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Cisco Secure Access vs. Cisco Umbrella vs. Cloudflare Access

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Secure Access

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AA cloud-delivered security service edge (SSE) solution, grounded in zero trust, designed to give users an exceptional user experience and protected access from any device to anywhere.N/A

    Cisco Umbrella

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/ACisco now offers OpenDNS Umbrella Web Filtering. Cisco acquired OpenDNS in August 2015, and rebranded the product as Cisco Umbrella.N/A

    Cloudflare Access

    Score9.2 out of 10
    N/ACloudflare Access is a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution that secures internal applications by verifying identity, device posture, and context for every request. It replaces legacy VPNs with a faster, more secure alternative that lives at the network edge.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Secure AccessCisco UmbrellaCloudflare Access
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Secure AccessCisco UmbrellaCloudflare Access
    Free Trial
    NoYesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details———
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Secure AccessCisco UmbrellaCloudflare Access
    Considered Multiple Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Secure Access
    Cisco Secure Access provided all the functionality we required and was also competitively priced.
    Incentivized
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Umbrella
    I really like it for this price point.
    Incentivized
    Cloudflare
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    95%
    Would buy again
    91 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    29 Answers
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    88 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    34 Answers
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    92 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    30 Answers
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    77 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    29 Answers
    92%
    Implementation went as expected
    84 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Features
    Cisco Secure AccessCisco UmbrellaCloudflare Access
    Identity Management
    Comparison of Identity Management features of Cisco Secure Access and Cisco Umbrella and Cloudflare Access
    Feature
    Cisco Secure Access
    -
    Ratings
    Cisco Umbrella
    -
    Ratings
    Cloudflare Access
    10.0
    2 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Multi-Factor Authentication00 Ratings00 Ratings10.02 Ratings
    Endpoint Security
    Comparison of Endpoint Security features of Cisco Secure Access and Cisco Umbrella and Cloudflare Access
    Feature
    Cisco Secure Access
    -
    Ratings
    Cisco Umbrella
    -
    Ratings
    Cloudflare Access
    10.0
    1 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)00 Ratings00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Threat Intelligence
    Comparison of Threat Intelligence features of Cisco Secure Access and Cisco Umbrella and Cloudflare Access
    Feature
    Cisco Secure Access
    -
    Ratings
    Cisco Umbrella
    -
    Ratings
    Cloudflare Access
    8.7
    2 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Network Analytics00 Ratings00 Ratings4.82 Ratings
    Threat Recognition00 Ratings00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Vulnerability Classification00 Ratings00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Automated Alerts and Reporting00 Ratings00 Ratings6.32 Ratings
    Threat Analysis00 Ratings00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Threat Intelligence Reporting00 Ratings00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Automated Threat Identification00 Ratings00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Zero Trust Security
    Comparison of Zero Trust Security features of Cisco Secure Access and Cisco Umbrella and Cloudflare Access
    Feature
    Cisco Secure Access
    -
    Ratings
    Cisco Umbrella
    -
    Ratings
    Cloudflare Access
    9.2
    2 Ratings
    7% above category average
    Continuous Verification00 Ratings00 Ratings10.02 Ratings
    Secure Web Gateways00 Ratings00 Ratings10.02 Ratings
    Network Flow Control00 Ratings00 Ratings10.02 Ratings
    Network Traffic Analysis00 Ratings00 Ratings6.32 Ratings
    Segmentation Leveraging00 Ratings00 Ratings10.02 Ratings
    Admin Access Control00 Ratings00 Ratings7.82 Ratings
    Network Data Encryption00 Ratings00 Ratings9.32 Ratings
    Network Topology Mapping00 Ratings00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Secure AccessCisco UmbrellaCloudflare Access
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access
    Score8.6 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access
    Score8.6 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Forescout Vistaro Platform
    Score6.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Secure AccessCisco UmbrellaCloudflare Access
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (33 ratings)
    8.9
    (124 ratings)
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (15 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    7.5
    (10 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.7
    (11 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.9
    (63 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.5
    (11 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.5
    (10 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.1
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.1
