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Cisco Umbrella

Cisco Umbrella

Overview

What is Cisco Umbrella?

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

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Recent Reviews
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Awards

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Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Video Reviews

2 videos

Convenient and Secure | A Cisco Umbrella Review
02:10
Cisco Umbrella Review
13:09
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Product Details

What is Cisco Umbrella?

Cisco Umbrella, a key component of Cisco's secure access service edge (SASE) architecture, integrates multiple security services in a single, centrally managed, cloud-native solution to secure access to the internet and control cloud app usage. By unifying secure web gateway, firewall, DNS-layer security, threat intelligence, and cloud access security broker (CASB) solutions, Cisco Umbrella helps reduce the resources required for deployment, configuration, and integration. And, by delivering this functionality from the cloud, you can scale to meet the needs of a remote and roaming workforce, shifting network perimeter, and multi-cloud environment — all while simplifying security. Umbrella can be easily integrated with an SD-WAN implementation to provide a combination of performance, security, and flexibility to delight both end users and a security team.

Cisco Umbrella Features

  • Supported: DNS-layer security
  • Supported: Secure web gateway (full proxy)
  • Supported: Cloud access security broker (CASB) functionality
  • Supported: Cloud-delivered firewall
  • Supported: Interactive threat intelligence
  • Supported: Integrates with SD-WAN

Cisco Umbrella Videos

Cisco Umbrella Integrations

Cisco Umbrella Competitors

Cisco Umbrella Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Chromebooks
Supported Countries190 Countries

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Cloudflare, Akamai, and Zscaler Internet Access are common alternatives for Cisco Umbrella.

Reviewers rate Availability highest, with a score of 9.5.

