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Our backup to Securely
Updated September 08, 2023

Our backup to Securely

Shaun Stockton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Umbrella

Currently Cisco Umbrella is being used to web filter our school district. All Windows PCs are set up via DHCP to point to the Cisco Umbrella DNS. This is used as a secondary web filter to Securely. We are mostly a Chrome-based school district and use Securely to filter those. Any device on our network points to Cisco Umbrella DNS.
  • Web filter.
  • Ease of use.
  • Reporting.
  • Nutanix AHV support.
  • Chrome plugin.
  • Interface is not as easy as other products.
  • Helps keep Cyber insurance.
  • Had to find other solutions for Chromebooks being taken come.
  • Helps keep away malware.
With a client for Windows they reach out to the cloud for web filter. We do not have many Windows devices left in our district so we do not implement this. All kids and most staff have Chromebooks. As I have stated I do not believe they have a Chromebook plugin.
We currently do not integrate Cisco Umbrella with any other product. Is is very complimentary to using Securely for Chromebooks. It's nice for on-prem Windows devices because we do not need to install anything. We just point their DNS to Cisco Umbrella via DHCP. Any device joining are network is filtered.

Do you think Cisco Umbrella delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Umbrella's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Umbrella live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Cisco Umbrella go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Cisco Umbrella again?

Yes

It is well suited in a Windows environment. So far I have not found a Chromebook plugin. Windows you can install a client if you like. It's great to be able to filter through DNS even for BYOD. So when someone connects to our network DHCP points them to Cisco Umbrella DNS and they are filtered.

Resilience and Reliability

It helps with resilience by filtering devices from websites that good potentially be malicious. This is very valuable because the highest risk to security is typically the end users. If malicious sites are blocked through Umbrella then they malicious site will not be infectiong our systems. This is all about how well a company sets up, implements and updates Umbrella.
When referring to Cisco Umbrella leaders can become more resilient to cyber threats by implementing a good webfilter. Surfing the web is one of the top ways devices get infected. Especially through emails with links, if a user clicks on a malicious link in an email a good webfilter will block it. A key is to stay on top of blocking malicious sites.
It is a pretty good product. It does what it is supposed to without letting users bypass it. I wouould look into other solutions like firewalls to block the use of VPN to get around Cisco Umbrella. There are other products out there that do the same thing with more or less features, but Cisco is a name you can always count on.
The best insights when implementing is to know your organization. When filter do you want to apply it to all users or group them in different levels so that some have more access to others. What type of websites would you like to block? Know your categories and even if you select a category you can still whitelist a website.
I have never had an issue with the availability of Cisco Umbrella. It is simply Linux installed on a server. If your server goes down then there could be some issues. This is why you would want to setup multiple Cisco Umbrella servers and push them out via DHCP so that if one goes down the device can rely on the others.
We do not have Ciso deeply integrated into any other system. Simply we use the DNS filtering and the Chromebook client. DNS is easily pushed out to devices via our DHCP server. When it comes to Chromebooks the Cisco Umbrella extension can easily be pushed out to via the Google Admin Console.
  • As DNS servers
  • Filtering Chromebooks when not onsite
  • To whitelist sites even when categories are blocked

Cisco Umbrella Support

I have not had to use the support myself yet. When the product is set up it runs and works just fine. We occasionally have to add websites to the deny or allow list when issues arise. This is really a pretty simple task.