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Secure AccessCisco UmbrellaCloudflare Access
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    Cisco as a whole solution, Cisco Secure Access as a solution is very well suited. If you want to simplify the operations and the way that you provide access to certain things, rollout and deployment are fairly straightforward and fairly fast if you know how to configure it properly. Regarding private access, there's still some things that need to be addressed to mitigate certain connections that aren't working correctly through the VPN, or maybe create some kind of exception. The most famous ones are things with Microsoft or other vendors, where, when you send that information through the VPN, split tunnels aren't necessarily the only configurations you have to consider. Things like IPS, decryption, you also have to look at those things as well. It might be good to try to enhance those types of configurations and maybe also document those things so that the users are aware.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    When a company has a distributed workforce, the produce works very well to unify a set of policies to apply against web bound traffic. Areas we have struggled with is getting value out of our cloud delivered firewall due to requirements to fully use it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    I wanted to securely connect to my servers without getting tracked by malicious attackers, even though I was on public Wi-Fi. Security was my top priority, and I also wanted a setup that was easy and quick to start and provided great network performance. Cloudflare's Zero trust matches my criteria for becoming my first choice.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • In my experience, zta (zero trust access) is done well in Cisco Secure Access
    • In my opinion, segmentation is done well in Cisco Secure Access
    • I think traffic security is done well in Cisco Secure Access
    • In my experience, enterprise security is done well in Cisco Secure Access
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • As many companies think—they’re afraid of firewalls, but they want to keep something secure—and what it does best is it simplifies the approach from a cybersecurity perspective, especially from the user perspective. Users spend a lot of time on the web, trying to access sites, clicking links, scanning QR codes, and doing whatever. You can’t really stop them unless you have something in between that can check whether those links lead somewhere safe, or potentially run them in a sandbox if there are threats or specific use cases.
    • So I think one of its strongest points is that it’s very simple, and it’s not expensive compared to if you buy a firewall and licenses from other brands, where you have to configure it and spend engineer work hours or outsource the work. It’s the simplicity, and I think it just works. I had some issues five years ago, four years ago, but now it just works. I’m pretty happy.
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    • Block access to known bad, risky, or unwanted destinations at the DNS or HTTP level.
    • Excellent protection for remote users.
    • Best in class browser isolation techniques.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • The integration into the Meraki dashboard is not yet complete, you have to use several interfaces to complete the configuration, the services should be fully integrated to provide better handling
    • Integration of firewall rules onprem and cloud should be standardized
    • Better user management / import
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • So we had in the past very general rule sets, very detailed rule sets for security rules. Like you can access this page but not this IP range and so on. So hundreds of specific rules for specific machines and the rule management in Cisco Umbrella is not that granular. So it was not possible to build up these rule sets in Cisco Umbrella, but now we see to access it's much better already. So that's why one reason why we are migrating to CQ access to have better API based possibility to manage these rule sets and synchronize them between different products that we are using and in the cloud. So yeah, we hope that with secure access it's a little bit more granular like with Cisco Umbrella currently.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    • Cloudflare still need to improve CASB direction to complete set of SASE tools.
    • More integrations with the third-party agents to check device posture in the Zero Trust framework.
    • More granularity in firewall rules for full replacement of on-premise solutions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    First off I never give anything a "10" unless it's perfect. LOL - I grade on the curve. I think OpenDNS/Umbrella is a very good product. I think that fact that Cisco absorbed them is one of the proofs of that. I have used the product back when it was free for companies our size. I have not always appreciated the cost - but in the post pandemic cyber chaos, I believe the cost benefit ratio is still very high. I have honestly not looked at other products because Umbrella continues to work to my satisfaction. I consider Umbrella to be one of the key layers in my cyber security strategy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Cisco
