time going from product to product to product to either investigate or set up policy. We need to have one place that we can go to and set everything up."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard, visibility, and reporting capabilities. Our customers can see how much Umbrella is protecting their organization. If you don't know what you've got, you can't protect it. With Umbrella, you get the visibility and see the protection that it's providing. We can get PDF reports on a weekly basis of any malware activities and any denial of service or command-and-control-type activities."
"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."
"It is a good cloud-based solution for DNS security."
"It supports auto-scaling for mobile users. It auto-scales depending on the mobile user traffic. For example, if 1,000 people are working from home today, and tomorrow, the number increases to 2,000, it is not going to be an issue."
"Prisma Access gives us security from a single point. It controls mobile users and determines how secure their networks will be, including from where they will get internet access. We can optimize things and add security profiles centrally."
"The always-on feature is fantastic for the users. They don't have to think about it. When they go to a coffee shop to do work, there's no need to remember to toggle the VPN on. We'll protect them. URL filtering is the same at home as it is in the office."
"It's much faster and more secure than legacy solutions. It is also quite stable and scalable as well. We are able to see all the traffic in one place."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to change the gateway. For example, if there's a problem with a specific region or vendor, we can make modifications. The solution is scalable, and there are different gateways that can be created depending on the demand."
"It is geographically dispersed, and it sits on top of Google and AWS platforms. Therefore, you don't face the standard issues, such as latency or bandwidth issues, that you usually face in the case of on-prem data centers."
"A feature I've found very helpful is run time security because most of the products on the market will look at security during the build time, and they don't really look at what happens once you're going into production."
"We're now able to go after contracts that require a Zero Trust solution and Prisma's other technology solutions."
"There are a couple of interface issues. I know that they say that there are feature enhancements that are noted. For example, we've got the Cisco Meraki security appliances, and there, we geofence our company to where we're allowed to send and receive traffic. So, in our case, by default, we only allow traffic to six different countries, which allows us to effectively prevent traffic for the majority of bad players in the world, but they don't give you an easy way to do that in Cisco Umbrella. With Cisco Meraki, I can specify or pick the countries. I can say that I want to only allow traffic from these six countries, and I'm done. With Cisco Umbrella, I have to rely on the fact that they're going to prevent traffic to other countries. They're going to decide if it's good or bad."
"Something on our end that might make it better is alerting going to our ticketing system. It's not something that we have discussed, but that would be a proactive option for us to provide a learning experience for the staff."
"The locks and management could be better. The product is fairly new, and it may take some time to get all the features up and running."
"If a hardware platform were provided for Umbrella, that would definitely improve the market for it... Especially when we are addressing governmental customers, they hesitate to connect to the cloud. That is where we need a hardware platform so that the solution can be used on-premises as well."
"They can maybe simplify the configuration. For example, sometimes, the proxy part is quite difficult, and that's why we didn't deploy that."
"We faced an issue regarding virtual appliances (VAs) during deployment. They could improve the quality and management of the virtual appliances offered right now. You can't see much because it is a Linux machine, and they have customized it. You don't have any route access to the machine, only seeing limited things in it. When we opened a ticket, they didn't know much about VAs themselves. So, that is where it is lacking right now. I know this will improve in the long run."
"I would like to see Cisco enable us to get objects from the internet. I would also like to be able to choose groups."
"The integration with Cisco could be better."
"It applies commits to the firewalls slowly. There isn't an API you can use for anything. We've previously had trouble with the egress IP addresses though we expressed to engineering that those mustn't change. They changed several times without warning, causing a lot of headaches."
"There can be some latency issues with the solution that should be improved."
"If you compare Prisma SaaS against other products, such as Cloud Log, it's a little bit tricky to understand, but it offers different functionality that other products don't have. From a user usability point of view, you need some training for this product, as an admin, you need a couple of demos."
"There should be a dedicated portal or SASE-based solution. They're trying to add a plugin but it needs a dedicated portal because it is now an enterprise solution for multiple organizations. People should be able to directly log in to a dedicated page for Prisma Access, rather than going into a Panorama plugin, and always having to update the plugin."
"There is some particular traffic that the security team wants to filter out and apply their own policies and they cannot."
"When we deploy firewall rules via Panorama, we find it's a little bit slow. We have a global environment and might have 100 gateways or VPNs in the cloud. When we deploy something, it tries to deploy it one-by-one, and that can be slow."
"Palo Alto needs to improve the GlobalProtect agent to work as a secure web gateway agent, not only as a VPN agent because some companies would want only a secure gateway. They wouldn't want a full VPN. So, Palo Alto has to make the VPN agent work as a secure web gateway agent for those customers who want only the secure web gateway solution."
"The Cloud Management application has room for improvement. There are a lot of things on the roadmap for that application; things are going to happen soon."
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Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) with 39 reviews while Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 2nd in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) with 25 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.2. 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 Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks writes "Makes us part of a bigger security ecosystem with updates taken care of for us, but pricing and support need work". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security, Fortinet FortiGate SWG and Cloudflare DNS, whereas Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Zscaler Private Access, Zscaler SASE, Prisma SD-WAN, Cato Networks and Netskope CASB. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks report.
See our list of best Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) vendors.
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