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Cisco Umbrella vs Symantec CloudSOC CASB 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 Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (5th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), ZTNA as a Service (7th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Symantec CloudSOC CASB
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
19th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.7%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 8.8%, down from 14.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec CloudSOC CASB is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella8.8%
iboss2.7%
Symantec CloudSOC CASB0.8%
Other87.7%
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2701851 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director
Enhances web security with a single pane of glass and flexible deployment
I don't see any need for improvement; one of the really good things about iboss as a company is that they listen to customer feedback. I have suggested enhancements, and they are responsive, making changes for the better, and they do a lot of testing. To improve iboss, although we haven't used it, we considered the VPN solution that comes with the highest tier licensing, which includes DLP and various other add-ons. We prefer using another product which automatically logs you back onto your network when turning on your PC. With iboss, the connection is manual, which doesn't meet our needs. Additionally, sizing can be tricky because, although the initial recommendations may seem adequate, actual usage may require more gateways than anticipated.
BB
Senior Network Engineer at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
Ensures comprehensive protection with seamless threat logging and efficient policy management
My favorite feature of Cisco Umbrella is probably just the DNS and the fact that when a security threat happens, all of that gets logged in their Umbrella portal, and it's very easy to find who's been accessing the site and how many people have accessed it, so that we can go to them and make sure they're not compromised. The features of Cisco Umbrella benefit my company by providing less time to search for things through logs, to look for what we need. It's just one place to go, and we just search for it, and we find it really fast. The fact that there's a virtual database that has all that information is great on our portal.
cto543714 - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Works very well in a hybrid environment in terms of DLP policies, but trying to do your own troubleshooting can be a little bit difficult
It does scale. They have different data centers spread out for you to do things. It scales just fine, but it is the setup and configuration that you have to do in order for it to scale the way you want it to. I know that some of the newer technologies, such as Zscaler, are doing SD-LAN type connections and things of that sort to improve performance and scalability. So, things are still evolving in terms of scalability. Depending on how you deployed it, you can run into some performance gotchas. If you take a VPN connection and try to overtax it, you can run into problems. You can't say that it didn't scale. You have to use a different method to get the traffic, or you may have to set up two VPN tunnels or things of that sort. So, if you want it to scale, you have to think it through and make sure you are deploying it in a manner to scale. It can scale, but you have to plan it and make sure you think everything through.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"From a use-case scenario, what I like the most is the plug-in. I like the fact that we can do the filtering of these devices offsite independent of the network they are connected to, and we do not have to have traffic coming back inside our network."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent."
"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Umbrella is its DNS security."
"Application performance has greatly improved and there are less operational issues. Productivity has been going up because we have less operational issues. Also, we have happy customers."
"It enables us to finally allow laptops to be used as workstations and allow data to leave the building."
"A single pane of glass saves time... This does have a lot of options available for us to see who's doing what, what trends, what errors. We can set up our alerting through it as well. It is definitely a great dashboard."
"Threats never come close to your network with security at the DNS level​."
"The reports and notifications are the most useful part of the platform. As soon as you deploy the security layers, the reporting is very comprehensive. It helps you to have, at a glance, a clear view of what's going on."
"Umbrella is probably one of the best tools out there in all the security landscape."
"The biggest return on investment when using Cisco Umbrella for me is the ease of use of the fact that we've deployed this with our Cisco VPN Secure Client, so every computer has the Umbrella module in it."
"The value in some of these solutions is just the integration of technologies with their on-prem DLP solution, so you can tie on-prem and cloud DLP policies together and apply on-prem policies to the cloud to have consistent policies in a hybrid environment, which works very well in that hybrid environment of on-prem and cloud."
"This solution has improved my organization because it enables us to have visibility and monitoring over our global workforce connectivity to Office 365 and for Service Now."
"The monitoring and threat protection were the solution's most valuable features."
"The stability of the solution is very good; it's one of the most stable products on the market."
"The active directory integration is very valuable as we can connect to the list of users that we have and the cloud control, the blocking, the access control of the cloud, can be handled by this product."
"This solution has improved my organization because it allows us to have visibility and monitoring over our global workforce connectivity to Office 365 and for Service Now."
"The scalability is excellent, and if a company needs to expand the product, it can do so easily."
"The stability of the solution is great, and it's one of the most stable products on the market."
 

Cons

"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."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"Its pricing could be better."
"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability within the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"We would like them to add more features to Cisco Umbrella."
"The integration with other solutions is a little complex. If you want to integrate with something like ArcSight or LogRhythm or Splunk, you need to do a lot of configuration. There are no easy ways to implement it."
"The product can be pretty expensive."
"Cisco Umbrella is expensive and could be cheaper."
"Overall, I'm quite happy with Cisco products, but there could be one place where you can check what's going on. There could be one place where you get all the information about these products so that you don't need to look around. You get the status, information about what lately happened, and if there was anything on the machine in one single place."
"There are cheaper solutions in the market."
"I would be happy if they could add the whois information of an IP."
"Actually, we recently switched over to Zscaler because it has more features and it's more scalable than Cisco Umbrella."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate it with a central management system."
"It's a niche product. Not many people use it, and therefore there isn't as much of a knowledge base surrounding it."
"It's a niche product; not many people use it, and therefore there isn't as much of a knowledge base surrounding it."
"The solution should work to incorporate some machine learning policies like IDM and VML."
"The solution needs to focus on data security."
"They have some room for improvement in terms of being able to do troubleshooting. If you're trying to troubleshoot it, you have to work a lot with their backend people in order to get to a solution. So, trying to do your own troubleshooting can be a little bit difficult."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate it with a central management system."
"They have some room for improvement in terms of being able to do troubleshooting. If you're trying to troubleshoot it, you have to work a lot with their backend people in order to get to a solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost."
"Cisco uses subscription models for the pricing and there are three subscription plans."
"The licensing fee is paid on a yearly basis."
"I am not sure, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think it's $1.00 or so per device/month."
"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."
"You can request an evaluation license​."
"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."
"We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good."
"It compares well with the competition because they're all priced on a per-user basis. I've seen the rest of them. There is definitely a huge price difference between them."
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885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise51
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company Exxon...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
Previously when I used iboss, we did the POC for iboss for ExxonMobil. Four or five people wanted to move from our ol...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern. There are cheaper alte...
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?
The pricing for Cisco Umbrella is fair compared to other platforms out there for DNS security. We acquired it as a bu...
What needs improvement with Symantec CloudSOC CASB?
After integrating the Gatelet with a live environment, users experienced connectivity issues because they were not im...
What is your primary use case for Symantec CloudSOC CASB?
The solution helps detect and control data in the cloud, focusing on Shadow IT and Shadow Data. The audit module help...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
CloudSOC, Symantec CloudSOC
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
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
Globe Telecom
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Symantec CloudSOC CASB and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.