Cisco Umbrella vs. Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR

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
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Traps replaces traditional antivirus with multi-method prevention, a proprietary combination of malware and exploit prevention methods that protect users and endpoints from known and unknown threats.N/A
Pricing
Cisco UmbrellaPalo Alto Networks Cortex XDR
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco UmbrellaPalo Alto Networks Cortex XDR
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco UmbrellaPalo Alto Networks Cortex XDR
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Cisco UmbrellaPalo Alto Networks Cortex XDR
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

SentinelOne Singularity
SentinelOne Singularity
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies

No answers on this topic

CrowdStrike Falcon
CrowdStrike Falcon
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises

No answers on this topic

CrowdStrike Falcon
CrowdStrike Falcon
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco UmbrellaPalo Alto Networks Cortex XDR
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(90 ratings)
8.8
(12 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.5
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(7 ratings)
2.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.5
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(62 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.4
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco UmbrellaPalo Alto Networks Cortex XDR
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
So the well-suited product, it's actually in two areas. One I already touched base on earlier which is the ability to have a federal model where we have the flexibility to set high-level policies from a group perspective while giving the independence of the business unit to operate and model the system to meet their needs. The second one, which is very powerful, especially in the last few years, is the remote workers. I'm able to protect and extend that edge of my security to their endpoint regardless if they are a Cisco Live or if they are at a bar or on a train basically anywhere. So as a chemical company, we have a lot of OT or ICS industrial control systems, which are highly regulated and highly scrutinized and usually require a physical presence while Cisco umbrella is mostly a cloud native type of product. So it doesn't fit well in that environment, which is detached from the internet doing well.
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Palo Alto Networks
Malware that doesn’t leave files behind has become widely available. Anyone who can afford to reverse this trend should purchase technology. Application whitelisting isn’t for everyone, and Palo Alto Networks Traps can help. Enterprises looking for a low-affected, next-generation solution with high protection should consider it. PAN Traps is a great product at a reasonable price, and I highly recommend it.
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Pros
Cisco
  • Effective prevention of ransomware and malware by blocking CNC traffic. rendering the malware useless.
  • Good reports, which are readable by non technical users
  • Using Talos for its threat database means that it rarely misses anything
  • Very good knowledgebase available which means that it is easy to learn how to use and implement the product
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Palo Alto Networks
  • Direct Access to devices via Live Terminal which provides operations with scripting, triage, and preservation of artifacts.
  • Behavioral Indicators of Compromise which provides alerts on events regarding groups of hosts and their signatures.
  • Querying complex data sets involving a variety of devices for network connections, hashes, DNS, etc.
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Cons
Cisco
  • Umbrella Virtual Appliances have been buggy in resolving local domain hosts.
  • Integration between other Cisco and Meraki products is complicated.
  • Reporting is not always accurate; for example, if you configure a Meraki access point to use an Umbrella Virtual Appliance, you lose device reporting. All reporting shows up under the AP's IP.
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Palo Alto Networks
  • Traps doesn't seem to function as a traditional A/V very well, so it's better as another layer to your endpoint protection
  • Traps can cause issues with some legacy or custom programs, so exceptions may have to be made
  • Traps falsely identifies things as malicious at times, this is not often though
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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.
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
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.
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Palo Alto Networks
Day to day, Cortex is easy to use when you have no alerts and when an agent upgrade doesn't go south. Alerts are far too "clicky", there's too many steps to drilling down to what actually happened to trigger an alert. Investigating alerts in Cortex takes about 5x longer than it should.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
Cisco Umbrella's availability was great, they got back to me in less than an hour to get my problem solved.
We needed to get our Meraki AP's hooked up to Cisco Umbrella to monitor that specific traffic and they got back to me promptly, they guided me and explained every question I had.
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
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
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cisco
We have not had a chance to use Cisco support frequently, but when we needed to troubleshoot some issues that we were having with the agent installation, the support was very responsive and the solution that they offered worked. The only reason I give it one less point is that the turnaround time for non-critical issues is very long.
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Palo Alto Networks
The support we receive from Palo Alto is one of the best aspects of Traps. It is very easy to recommend their support. It seems much easier to connect directly with someone with a deep understanding of the product rather than other companies where you basically have to make an airtight case that it is some kind of non-standard issue that can't be solved with existing documentation. Palo Alto digs deep and helps with advanced troubleshooting to get things working.
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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.
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
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.
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
Auto SIG Tunnels is a feature that helps in provisioning tunnels automatically using Cisco Umbrella APIs and so this is one win for choosing Cisco Umbrella over others. With Cisco SD-WAN viptela, the Cisco Umbrella stacks up well because its the same vendor so less complexities and interoperability issues.
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Palo Alto Networks
Traps is the slickest interface, easy to use and intuitive rule making, and the rest just didn't quite stack up to the performance level of Traps. McAfee and Kaspersky just hog processor and RAM power. I didn't like the interface and functionality of SentinelOne as much as Traps. Palo Alto really put a lot of time into the development of this software, and had some of the founding fathers of IT Security heading the development process. Can't beat that.
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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
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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Cisco Umbrella has been an excellent investment for us. The extra protection it provides in a very simple way has been well worth the costs.
  • Cisco Umbrella is very easy to setup and manage and can do most of the things we need with little daily interaction so we are free to work on other systems that need more attention.
  • Utilizing the Cisco Umbrella reporting features, we can determine what systems might need additional attention. If we see systems attempting certain types of access, we quickly know there is likely something on the device that probably needs removed.
  • Specific Cisco Umbrella reports can help us determine if we need to do user education and develop cyber habits.
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Palo Alto Networks
  • After putting Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR on a user's system, users came back with a positive response that there are no performance issues now.
  • We are able to track and control granular suspicious and malicious activities.
  • Web controls are missing, which if they would have been there would have been very helpful.
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