Cisco Umbrella vs. KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Umbrella
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Cisco now offers OpenDNS Umbrella Web Filtering. Cisco acquired OpenDNS in August 2015, and rebranded the product as Cisco Umbrella.N/A
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
KnowBe4 is a security awareness and compliance training and simulated social engineering product. It is used by organizations worldwide to strengthen their security culture and reduce human risk. The product includes a comprehensive suite of awareness and compliance training, real-time user coaching, AI-powered simulated social engineering, crowdsourced anti-phishing defense and an AI suite that enhances human risk management through personalized training and automation. With…
$0.95
per month (billed annually) per seat
Pricing
Cisco UmbrellaKnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Silver
$0.95
per month (billed annually) per seat
Gold
$1.10
per month (billed annually) per seat
Platinum
$1.25
per month (billed annually) per seat
Diamond
$1.70
per month (billed annually) per seat
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco UmbrellaKnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco UmbrellaKnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
Considered Both Products
Cisco Umbrella
Chose Cisco Umbrella
I have used several different solutions over the years. The Cisco Umbrella solution is by far a way better solution than anything I have used. IT is easy to easy with basic implementations vs. others. Cisco Umbrella is more accurate than other solutions (though not as deeper …
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
Chose KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
KnowBe4 offered a significantly more favorable cost-benefit ratio compared to other solutions. Its seamless integration with our existing infrastructure—particularly Active Directory and email systems—was the most compatible with our operational and security requirements.
Chose KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
The cost benefit ratio was significantly better for KnowBe4, the seamless integration was considered to be the best for our needs.
Chose KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training is the only resource we have used or looked at.
Features
Cisco UmbrellaKnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Umbrella
-
Ratings
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
8.9
338 Ratings
3% above category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings9.3301 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.6326 Ratings
Security Awareness Training
Comparison of Security Awareness Training features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Umbrella
-
Ratings
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
8.1
370 Ratings
5% below category average
Training Content Library00 Ratings8.4367 Ratings
Multilingual Training Content00 Ratings8.0207 Ratings
Training Gamification00 Ratings7.8306 Ratings
Industry-Specific Security Training00 Ratings6.9323 Ratings
Individualized Security Training Plans00 Ratings7.7312 Ratings
Phishing Simulations00 Ratings9.4365 Ratings
Security Reporting00 Ratings8.4355 Ratings
Integration with Security Tech Stack00 Ratings8.4211 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Cisco UmbrellaKnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Barracuda Email Protection
Barracuda Email Protection
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies

No answers on this topic

Hoxhunt
Hoxhunt
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Zscaler Internet Access
Zscaler Internet Access
Score 8.8 out of 10
Hoxhunt
Hoxhunt
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco UmbrellaKnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(109 ratings)
9.2
(705 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(15 ratings)
10.0
(56 ratings)
Usability
7.6
(10 ratings)
9.3
(196 ratings)
Availability
8.7
(11 ratings)
9.6
(20 ratings)
Performance
9.8
(2 ratings)
9.6
(21 ratings)
Support Rating
7.1
(63 ratings)
8.0
(260 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(5 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.4
(17 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.5
(11 ratings)
8.2
(24 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.9
(16 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(39 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.5
(10 ratings)
6.5
(8 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(2 ratings)
9.5
(21 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(12 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.1
(3 ratings)
9.6
(17 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.1
(3 ratings)
9.5
(16 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco UmbrellaKnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
It is good for whole network protection, and individual PCs with the client. Provide good reporting on where your network is going on the net. One thing I would like is a longer history with the logs 14 and 30 days are too short some times.
