Cisco Umbrella vs. Sophos UTM

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
Sophos UTM
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Sophos UTM provides core firewall features, plus sandboxing and AI threat detection for advanced network security. It has customizable deployment options.N/A
Pricing
Cisco UmbrellaSophos UTM
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco UmbrellaSophos UTM
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Detailst2.small - $0.123 - Total / hr m3.medium - $0.417 - Total / hr m3.large - $0.883 - Total / hr m3.xlarge - $1.366 - Total / hr m3.2xlarge- $1.982 - Total / hr c3.large - $0.555 - Total / hr c3.xlarge - $1.11 - Total / hr c3.2xlarge - $1.72 - Total / hr c3.4xlarge - $2.59 - Total / hr c3.8xlarge - $3.68 - Total / hr c4.large - $0.55 - Total / hr c4.xlarge - $1.099 - Total / hr c4.2xlarge - $1.698 - Total / hr c4.4xlarge - $2.546 - Total / hr c4.8xlarge - $3.841 - Total / hr m4.large - $0.868 - Total / hr m4.xlarge - $1.365 - Total / hr m4.2xlarge- $1.931 - Total / hr
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco UmbrellaSophos UTM
Best Alternatives
Cisco UmbrellaSophos UTM
Small Businesses

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pfSense
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies

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Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Zscaler Internet Access
Zscaler Internet Access
Score 8.8 out of 10
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Score 9.6 out of 10
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User Ratings
Cisco UmbrellaSophos UTM
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(106 ratings)
9.0
(11 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(15 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.7
(10 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
8.9
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.6
(63 ratings)
7.9
(3 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.3
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.3
(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 UmbrellaSophos UTM
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.
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Sophos
UTM works great if you want a solid, obvious firewall. There's not a lot of second-guessing as to what you are about to do with every change you make. If you incorporate their wireless access points and RED (remote ethernet device) for remote users or small offices, it's considerably much easier to set up than other comparable solutions. If you are looking to manage your firewalls via the cloud, you are out of luck.
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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.
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Sophos
  • Firewall Protection. The protection is unmatched, setup it a little daunting, but once set up it pretty much runs itself.
  • Site-to-site VPN. Super easy to deploy so we are able to network all our sites together.
  • The DHCP server function is actually really nice, I prefer using it over the traditional way of using a DC for DHCP.
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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.
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Sophos
  • Better standard support, it used to be great, now, not so much (for paying customers, that only aquired the Hardware)
  • Better wireless solution, there is always room for that, now that everybody needs robust wifi, even at home!
  • Faster and more robust wireless Access Points, or different vendor-like compatibility.
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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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Sophos
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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Sophos
The interface is no non-sense and easy to understand. No need for any consultants to help implement this solution. The performance is consistent and solid. Paired with a good amount of firmware and definitions, it's hard to find any fault in this product. It's interoperability with other Sophos products make a compelling argument to invest in more Sophos products.
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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
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Sophos
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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Sophos
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)
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Sophos
I find the support fair. The wait can be frustrating when dealing with fire. The pandemic has not helped with this. Although the wait can be long, the support reps are knowledgeable and was able to resolve the issues I was facing.
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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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Sophos
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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Sophos
No answers on this topic
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.
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Sophos
I would rate Sophos second on this list right below Webroot. Webroot has an easier user interface and policy builder. However, Sophos would be on top of its UI would be improved. I would rank CrowStrike third and McAfee last. Sophos is great for complex environments that have multiple needs.
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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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Sophos
No answers on this topic
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.
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Sophos
  • Sophos has provided a secure Firewall for us.
  • Integration with Sophos Central makes it easier to manage both.
  • Site to site VPN Failover groups has caused more trouble than it's worth.
  • High availability doesn't recognize when you are restarting for an update.
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ScreenShots