TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Cisco Umbrella

Score8.8 out of 10

314 Reviews and Ratings

Get a Demo

What is Cisco Umbrella?

Cisco now offers OpenDNS Umbrella Web Filtering. Cisco acquired OpenDNS in August 2015, and rebranded the product as Cisco Umbrella.

Categories & Use Cases

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using Cisco Umbrella
Based on HG Insights installation data
View all Reviews
#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

21.1%

228 installations of 1,079

“Cisco Umbrella is used by our whole organization and it provides a big added value in terms of security visibility on company assets. We started to implement it on Cisco Anyconnect VPN client as an add-on module during COVID-19, the integration was so simple and the result was so great!”

— Sr. Network security consultant, Communication Valley (51-200 employees)
Verified Review
#2 most frequent

Manufacturing

11.5%

124 installations of 1,079

“We use Umbrella as a content filter and for malware protection across the whole organization when endpoints are not behind one of our central firewalls. I like the ease of deployment, the rich statistics it supplies, and the great AMP integration.”

— Senior Network Administrator, Manitowoc Crane Group (1001-5000 employees)
Verified Review
#3 most frequent

Information

8.4%

91 installations of 1,079

“We wanted to prevent our users from accessing potentially dangerous content urls. Also how to restrict access to certain content to certain users. With this tool we managed to prevent users from entering dangerous urls and we were able to create different Internet browsing groups.”

— Jefe de Proyecto, SIPYCOPY (1-10 employees)
Verified Review

Reviews

What users are saying about Cisco Umbrella.
View all reviews

Cisco Umbrella Review

Incentivized
Arturo Martinez
Network Engineer in Information Technology at IBC Bank (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Cisco Umbrella pretty much every day as our actual DNS threat defense.

Pros

  • The pro is it's really simple to implement it.

Cons

  • The con is that sometimes it's just too restrictive for some of the users who are actually having difficulty getting there.

Return on Investment

  • It's actually positive. It's been easy to implement and easy to maintain.

Other Software Used

Infoblox DDI (BloxOne), NetBrain Technologies

Secure your DNS layer with Cisco Umbrella

Incentivized
Mustafa LajamView profile
Network Security Engineer in Information Technology at Fakeeh Medical Group (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have deployed Cisco Umbrella mainly to protect and secure our environments, users and devices from external online threats. By securing DNS and IP layer our network is being safe from outsource traffic coming to our network either by VPN or visiting on prem hosted web servers app. Mainly we have deployed the Umbrella agents to all user supplicants.

Pros

  • Protecting DNS layer to prevent external threats
  • Easily deploy Umbrella agent to users
  • Cloud host and easy DNS configurations.

Cons

  • Umbrella dashboard can be a bit more user friendly.
  • Umbrella deployment agents sometime require reinstallations
  • Umbrella agents installed but not connecting to Umbrella cloud server

Return on Investment

  • Umbrella benefited of securing the end users which saving the company income
  • Umbrella saved the cost of falling victim to external threats by protecting the DNS layer.
  • Umbrella made it possible to connect VPN user to internal resources which greatly impact business growth.

Alternatives Considered

Cloudflare, CrowdStrike Falcon and Trend Micro Cloud One

Other Software Used

HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass Policy Manager, Netreo, BMC Helix ITSM

Team lead

Incentivized
Semih Yuksel
Team lead in Information Technology at Migros (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In our organization, We use Cisco Umbrella for dns security. Cisco Umbrella works clearly but Cisco Umbrella does not healty work without ad connector. We do not see spesific user in company network

Pros

  • In my opinion, Cisco Umbrella is User friendly and that is done well

Cons

  • In my opinion, the Ad connector has room for improvement in Cisco Umbrella

Return on Investment

  • The impact Cisco Umbrella has on our overall business objectives is that Cisco Umbrella is İmportant for us.

Cisco Umbrella Review

Verified User
Manager in Sales (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have special profiles for special users, and we have guest profiles as well on access points. So it doesn’t matter—of course, it matters who tries to use it, because specific filters and rules are applied for users depending on what they can access. Marketing has different needs than finance, and vice versa. So we basically categorize who belongs where and who can do what. We use it in that way from multiple perspectives.

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • Sometimes there are some issues if we try to block some applications. Some years ago, I remember we had an issue with Google apps, and if they ran within the frame, it wasn’t blocked. So people could easily find workarounds to access their Gmail or Google Drive folders. Now I’ve seen that’s been fixed, but still, there are some websites that run scripts within scripts or something like that and can still access it, or maybe they are rerouting somewhere. So there are some weaker spots, but I think generally it works quite well.

Return on Investment

  • Been a positive for the company, of course. At least our CTO. When we added email security and Umbrella and actually implemented it in our environment, it decreased a lot—especially phishing emails and malicious emails. It works because people are curious; they click before thinking.
  • On the business objectives, I don’t see negative impacts. Maybe from a customer experience perspective, there are people who don’t like it when they’re not allowed to do something. My cat especially—closing the door for the cat is like it screaming. So it’s the same if you’re closing the door for a human being and they like a website and now they cannot access it. So there could be some friction there, but in the end, when people get adjusted, it becomes a new norm, and everything works.
  • So I think the main issue is when people are not able to do something. And of course, there were some outcomes where we had to fine-tune things because, as I mentioned, marketing people have different needs. Sometimes, when accessing certain sites, there were some false positives, and downloads were blocked. But of course, there’s always a way of solving this.

Other Software Used

Webex Meetings, Webex Calling

Umbrella Covers You.

Incentivized
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Cisco Umbrella is deployed in our environment for web Content Filtering. We have deployed the Cisco Secure Client on all desktops and portable devices (Surfaces and laptops). 1400+ devices are protected by Umbrella. This protects our staff and devices from dangerous websites and content.

Pros

  • Content Filtering.
  • Reporting of users and devices.
  • Defining of multiple policies.
  • Protecting multiple domains.
  • Protecting numerous sites/IPs.

Cons

  • Support could be a tad easier to contact. It seems they've made great strides since day 1.
  • Better documentation on how to do certain features.
  • Deploying the agent should be easier - especially if we're doing a remote push/install.

Return on Investment

  • Agent cost - more agents installed - better the price.
  • Paying for features you don't need, other products will give you what you need for less money.
  • Umbrella is worth it, as long as you use all the features.

Alternatives Considered

Barracuda Web Security Gateway and Titan Web

Other Software Used

PDQ Connect, Snagit, KACE Systems Deployment Appliance (SDA), KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA)

Related Products

Products similar to Cisco Umbrella that may also meet your needs.
All comparisons
Akamai CDN
CompareLearn more
Zscaler Internet Access
CompareLearn more
Cloudflare
CompareLearn more
Infoblox DDI (BloxOne)
CompareLearn more
Netskope Intelligent Security Service Edge
CompareLearn more