Read full review
KnowBe4
I don't have any frame of reference for comparison, but the training that I have used has proved impactful for my staff. Since starting KnowBe4 training, we've seen a great increase in the number of phishing attempts, but also a great increase in the number of attempts that have been recognized by staff, and we have thus not been the victim of phishing or other cyberattact vectors
Read full review
Pros
Cisco
  • So for example, we had the problem in the past. We are connecting users to our own managed data centers. We had seven locations around the world, put them with Cisco, any connect to our on-prem data center and let them out to the internet. So that's causing some high latency bad experiences with teams and so on. And with Umbrella we can directly connect the user to the cloud and to the internet so the users have a good experience with speed with latency and it's much better than back hauling the traffic to their own company and then processing them there.
Read full review
KnowBe4
  • Phish tests can be set to various difficulty levels as staff becomes more knowledgeable in catching phish emails.
  • Automated phish tests and training save a lot of admin time. The product can also test for phone and USB stick practices.
  • The phish alert button in Outlook, along with PhishER and PhishFlip allow easy managing and response to actual phishing emails.
  • The interactive training is well designed to cover all types of phishing and safe email and phone behavior.
Read full review
Cons
Cisco
  • The smart search feature in Cisco Umbrella is great addition for sure which helps us to identify malicious domain just by searching the URL and there is scoring system of Cisco Umbrella which mark the URL in low, medium and high risk. Sometimes Cisco Umbrella mark well known and good domain as malicious whether sometimes they mark malicious sites/domain as low risk. So, it's something that they should focus on, I think.
  • The live activity search is great for checking internet activities, but the filtering options could be improved. It would be helpful if we could filter by multiple parameters at once like combining username, destination IP and time range.
Read full review
KnowBe4
  • The provided templates for phishing simulations are mainly available in English. There are also some templates available in our native language, but their number is small. We have seen other platforms offer way more phishing simulation templates in our language.
  • Although there is a really huge number of training videos available, some of them are outdated and no longer have much to offer. Some cleaning up could help in this direction.
  • Although there a some games / puzzle like trainings available, we have seen other platforms offer more and better ones (on the other platforms had they had almost no videos at all...). It would help significantly to also invest in enriching the provided puzzles / games.
  • We have seen other platforms offer games, where, for example, employees of the company can compete against each other while working together in groups to achieve a common goal (e.g., eliminate a fictional security threat that has "hit" the company. Plan the steps needed to be taken, take the steps one after another and have a chance to see the impact each action has. At the end the team that has suffered the least cost to end the threat is the one that wins. Just an example. The point is to make this challenging, using gamification and to make the employees part of the prevention force of the company against cybersecurity threats.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
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.
Read full review
KnowBe4
Between the ease of use, cost effectiveness, functionality and continued improvements Knowbe4 continues to make it would be pretty hard to find another competitive product that wraps it all up like KnowBe4 has. Not saying it couldn't happen, but haven't seen anything that competes at this point.
Read full review
Usability
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.
Read full review
KnowBe4
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training is simple to use, simple to administer, effective, with quality content. It is easy to take the training and we have the reminders set so that the longer a user puts the training off, the more frequently they will receive reminder emails. Eventually they get emailed every day until they take the training. But with a simple click, they can get into the training content.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
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
Read full review
KnowBe4
There have only been a handful of outages in the 2 years we have had the product. Even during those instances, parts of the system were still operational
Read full review
Performance
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
Read full review
KnowBe4
Pages load quickly, filter/sort quickly, and don't slow down or freeze. Everything is smooth and very easy to use. There are a places in the UI where you can forget how to get there, but other than that everything is great. We have had no issues using any part of the website.
Read full review
Support Rating
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)
Read full review
KnowBe4
Tech prod support is great! I did have to ask for a new customer success rep, needed a more experienced person to match my 12 years of experience running Cybersec training programs. Would suggest that more matching of rep level of knowledge to client level knowledge would help.
Read full review
In-Person Training
Cisco
No answers on this topic
KnowBe4
Helpful and knowledgeable account managers have helped us navigate and use the system to our full potential
Read full review
Online Training
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.
