Cisco Umbrella vs Symantec WebFilter / Intelligence Services | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 8.5 out of 10

Based on 122 reviews and ratings

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Score 9 out of 10

Based on 1 reviews and ratings

Pros

Filters content at the DNS level. Makes it a little harder for the sneaky ones to make it through.
Since this is at the DNS level, using their DNS servers (as a forwarder to your local DNS) it is extremely fast. Transparent.
Always being updated. Not dependent on "definitions" or algorithms - a site is either blacklisted or whitelisted.
Easy to implement, apply, maintain

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Director of IT

BLDD ARCHITECTS INCArchitecture & Planning, 51-200 employees

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Excellent at preventing unwanted browsing and malicious sites
Great reporting, useful to see potential issues and/or sites that may need to be reviewed for potential whitelisting.
Perfect system for kiosk environments, limiting browsing to local on-network sites until the user authenticates

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Cons

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.

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IT Security Manager

Reynolds, Smith and Hills (RS&H)Design, 1001-5000 employees

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The admin interface would be better off not using Java
Setting up SSL properly can be a bit challenging
Could really use a better source for training, like a library of how-to videos

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

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.

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IT Security Manager

Reynolds, Smith and Hills (RS&H)Design, 1001-5000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Usability

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

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IT Security Manager

Reynolds, Smith and Hills (RS&H)Design, 1001-5000 employees

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Symantec WebFilter / Intelligence Services 5.0

Based on 1 answer

I really like the system, it's easy to use and mostly intuitive. I would have gone 10/10, but the management interface uses Java, and that seems to always make things a bit harder to start. Once everything is loaded and running, it's great - but it does require me to maintain a compatible version of Java on the machine I use to access the system, I'd be much happier with some kind of HTML5 interface.I also deducted 1 point for the functionality of the refer filter - it works as expected, but if the site isn't coded with the correct refer header, like Microsoft's site - then some page elements get stripped and pages only render about 98% correctly. I know that's not in Symantec's list of responsibilities, but having a filter that doesn't fully understand CDNs is worth the 1 point ding.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Support Rating

Cisco Umbrella 8.0

Based on 61 answers

Since I have had to use the support and service options for Cisco Umbrella more than any of my other Cisco programs, I can say that the support for this program is really above and beyond what I have experienced with other companies. They are patient and they make sure that they fully understand the issue that you are facing before trying to diagnose and correct it.

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Verified User

Director in Marketing

Marketing and Advertising Company, 51-200 employees

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Symantec WebFilter / Intelligence Services 10.0

Based on 1 answer

I've had exactly 1 problem in 8 years, I contacted support via the customer portal, less than an hour later I found myself in a screen share with a support tech who not only fixed my configuration error, but also took the time to ask about my usage and offered some great tips on changes. It was just one support incident, but I was impressed by the speed of response to a non-critical issue as well as the depth of product knowledge the support engineer had.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Implementation Rating

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

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IT Security Manager

Reynolds, Smith and Hills (RS&H)Design, 1001-5000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

We tested a couple options before going with Cisco Umbrella. Cisco Umbrella was definitely the most feature rich option and the most useful overall. At the time we compared other options, Webroot DNS Protection had just been released and we decided not to deploy a brand new product. At that time it wasn't nearly as complete a product as Cisco Umbrella, but that may have changed in the past couple years. WebTitan required a virtual machine to run the software so it wasn't appropriate for external or remote workers.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Consumer Goods Company, 51-200 employees

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Symantec WebFilter / Intelligence Services solution was a simple 1U appliance that does everything we need, compared to the Forcepoint solution which required a virtual appliance, a database server, a log server, and a management server - the licensing costs alone make the Symantec WebFilter / Intelligence Services solution a clear winner. The Forcepoint solution is really good, it just requires such a big footprint without delivering much beyond what the Symantec WebFilter / Intelligence Services solution does with a single unit.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Return on Investment

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.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 11-50 employees

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Helps maintain network security and prevents malicious browsing
Helps to prevent dangerous internet usage from network servers
Relatively low cost means fast ROI with drastically reduced security response costs

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 5001-10,000 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

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