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Cisco Umbrella vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)

    Score8 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds LEM is security information and event management (SIEM) software.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco UmbrellaSolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco UmbrellaSolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    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 UmbrellaSolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    95%
    Would buy again
    91 Answers
    88%
    Would buy again
    30 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    88 Answers
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    28 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    92 Answers
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    77 Answers
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    16 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    92%
    Implementation went as expected
    84 Answers
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    25 Answers
    Features
    Cisco UmbrellaSolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
    Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
    Comparison of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) features of Cisco Umbrella and SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
    Feature
    Cisco Umbrella
    -
    Ratings
    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
    8.9
    18 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Centralized event and log data collection00 Ratings9.018 Ratings
    Correlation00 Ratings8.015 Ratings
    Event and log normalization/management00 Ratings8.018 Ratings
    Deployment flexibility00 Ratings10.018 Ratings
    Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools00 Ratings8.013 Ratings
    Custom dashboards and workspaces00 Ratings9.017 Ratings
    Host and network-based intrusion detection00 Ratings10.03 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco UmbrellaSolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    IBM Security QRadar SIEM
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft Sentinel
    Score8.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco UmbrellaSolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.9
    (124 ratings)
    8.0
    (46 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.0
    (15 ratings)
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    7.5
    (10 ratings)
    8.0
    (6 ratings)
    Availability
    8.7
    (11 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.9
    (63 ratings)
    7.5
    (17 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.5
    (11 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.5
    (10 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    8.1
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.1
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco UmbrellaSolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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
    SolarWinds
    Optimal for SolarWinds Security Event Manager needs for smaller companies - it is a very cool product but has some limitations around EPS (which gets chewed up quickly if you're doing it the right way & adding servers/storage/FW & other network devices)... Also pricing model is GREAT (not consumption-based, which is the greatest grift the SIEM industry has created).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    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
    SolarWinds
    • It does a great job of notifying us when accounts have been locked out. We can then find out the device on the network where the login attempt occurred.
    • Searching for incidents is now a lot faster with the implementation of the HTML 5 interface.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    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
    SolarWinds
    • All SolarWinds product suffer from slow response times in management portals. SolarWinds SEM is no exception. While it is much preferred over a "thick client" there is much room for improvement in speed.
    • If you use the email alert features with SolarWinds make sure to prepare you staff and team for the large amount of emails they could receive. Make sure to reduce the number of alerts so your team does not ignore the alerts.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    It is pretty likely that we will renew SEM when the time comes up. It is easy to use and maintain so there isn't much of a need to replace this product. It is also a pretty fair price for the capabilities provided by the SEM
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    If you are familiar with SolarWinds then you can use this product it's as easy as that. If you have never used a SolarWinds product then it will take a minute to get how they do reports and make dashboards but that being said the tool is great and can make things very easy once you get a feel for how it works and get everything setup how you like it.
    Incentivized
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    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)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    The quality of support can vary depending on whom you end up speaking with. I was fortunate enough to work with a support representative who was very familiar with the product. He had even authored some of the support documentation on the website. On the flip side, I had two other experiences where I was simply directed to online training material.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    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
    SolarWinds
    Fortianalzyer can only do logs from FortiGate so usefulness is limited. Elasticsearch was a lot slower than Solarwinds and the filters were a lot harder to set up and use. The connectors for SEM were far more stable.
    Incentivized
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    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
    SolarWinds
    • For the price, it produced a decent value. It did a lot of the easy stuff well. I can't give any specific data given the objective of the product was to monitor very basic events in the environment.
    • There are free options that can do a better job.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Screenshots

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