What users are saying about
26 Ratings
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Based on 26 reviews and ratings
Cisco Umbrella
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Top Rated
138 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.6 out of 100
Based on 138 reviews and ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Cisco Umbrella is rated higher in 3 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Usability, Support Rating
Likelihood to Recommend

6.2
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
62%
8 Ratings
8.4
Cisco Umbrella
84%
69 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew

Cisco Secure Web Appliance
N/A
0 Ratings
10.0
Cisco Umbrella
100%
3 Ratings
Usability

9.0
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
90%
1 Rating
9.4
Cisco Umbrella
94%
4 Ratings
Support Rating

6.4
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
64%
4 Ratings
7.3
Cisco Umbrella
73%
67 Ratings
Implementation Rating

Cisco Secure Web Appliance
N/A
0 Ratings
9.0
Cisco Umbrella
90%
2 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
We have both scenarios where we can describe that. For example, in the HQ, where we have about 3,000 users, Cisco IronPort Web Security Appliance is the ideal solution, because we can consolidate all the Internet access, policies, rules, etc. in the same box. However, if you have small offices with a few users, it's hard to justify one big and expensive box that could cost more than the whole office infrastructure.
IT Infrastructure Specialist
RANDON S.AAutomotive, 5001-10,000 employees
Cisco Umbrella
Cisco Umbrella provides another layer of protection on top of firewalls and antivirus. Cisco Umbrella makes whitelisting, blacklisting, and categorical web filtering easier through the use of a single admin portal. Updates to these lists are populated almost instantly to all of your local and remote devices. Cisco Umbrella may be overkill for smaller businesses that do not have a distributed workforce.
Information Technology Team Lead
West Star Aviation, LLCAviation & Aerospace, 501-1000 employees
Pros
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
- SMA gave us central control over multiple servers, simplifying management.
- Performance of the Appliance VM exceeded that of our old physical appliance-based solution.
- Convenient licensing for virtualized environments that allows easy scaling.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Libraries Company, 1001-5000 employeesCisco Umbrella
- Cisco Umbrella protects our devices and users from malicious sites of all kinds.
- Cisco Umbrella allows us to add additional web site types we may want to block for specific users.
- Cisco Umbrella keeps the list of sites blocked current by utilizing data from their entire security platform.
Network Administrator
Plainfield Community SchoolsEducation Management, 501-1000 employees
Cons
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
- The default metrics on the dashboard visualization are not that useful. It is not much customizable too. Some of the dashboard features like load, volume, etc. can have a hide option.
- The false negatives are more than false positives. A lot of the times, it verdicts the same email as malicious and non-malicious. This can be reduced.
Security Analyst Graduate Intern
University of Colorado DenverHigher Education, 5001-10,000 employees
Cisco Umbrella
- Keeping up to date on known malicious sites and blocking those is difficult for all vendors, but this could always be improved upon.
- A more detailed descriptions of what is included the Security Categories would be useful. Generic descriptions are provided. For example, state lottery sites could be detailed in the description of the Gambling category.
IT Security Manager
Reynolds, Smith and Hills (RS&H)Design, 1001-5000 employees
Pricing Details
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—Cisco Umbrella
General
Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—Likelihood to Renew
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Cisco Umbrella
Cisco Umbrella 10.0
Based on 3 answers
It is a great product. It is easy to manage and is affordable. We are a Cisco shop, so it is easily integrated with our other security suite of products to include Threat Response and SecureX.
IT Security Manager
Reynolds, Smith and Hills (RS&H)Design, 1001-5000 employees
Usability
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
Cisco Secure Web Appliance 9.0
Based on 1 answer
Because it's one of those products you almost don't realize it exists from the end user. From the administrator perspective, you can do everything on its web interface and it's very intuitive to manage, once you know the concepts behind identities, acls, etc. Also, once you build the control structure, I mean, you link 'local' groups with your own Active Directory groups, as we did here, you don't need to be managing those things on the appliance itself.
IT Infrastructure Specialist
RANDON S.AAutomotive, 5001-10,000 employees
Cisco Umbrella
Cisco Umbrella 9.4
Based on 4 answers
The product was easy to install and get running. To maintain the product is also a simple matter of maintaining lists of wanted and unwanted domains or URLs. The basic and advanced security features all do what they are intended to do with no known erroneous outcomes
IT Security Manager
Reynolds, Smith and Hills (RS&H)Design, 1001-5000 employees
Support Rating
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
Cisco Secure Web Appliance 6.4
Based on 4 answers
Our experience with Cisco's support was terrible. Other than the fact that they don't respond to service-related emails with urgency, they also keep on changing the policies that affected us. Recently, they came up with a new look for the same software, which was insanely slow. Renewal of keys for the old interface took months. Overall, the support was not very friendly from the users' point of view.
Security Analyst Graduate Intern
University of Colorado DenverHigher Education, 5001-10,000 employees
Cisco Umbrella
Cisco Umbrella 7.3
Based on 67 answers
Our network team mostly works with Cisco support but from what I understand, they were pretty helpful because we're an enterprise company. We use a few other Cisco products, so we do get a pretty good response from Cisco customer support. I'm not a fan of Cisco's SSO because we can't put it behind Okta but that's beyond the scope of this.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Information Technology and Services Company, 1001-5000 employeesImplementation Rating
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Cisco Umbrella
Cisco Umbrella 9.0
Based on 2 answers
Overall, the implementation was smooth with little issues. Testing some of the advanced features and ensuring they did not impact our user population was the greatest challenge
IT Security Manager
Reynolds, Smith and Hills (RS&H)Design, 1001-5000 employees
Alternatives Considered
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
At home I have a McAfee service that does similar tasks and helps manage the users of my internet. McAfee seems more user friendly and easier to set exceptions.

Verified User
Professional in Corporate
Machinery Company, 10,001+ employeesCisco Umbrella
We used a product before this called iPrism by EdgeWave and also briefly tried Barracuda Web Security in the cloud. We were having such a large influx of service desk calls about proxy-based layer 7 web filters that we wanted to step back and pick something more at the DNS level, to protect our employees but not hover over their social media use, etc. Cisco will also employ a layer 7 proxy if a site is suspicious, which does require us to push a certificate out should we want that feature. For most policies we have it enabled.
IT Infrastructure Supervisor
Sight and Sound TheatresEntertainment, 201-500 employees
Return on Investment
Cisco Secure Web Appliance
- Security! Security! Security! We are financial company that work with very sensitive information. A lot of unsafe traffic was blocked on the Cisco IronPort WSA over years of using it. We did not earn on it but absolutely sure that we did not lose 'gazillion' of dollars being infected or scammed.
- Easy to configure and use, no need to teach new personnel how work with this product (hopefully saving time = saving money).
- Unfortunately the price of license subscription made financial managers push IT dept. to look for something cheaper.
System Administrator
Van Ru Credit CorporationFinancial Services, 501-1000 employees
Cisco Umbrella
- On the positive side, the product does help block known bad sites, resulting in less time that technicians spend cleaning infections.
- On the negative side, the problem that causes Windows to incorrectly report no Internet access has taken a lot of time for many technicians.
- Reporting features for individual clients help us more efficiently provide browsing reports when needed.

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Information Technology & Services Company, 11-50 employees