The most common users of Cisco Umbrella are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(236)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-4 of 4)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IT protects our Internet's infrastructure to enforce security and block malicious activity . it gives us visibility across all remote or on-site devices, ports and prevents against phishing, malware, and ransomware attacks. It is easy to manage DNS service combined with CIsco's trust and lots of third party integrations to enhance the security posture in our company.
  • DNS service
  • Protection against phising,ransomeware etc
  • Visibility across full infrastructure
  • secure web gateway
  • Application control risk assessment
  • On premise agents could be lighter
  • Ability to quickly onboard additional users
  • Content filtering functions
DNS Filtering it is the best setup which can be used as a DNS solution which is very effective for on-premise and remote users and other features like anti-phishing, anti-malware, and anti-ransomware security are amazing and for the most extended view, they efficiently stop attacks across all ports and protocols . Tt is less appropriate in case of linux devices and Nutanix integration .
  • saving in terms of hours and money, as well as getting effective security with a high uptime guarantee with this single solution.
  • improved visibility and performance
  • Excellent security features
  • Integrations with other softwares have helped
DNS filtering is always updated in Cisco Umbrella. It secures IT assets while being used on any data network. Visibility to DNS accesses ensures that users are not compromised. Remote login security is the best security feature which ensures protection from outside threats while accessing office network from remote offices and other branch offices.
The interoperability with other products of cisco like VPN connectivity applications is easy and better to manage.We have benefitted as most of our networking devices were of cisco make and it is having better integration with these devices as compared to other dns solutions and it offers better feature and better control for these devices.
  • Webex Meetings
  • Webex App
  • Cisco Catalyst Switches
  • Cisco Umbrella
heterogeneous environments as different kinds of devices are installed for various purposes. Sync between these devices for a better experience and handling these many kinds of devices was a big challenge as organization is having presence at multiple places and we have to deal with latency related issues apart from connectivity issues sometimes,Cisco has helped in providing seemless experience while doing webex meetings.
Our coworkers ,Employees and customers are getting used to this new way of working and they are enjoying the associated challenges with it and learning technological aspects to master this and with the help of cisco user friendly solutions it has made their task easier as well admin tasks easier to provide this services.
Cisco innovative solutions have helped us in implementing the world class solutions satisfying our coworkers,employees and customer needs in a delighful experience and still keeping the admin jobs simple and min time consuming apart from satisfying all the desired security standards .It has helped us in convincing the management for implementation of these solutions
Technical support responsiveness better integration with cisco devices easy to manage and vast ecosystems of cisco devices. Cisco devices and apps are satisfying all security standards. much easier to handle for administrators while experience of using is very good for coworkers ,employees and customers .Cisco has always delighted its customers by way of innovative solutions and customer support
  • Working from an office or other company space
we are in journey of implementations of hybrid work where coworkers,employees and customers and partners can work from any of our sights and for this purpose desired infrastrcture is being deployed at various our sites and customer sites along with desired applications for accessing our applications while deployed at those locations.
Cisco as atechnological vendor is having great reputation for its products and it has always excelled in the respective fields whether it is networking devices like router switches etc or video conferencing solutions or IT security solutions ,we have selected Cisco for the vast experience and reputation and our previous customer experience
  • Webex
  • Microsoft Teams
A cyber resilience strategy is vital for business continuity. It can provide benefits beyond increasing an enterprise's security posture and reducing the risk of exposure to its critical infrastructure. Cyber resilience also helps reduce financial loss and reputational damage which is the most critical in any organizations consideration while making any decision on purchase of infrastructure or services.
They can get the trainings on new technologies for their team members in the organization for implementing cyber resilience which will benefit in terms of business continuity. Awareness session for common users of services for do and don't to maintain the cyber resilience in the organisation.
Best set of features and the one of the best support mechanism.
Even the third party supplier of the product was having good knowledge of features and able to implement as per our requirements
Availability is always great in case of cisco umbrella, we have faced only rare incidents where some issue we have faced otherwise it is always up and running.
Best integration with cisco products and for other products also having all the desired features.
  • For cyber security control
  • infrastructure monitoring
  • great visibility
10
They are the part of IT administrator team, and they manage the cyber security section of the company and provides the desired services across the company.
10
Trained on various kinds of devices and latest cyber security trends and different kind of attacks.
  • Providing services to remote locations
  • better visibility across devices.
  • better cyber security control
  • For cloud operations
  • for Website Contol
  • Browser related contol by way of isolation etc
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
Support availability and Price for the features offered.
Selection criteria will be same .
  • Implemented in-house
Yes
Planning phase first it was planned which sites are the priority sites where the desired solutions should be implemented before other sites as these sites will impact more no of users and more critical areas of opeartion.
