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Cisco Umbrella vs Qualys VMDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 30, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Umbrella improves security, reduces costs, and enhances productivity, offering quick ROI and increased efficiency with threat prevention.
Sentiment score
7.2
Qualys VMDR enhances security, risk reduction, and compliance, improving asset management and operational efficiency with substantial benefits.
We saw a return on investment through significant savings in time, money, and resources.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco Umbrella is praised for efficient support and extensive resources, with minor delays in email and purchasing processes.
Sentiment score
6.7
Qualys VMDR's customer service is praised for expertise but faces occasional delays and generic responses, needing faster resolutions.
I would rate customer support ten out of ten due to the excellent assistance throughout the POC process.
Cisco's support is fantastic, providing assistance when needed, especially during the initial installation process.
Sometimes, it takes a while to get a response, and the team can be very rigid.
We usually get on calls with tech support, and they are very helpful.
The response time takes a while.
When reaching out via email, they reply quickly.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Cisco Umbrella offers scalable, cloud-based infrastructure, enabling easy deployment and management across diverse organizational sizes globally.
Sentiment score
8.0
Qualys VMDR offers high scalability for large networks, efficiently managing resources and adapting to diverse requirements seamlessly.
Cisco Umbrella is scalable for our company.
It is a scalable solution but requires improvement in specific areas.
Scalability depends on the license and the number of assets being monitored.
Qualys VMDR can handle scalability, although increasing the inventory can raise the licensing costs.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Cisco Umbrella is praised for its excellent stability, high uptime, and reliability despite rare minor connectivity issues.
Sentiment score
8.0
Qualys VMDR is praised for its stability, with users rating it highly, despite minor bugs and occasional connectivity issues.
I have not experienced any major stability issues with Cisco Umbrella.
I will give stability a score of seven, as there are some glitches from time to time.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Umbrella needs improved integration, user experience, reporting, and regional data centers for better security and network performance.
Qualys VMDR needs better reporting, UI, integration, and support to improve usability, manage vulnerabilities, and reduce costs.
Making it more flexible and easy to deploy, particularly when integrating with other technologies like Active Directory and proxies, would be beneficial.
I have to write an email to Umbrella support to get assistance, unlike the other products where I can call the Cisco technical assistance center and get an engineer.
The product can only shield a small area, making it less effective for larger spaces or multiple users.
It does not automate patching unless the patch management module is purchased separately.
If AI features were integrated, it could enhance the capabilities significantly.
They can tweak their UI since the new version seems a bit jumbled up.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Umbrella pricing is fair yet expensive, with flexible plans, negotiable discounts, and complex scalability for large enterprises.
Qualys VMDR offers competitive pricing and comprehensive features, justifying its cost for medium to large enterprises with flexible options.
The only cost associated is the license cost unless additional solutions need to be integrated with Umbrella, which would incur extra costs.
The prices need to be lower as the current pricing is exceedingly high.
I would rate the pricing between seven to eight out of ten.
Qualys offers better pricing and is feature-packed compared to other tools.
I have a notion that Qualys might be more expensive than Rapid7.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Umbrella offers DNS-based protection, web filtering, and integration, enhancing security and productivity for hybrid work environments.
Qualys VMDR offers comprehensive vulnerability management with strong cloud capabilities, automated detection, and user-friendly dashboards for efficient threat remediation.
The DNS layer security provided by Cisco Umbrella is very effective for our security posture, offering us vast improvements in visibility over DNS queries and potential threats.
The most valuable feature of Cisco Umbrella is its DNS security.
If a machine is attempting to access compromised sites, it can pinpoint the machine to prevent it, thus narrowing down the attack surface.
The prioritization of vulnerabilities has improved our remediation efforts by around thirty to thirty-five percent.
We use it daily to fix vulnerabilities by connecting with infrastructure to remediate.
Qualys VMDR offers a one-stop solution for monitoring and reporting.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Umbrella
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (3rd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Qualys VMDR
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (5th), Vulnerability Management (2nd), Configuration Management Databases (2nd), Container Security (12th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Umbrella is designed for Domain Name System (DNS) Security and holds a mindshare of 22.2%, down 28.0% compared to last year.
Qualys VMDR, on the other hand, focuses on Vulnerability Management, holds 8.3% mindshare, down 13.1% since last year.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Rohan Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent
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 single pane of glass management makes it very easy to manage your rollout. We get a lot of "single panes of glass" and, eventually, you need a pane of panes of glass. But it's always good to have a clear and graphical view, and Umbrella's is nice and easy to read. Definitely, of the panes of glass that we do have, it's one of the easiest to use. The single pane of glass is good to group users together and separate people out. Some people need different types of security. Some people are more vulnerable. Some have more highly valuable assets, like C-suite people. It's really good to be able to have end-users defined inside of that. You don't have to jump around. You don't have to figure out who's who. It's all done through one pane of glass. What most people don't realize is that it's running in the background, which is a really nice aspect when it comes to security. Often, when you deploy a security tool, it takes up CPU performance. Everything slows to a grind. But Umbrella is so simple and easy and it doesn't affect the end-user experience. It's the best of all worlds. It's nice when people realize that they're being protected when they go to the wrong site. I think people are happy that they're protected, but it's nice that they rarely notice it. It's generally easy to maintain network connectivity, but with Umbrella, the nice part is that whichever connectivity you're on, you're always secure. With Umbrella, as long as you're online, you're going to be protected.
Harold Jensen - PeerSpot reviewer
Good visibility but expensive and needs better support
Support: It's often overseas and often following a script, basically asking us to redo what we opened the case with. Multiple APIs: There seems to be a lack of easy onboarding into Qualys. We had to use manual inputs and some API calls to get items in place. Dashboard: It is very rudimentary with very little customization. The Qualys Scripting Language (QSL) works differently in different Qualys modules, so when you get it working in one area you have to modify the syntax in others. User account management: We often have to give users more rights than needed just to give them what they need. Integration with the various Qualys Modules: You can tell the UI is different based on of the different teams that created them. QSL syntax same in all modules Responsiveness of some of the components: They time out, you get a blank screen, etc. Backend updates between the various modules: You update connectors and information takes a few minutes to show in VMDR or Global Asset View Connectors: Connectors have a throttling issue with AWS which causes them to frequently fail unless you manually run them again.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Domain Name System (DNS) Security solutions are best for your needs.
850,043 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
32%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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.
What do you like most about Qualys VMDR?
I like that we have many scanners and channels that don't overload. It helps us scan and track easily. Also, the tagging system is good for tagging. We can still use QualysAgent task ID tools even ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys VMDR?
Qualys offers better pricing and is feature-packed compared to other tools.
What needs improvement with Qualys VMDR?
They can tweak their UI since the new version seems a bit jumbled up, and the old UI was more user-friendly.
 

Also Known As

OpenDNS
Qualys VM, QualysGuard VM, Qualys Asset Inventory, Qualys Container Security
 

Overview

 

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
Agrokor Group, American Specialty Health, American State Bank, Arval, Life:), Axway, Bank of the West, Blueport Commerce, BSkyB, Brinks, CaixaBank, Cartagena, Catholic Health System, CEC Bank, Cegedim, CIGNA, Clickability, Colby-Sawyer College, Commercial Bank of Dubai, University of Utah, eBay Inc., ING Singapore, National Theatre, OTP Bank, Sodexo, WebEx
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Infoblox, Palo Alto Networks and others in Domain Name System (DNS) Security. Updated: May 2025.
850,043 professionals have used our research since 2012.