    It's simpler to identify or find things within the platform. Obviously, there are always things to improve, maybe in the GUI or in certain things coming over from Umbrella, because this platform is actually adopting a lot of the Umbrella solutions. And it's just a matter of trying to navigate through it. I really like the way it's simplified in how you categorize your internal policies and your private access policies. It's just a different mindset and a different way of creating policies in this case, compared to how Umbrella did in the past with rule sets and those kinds of things. But the actual solution itself works pretty well when you understand it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Better features and easy to manage system with great customer support and overall usability is great as it works for hybrid environment with ease as it is having features for on prem users as wells as cloud users with great customer support and great team of trained engineers to support our opeartions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    Within a few hours, new engineers are trained in basic tasks and are quite happy they are able to resolve issues independently. After SSO is configured, onboarding is as simple as signing into m365 via a web browser popup.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    Cisco umbrella services in the cloud are always available. However, the weakness is the VM installed in the data center that are the first resolvers. If the VMs become unavailable for any reason or the vSphere goes down, then all DNS is affected
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    our experience with cisco products has always been awesome and same is the case with cisco umbrella .Under umbrella cisco provides flexible and scalable software solution to use across different dept and sites . These softwares are very user friendly ,pages load quickly as these applications are designed for minimum latency and reports are also provided quickely
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    Whilst the support is good once you get through to them, it's email only and the response is slow. This is a issue, because its a core system that needs to work. We have had issues in the past where several of our companies have gone down due to Umbrella and support is nowhere to be seen. It is very difficult to know whether Umbrella is having service issues, since they do not regularly update customers on the status of their services, such as is seen by providers such as Microsoft (status.umbrella.com just seems to show up all of the time, I'm not sure it's even updated)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    Good chat support from the portal for basic questions and minor issues. The enterprise support line is provided as well.
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    Quite easy to understand training modules prepared by knowledgeable trainers. Training modules have included all the desired features of these softwares and the content delivery is very good from the respective module trainers and it explains in details the features and apart from that further training material support is also provided if needed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    At the time we were forced to move from Cloud Web Security to Cisco Umbrella, Cisco Umbrella was far from being a direct replacement. It was frustrating and difficult to migrate due to the lack of functionality. This has since been addressed, however we now have legacy rulesets that were built as bandaids that cannot be removed. Hopefully the migration to Secure Access will address this.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    We selected Cisco Secure Access due to the intuitive GUI and ease of use. The agent deployment was simple and easy to maintain. Any additional updates or changes were quickly deployed, and users found the customized block messages useful. From analytics and management, the Secure Access Product has been simple to manage and provides a robust level of security and flexibility that we haven't found in any other product yet.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Umbrella checked all the boxes for us (at the time) because it supported multiple domains and multiple IPs to protect (we have 20+ offices), and its configuration and policies cover a lot of different options for us. We used another product prior, and it worked well, but it didn't have all the features we needed at the time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    Cloudflare was both the most feature-rich and cost-effective of comparisons. Presales engagement understood our challenges and was keen to solve them.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco
    Cisco umbrella provides fleaxible and scalable software solutions which are easy deploy across multiple departments and sites wherever needed and this softwares are very easy to use and provides the best interface along with cisco support for other devices apart from cisco infrastructure but still there is scope for improvement on the inclusion of latest features
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • The impact Cisco Secure Access has on our organization's overall business objectives is that we Replaced Bomgar
    • Another impact Cisco Secure Access has on our organization's overall business objectives is that it Eliminated giving vendors AD accounts
    • A third impact Cisco Secure Access has on our organization's overall business objectives is that Cisco Secure Access is Quick to deploy
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • It's a costly product and we have to admit that, but security breaches are costlier, and they can take more than we can afford so we always had positive mindset over our security purchase and Cisco Umbrella had overall positive impact.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    • The cost of Cloudflare Zero trust is much lower, hence reducing spending on infrastructure security.
    • The Network performance is improved thanks to Warp protocol.
    • Requires less maintenance and hence saves time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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