Pilot run for these sites were done and after testing and found satisfactory use of these devices it was implemented at other secondary sites
Change management was minimal
Change mangement was minimal as the planning work for implementation was already done in very detailed manner and all the activites were planned as per the priority and critical nature of those activities and all the risks associated were included in the plan along with mitigation plan for those so changes were required to the minimum extent only
  • implementation at remote sites
  • Permission from concerned authorities
  • Technical knowledge of our staff with respects to products
  • Online Training
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.
Accessibility to support executives those are having great product knowledge and able to resolve most of the issues related to configuration or operation at their level only and in very few cases it need to be escalated to next level and most of the issues were resolved at first level itself.
No because of budget constraints.
Yes
yes, i have received quick response and the issue was resolved very promptly.
Cisco provided the support even during the holidays time
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.
  • Visibility of assets and users
  • Ransomware controls
  • DNS
  • incident response
  • control on mobile users
  • App integration
  • nutanix AHV integration
  • linux devices integartions
Yes, but I don't use it
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 .
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
it is always delightful to deal with cisco and their sales process is very user friendly as they are having vast network of partners who work for them for sales as well as integration partners. As our process requires quotes from multiple vendors it was vey easy in case of cisco as they have multiple partners
No
  • NA
  • NA
  • NA
  • Latest features
  • more security features
  • microarchitecture based
No
No
Randy Zuehlke | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use OpenDNS across the entire organization, and it is currently a stop-gap measure until we identify and acquire a secure web gateway.
  • Keeps users away from identified spam or malicious sites.
  • Easily configured to add blocked sites of your own.
  • Great reporting features.
  • Timely and valuable response support from Help Desk.
  • 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.
Obviously where the user is not sophisticated enough to change the DNS servers utilized then the product is great.
  • Positive ROI when the service keeps users from going to malicious websites.
  • We had it deployed while users were internal and external with the AnyConnect Umbrella module so our protection was both on and off the corporate network.
  • Great product. Has paid for itself two time over.
We have it deployed with our Cisco AnyConnect VPN client and the Umbrella roaming client module. It has been great at extending the DNS and URL filtering beyond our corporate firewalls. We have not had any reported instances of the protection not working while outside the corporate network. The granular visibility by user is great for incident response functions.
We are primarily a Cisco shop, so we already have Umbrella integration with Cisco Threat Response and SecureX to manage our threats across our entire Cisco suite of security products. We also have Cisco AMP and FTD's on our perimeter. So, having Umbrella provides great DNS protection within our environment. We do have a 3rd party SIEM/MDR service provider that ingests the Umbrella logs for additional visibility in the DNS realm.
Nothing is perfect, but so far Umbrella has stood up to all of the major DNS vector threats (e.g., CC) we have encountered from APTs to criminal elements attempting to penetrate our network, whether to steal IP or install malware on our network. In conjunction with our suite of other security products, Umbrella has withstood the test of time. We have had this product on our network for over 3 years now with no complaints.
We looked at the other option of full web content filtering and decided this was a better approach for us. We really did not evaluate other options like Zscaler or Sophos.
1400
Our entire organization from accounting to the engineers and architects use it.
2
Umbrella once it is up and running is low maintenance with just upkeep with black lists and white lists.
  • DNS Protection
  • URL Filtering
  • Content Filtering
  • None.
  • Can't think of anything now. It does what it does.
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.
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
Price was an important factor.
I would not.
  • Implemented in-house
  • Testing some of the advanced features like DNS tunneling
  • Reporting activity by individual user
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.
Yes. We have a small security team and extra help helps. Having fewer team members to trouble-shoot because of the scope of responsibility does not leave time to conduct these efforts.
No
When we were implementing Umbrella to give us detailed reporting by users and their specific website activity, it required some configuration of our internal servers. Cisco provided us the needed engineers on several calls to complete the effort successfully.
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.
  • DNS Filtering
  • URL Filtering
  • Content Filtering (e.g., blocking gaming and pornography)
  • Application blocking
Yes
Have not used it. Requires an MDM application to run on mobile devices. We have not rolled one out yet.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have deployed it to the entire company, in addition to their mobile devices (laptops) when they are offsite. For us, this solves the web filtering that in the past was cumbersome to manage. We did not want a heavy proxy web filter, but a general best effort one based on DNS. This product does that for us as well as generates great security alerts on malware using DNS.
  • Security.
  • Webfiltering.
  • Easy setup.
  • Reporting.
  • MacOS web filtering IP layer.
  • Mobile device - iOS and Android.
  • Webhooks.
This product works with hybrid cloud or companies fully in the cloud, but identity management could get harder. We have 500 users. Sometimes, due to the nature of DNS requests, it can be hard to see the forest through the trees or get false positive hits because some ads on a legitimate website loaded something bad. Overall the security it provides is very good and the insight into web browsing is very helpful. Being a SaaS product makes it easy to set up and maintain.
