Cisco now offers OpenDNS Umbrella Web Filtering. Cisco acquired OpenDNS in August 2015, and rebranded the product as Cisco Umbrella.
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Zscaler Internet Access
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Zscaler Internet Access™ (ZIA) is a secure web gateway (SWG), delivering cloud native cyberthreat protection and zero trust access to the internet and SaaS apps.
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 …
Initially when we researched Cisco Umbrella we felt that Zscaler came out ahead. Umbrella has made huge improvements since then that we are planning to evaluate again.
Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) gives us better and full visibility to websites, URL, requests etc that we didn't get with Cisco Umbrella. We could block things by domain name, but seeing subdirectories and subdomains for that, we didn't have that ability. It's probably there, …
Supports zero trust access and real time SSL inspection offers better visibility into encrypted threats.
Verified User
Engineer
Chose Zscaler Internet Access
Zscaler Internet Access has significantly more configurability and capability in the platform, and can scale much better with large organizations. It is also much more affordable for our environment and gives us greater flexibility to grow into the Zscaler Platform.
It is a mature product with several features and provides more stability to the users. Also, it solves different issues that required from different vendors n the past. On the other hand, the Zscaler team has provided good support to understand the tool which has giving us a …
We evaluated Zscaler Internet Access as more attractive on financial side than competitors we evaluated and easier to setup and to use. The interaction with vendor and its partners was also top-notch.
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are broad-spectrum internet security solutions. Zscaler Internet Access unifies multiple security functions, such as web filters, firewalls, and file sandboxing into a single cloud-based product. Cisco Umbrella used to be limited to DNS-level inspection but has recently expanded its feature set to be similar to Zscaler.
On TrustRadius, both products are used heavily by enterprise-level organizations, likely due to the attractiveness of single-product security solutions for large businesses with complex security needs.
Features
Although both Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access provide similar levels of protection, they each have a few standout benefits.
Administrators using Zscaler Internet Access appreciate that the platform is relatively simple to implement and keep updated. Its cloud-based abstraction also allows users to do away with complicated local security configurations. End-users generally report minimal delays to web access. The product’s SSO capability helps keep users safe without having to log in to the service repeatedly.
Cisco Umbrella’s users appreciate that the service is lightweight, easy to implement, and comes with useful policy configurations out-of-the-box. It provides detailed statistics to help administrators understand user behavior and threat patterns, and adjust their policy appropriately. Cisco Umbrella’s DNS-level filtering is fast and responsive; users report it acts almost invisibly. It also integrates well with other web security products, especially those offered by Cisco.
Limitations
Both solutions provide web security and filtering for their customers, but each also has limitations to consider before purchasing.
Many users find Cisco Umbrella’s statistics and reporting feature to be dense and difficult to parse. Some users wish for quality-of-life improvements, such as the ability to create policy rules (e.g. blacklisting a website) directly from reports. Although the service can integrate with MS Active Directory, many administrators found the integration process difficult, a problem that was compounded by a lack of sufficient training and FAQ material.
On the other hand, reviewers on TrustRadius report that Zscaler Internet Access can be frustrating to work with in general. Administrators often comment on the poor user design when trying to use the management dashboard. The web blocking options may be too inflexible for some companies. This requires administrators to abandon the platform’s category and behavior-based blacklist capability and resort purely to whitelisting approved websites. Although Zscaler Internet Access provides detailed logging, the tools to filter those logs can be troublesome to use. The report generation options also don’t provide enough customization options for some users.
Pricing
Both Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access use a tiered, subscription-based pricing structure and do not disclose pricing information on their website. Quotes are available from the vendor upon request.
Cisco Umbrella’s feature set changes significantly between its three tiers. The DNS Security Essentials tier offers primarily DNS-based filtering and security. The DNS Security Advantage tier adds features like SSL decryption and threat intelligence tools. The Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) Essentials tier adds the complete set of security features, including file sandboxing, cloud access security broker (CASB), and firewall capabilities. Complete pricing information is available via a quote from Cisco.
Zscaler Internet Access also offers three tiered plans. The Professional Edition offers security features such as web filtering, malware protection, and file sandboxing. The Business Edition adds features like SSL inspection, bandwidth control, and cloud data loss prevention. The Transformation Edition adds extra sandboxing features, more firewall options, and CASB functionality. Complete pricing information is available via a quote from Zscaler.
Features
Cisco Umbrella
Zscaler Internet Access
Identity Management
Comparison of Identity Management features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Umbrella
-
Ratings
Zscaler Internet Access
5.0
2 Ratings
56% below category average
Multi-Factor Authentication
00 Ratings
5.02 Ratings
Endpoint Security
Comparison of Endpoint Security features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Umbrella
-
Ratings
Zscaler Internet Access
10.0
2 Ratings
10% above category average
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
00 Ratings
10.02 Ratings
Threat Intelligence
Comparison of Threat Intelligence features of Product A and Product B
Cisco Umbrella
-
Ratings
Zscaler Internet Access
8.4
137 Ratings
8% above category average
Network Analytics
00 Ratings
8.4137 Ratings
Threat Recognition
00 Ratings
8.2134 Ratings
Vulnerability Classification
00 Ratings
8.4120 Ratings
Automated Alerts and Reporting
00 Ratings
8.4130 Ratings
Threat Analysis
00 Ratings
8.8128 Ratings
Threat Intelligence Reporting
00 Ratings
8.6127 Ratings
Automated Threat Identification
00 Ratings
8.5124 Ratings
Zero Trust Security
Comparison of Zero Trust Security features of Product A and Product B
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.
It's best suited for a distributed remote workforce, securing internet access for users from anywhere. Suitable for highly regulated industries, such as banking and Healthcare. Not a good fit for an organisation where most of its legacy is in an on-premises environment. Bandwidth-intensive industries like media/entertainment firms.
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.
Single Pane of Glass Management - Everything is very easy to access and monitor the entire environment from an internet security perspective.
Install Flexibility - We can and do install Zscaler Internet Access on both our client devices as well as our SD-WAN appliances and servers. This allows us to control internet security even on devices without an agent in our networks.
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.
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.
While Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) delivers critical value in cloud security and RBI compliance, I rate renewal likelihood 7/10 due to evolving needs versus platform limitations. Below is my rationale:
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.
The application is easy to install and configure on all Windows devices. To troubleshoot any internet issue, we can easily collect all the relevant logs from Zscaler and check the exact issue. The only problem is with the uninstall, as a dedicated crew needs to provide the password.
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
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
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)
Zscaler's ZIA support is quick and knowledgable. They respond within 1-2 hours of you submitting your ticket. They are very thorough and are typically ready to jump on a live troubleshooting session. Our ZIA platform and how we use is it unique so at times tickets can be open for weeks but we alway get quality support compared to other unrelated product support in our enterprise
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.
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.
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.
Zscaler Intenet Access outperformed the competition due to its lightning-fast policy delivery and cross-compatibility. It is easy to track employee usage and block unnecessary websites, reducing company internet usage. Zscalar installed on every system increases cloud-based software bandwidth, decreasing user turnaround time and increasing efficiency.
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
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.
Has allowed us to remove other products that were suboptimal
Saved us money overall by stacking it with other Zscaler products
Created a more secure work environment for our users through intelligent internet policies that are not needlessly restrictive while still maintaining security best practices