Read full review
KnowBe4
confusing question. I inherited this application so I didnt get any formal training other than the person who was leaving. The CSM provided some later on when I asked in a zoom call
Read full review
Implementation Rating
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.
Read full review
KnowBe4
The implementation went really well and KnowBe4 was there the whole time on setup to make sure things were setup correctly. The only thing we had to figure out on our own was to script users automatically being added to security groups. So that when they sync to knowBe4 from AD they are placed into the same/correct groups.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
Different products in different spaces. The Z3 was more of a VPN endpoint so that users didn't have to worry about a client. If they are at home, they are on their corporate network and able to access resources. Cisco Umbrella can be used then to serve corporate DNS across the VPN tunnel to the Z3 device and extend the capabilities of Cisco Umbrella.
Read full review
KnowBe4
KnowBe4 offered a significantly more favorable cost-benefit ratio compared to other solutions. Its seamless integration with our existing infrastructure—particularly Active Directory and email systems—was the most compatible with our operational and security requirements.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Cisco
No answers on this topic
KnowBe4
I was not involved in the pricing, billing or contract terms.
Read full review
Scalability
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
Read full review
KnowBe4
The product scales greatly. As long as you upgrade the license to support the number of users you are needing, adding in those new users is easy. Also getting those users set up with trainings/campaigns is very easy as well
Read full review
Professional Services
Cisco
No answers on this topic
KnowBe4
The team was great to work with and took their time to ensure that we knew what we were doing with the product and that it was set up to meet the specific needs of our organization. This wasn't just a cookie-cutter deployment, but rather they focused specifically on our needs.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • So it's always very hard to calculate return on investment, especially on security and especially in a physical product. So it's not like I'm going to be selling a lot more plastic or a lot more aviation fuel because I implemented Cisco Umbrella. What I know is that definitely, the return on investment is on the ability of the business to continue to run and give the assurance that our users are safe.
Read full review
KnowBe4
  • With the implementation of KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training, we have reduced a lot of issues of social engineering attacks like Phishing attacks, Smishing attacks, Vishing attacks, and a lot more. After implementing the KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training, we have seen a significant decrease in the clicking on a phishing email. Now users are aware of phishing attacks and they know how to react to them.
  • With KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training, we got another tool Phish Alert Button that we have installed on the user's outlook and after providing training on these topics, now we are receiving a lot of spam report emails are users are protecting them from clicking and just reporting it to the IT team.
  • With the Phishing test, we are seeing the growth and analyzing how our users will react in the case of a real phishing attack, and with this, we are providing more training to them and going with them as per the test report. This whole process is making our company more stronger against any type pf social engineering attack.
  • After implementing KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training, we have seen a lot of improvements in the account compromise case in our company because users are not clicking on fake links now.
Read full review
ScreenShots

KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training Screenshots

Screenshot of the Phishing Dashboard. This displays how end users are doing at-a-glance and in comparison to peers across industries with Industry Benchmarking.Screenshot of the Virtual Risk Officer functionality, which helps identify risk to support data-driven decisions about a security awareness plan.Screenshot of KnowBe4's partners, including The Security Awareness Company, Popcorn Training, exploqii, Twist & Shout, El Pescador, CLTRe, Saya University, and MediaPRO. Together, they create security awareness training content available in the ModStore.Screenshot of a security training quiz question showing "Security Moments Series: Spot the Bad Link" asking what Lisa should do when receiving an unexpected email with an HTML attachment, with three answer options and Submit/Cancel buttons.Screenshot of the AIDA Phishing Template Generator interface, which displays a customizable phishing simulation tool with template setup options on the left and a preview of a generated "Annual Bonus Announcement" email featuring a QR code attack vector on the right.Screenshot of the AIDA Configure Training interface, which displays settings for personalized remedial phishing training, including user enrollment options, completion timeframes, knowledge refresher schedules, and notification preferences, with an "Activate Remedial Training" button to implement the configuration.