  • Helped with security.
  • Prevents basic, bad website categories without overloading helpdesk with proxy issues.
  • Good mix of security and end-user experience.
With the small application, it provides IP layer filtering. On MacOS it is iffy, but on Windows it works great. This helps the system understand what user is on a laptop at that time. If some devices don't support this you can set public DNS to their system and it will provide a very basic level of coverage. With us being more remote the coverage expanded easily to our workforces at home and everyone has been very happy.
We have not integrated with any third parties yet. Although, we have looked into the integration with Cisco Meraki access points for filtering at the AP level before the traffic goes any further. However, COVID has caused us to shift some priorities. We do not have a SEIM to log into, but we are evaluating a few solutions right now that Umbrella supports.
They provide a very quick response if I need to email or call in. They also have chat bots, which are decent in providing some help, but the documentation answers most of our questions because it is well written.
We used a product before this called iPrism by EdgeWave and also briefly tried Barracuda Web Security in the cloud. We were having such a large influx of service desk calls about proxy-based layer 7 web filters that we wanted to step back and pick something more at the DNS level, to protect our employees but not hover over their social media use, etc. Cisco will also employ a layer 7 proxy if a site is suspicious, which does require us to push a certificate out should we want that feature. For most policies we have it enabled.
Veeam Backup & Replication, Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), AWS Lambda
Yes
EdgeWave iPrism - we were having a lot of issues with the layer 7 proxy and end-users getting frustrated with security impeding work but not much pay off from a protection standpoint.
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
We love the cloud model and how it's structured as DNS Security. This helps users get "invisible" protection and allows us to feel good about trapping malware and keeping an eye on certain bad site categories.
We would not change anything. We are very happy.
Karl Fulljames | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We are an MSP with 7000 endpoints that we support. Umbrella is not optional for our clients. While antivirus is required, it serves as a checkbox. Umbrella is what does all of the heavy lifting for us on the antimalware side of things.
  • Cisco umbrella protects the whole network. While you can have an agent installed on machines to provide more protection abilities and filtering, you more than likely have IoT devices on your network and you want to make sure those aren't working with bad actors.
  • Umbrella is lightweight and the geniuses behind it are constantly finding ways to thwart evildoers.
  • When we initially put in umbrella we were spending over 40 hours per month on fighting crypto viruses and that dropped to 20 hours for the next 12 months. It has paid for itself easily.
  • Every once in a while it conflicts with an app and we need to turn it off to troubleshoot, see it working again, then create a ticket to get support to resolve the issue.
Great product that saves us SO much time by blocking more bad actors than I could ever count.
We've seen the number of ransomware attacks drop substantially after putting Umbrella in place
  • The amount of times Umbrella has stopped crypto from entering an environment is countless. If crypto manages to get on a desktop, it doesn't let it communicate back with the bad actor server and notifies us in Connect Wise that a computer needs a virus cleaned off.
  • We can look at our antivirus suite and see that maybe a dozen items are blocked in a month. Looking at umbrella, it's literally millions of bad data points being rejected.
Especially during a pandemic, protecting users when they are not behind a firewall can be incredibly hard to accomplish. Thankfully we already had Umbrella in place to help protect endpoints that are roaming around the world. We've been notified regularly of ransomware attacks that have been thwarted by Umbrella.
We use the Meraki suite of products but haven't seen an integration worth using.
I believe there's an integration with cisco anyconnect but that's very new in Meraki land and we haven't tested it yet.
Every once in a while Umbrella will get in the way and cause issues with a certain application. Creating a ticket with Cisco will normally take a few days to resolve. In the meantime we have to shut off Umbrella for the client to work. This needs to be shored up.
We've looked briefly at the DNS protection from Webroot. I think Webroot is a fine base, but would you prefer your 1999 Camry that works most of the time or would you rather be driving in a 2019 Acura NSX that does everything so well and makes you look like a hero using it?
10000
All business functions. This number is for both us and our client base. Umbrella is mandatory for our clients protection.
40
Junior to senior level techs can work with umbrella. It is not a complicated product.
  • Protecting against ransomware
  • Protecting against IOT attacks on your network
  • Uncovering Shadow IT that may be persistent within the organization
  • We've been able to use Umbrella to uncover Shadow IT that might be within an organization
  • We've been able to do some basic level of web filtering to help with situations that warrant it
  • We are able to use Umbrella to get some base level of reporting for business owners that want to see how often sites are used
  • Roll it out everywhere and get everyone protected. Figure out the rest later
We've renewed it ever year without question
No
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
It was easy to justify the cost of Umbrella based on the amount of effort we were spending cleaning up ransomware attacks
There are a number of new players in this market space now. I'd review against them and try to determine if we need the Rolls Royce or the Honda Fit
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
  • The Bria phone app was broken by Umbrella and we had to disable it for those phone users until it was resolved by cisco
Very easy to roll out using the RMM scripts that were pre-written by the cisco crowd
i did not
Yes
It was a bit slow to get to the resolution but it was resolved
Sales support and initial rollout was fantastic. Great team.
It's a fantastic product that works better than advertised.
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