Item: Cisco Umbrella
Rating: 6
Author: Mohammed Younus Siddiqui

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Umbrella

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Cisco umbrella is used to protect your users from DNS based attacked. It provides DNS security and it is cloud based. If you are a educational institution then you can even get it at a discount. You need to setup one time and forget it. All the users in your institution will be covered as long they use the dns server of cisco umbrella.

Pros and Cons

Pros

DNS Security
Reports
DNS Lookup

Cons

Alerts
Configuration Changes implementation
Support

Return on Investment

High DNS Level Security
Quick DNS Resolving
Delayed Time to Change

Security Coverage

An app by cisco umbrella needs to installed on any endpoint which is outside the firewall. Once the app is installed, the same policies which are applied to inside firewall is also applied to outside firewall. You can even have separate policies for those roaming users. For remote branch offices, you will have to add their network address in the cloud portal and then they will also be covered.

Integrations

As we do not use any other cisco security product, there was no integration which was performed. However, Cisco provides a free tool called SecureX, however we did not get any support or resources to implement it and use it. It is said that secureX will help in incident investigation.

Alternatives Considered

The main reason for selecting Cisco Umbrella compared to any other solution is the cost. The cost of licensing DNS security from Infoblox is too high. Also, setting up infoblox to capture user information is complicated. Moreover, cisco umbrella is a cloud service and can be accessed from anywhere.

Key Insights

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?

Did implementation of Cisco Umbrella go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Cisco Umbrella again?

Other Software Used

ManageEngine Endpoint Central, SentinelOne Singularity, Netskope NextGen SWG

Likelihood to Recommend

Cisco umbrella can be used in any organization as it is cloud based. However, you will have to allow your DNS traffic to leave the organization to get resolved by cisco umbrella. Two drawbacks is that the support is very basic and takes days to resolve the ticket. Even the policy changes made in the portal will take three hours to implement.

Cisco Hybrid Work

Hybrid Work Model

Working from anywhere (e.g., coffee shop, airport)
Working from an office or other company space
Working from home

Resilience and Reliability

Resilience

Resilience in DNS infrastructure is very important. It is the first point of reference for any communication over the network. If the DNS server is not available even if connectivity is there, the user will not be able to get requested content.

Leadership in Resilience

The need to hire people who are experience or train their existing people so that they can become experts in the technology invested. Also make sure that they have redundancy for the technology so that backup is available at all times.

Likelihood to Renew

While cisco umbrella is good, there are many competitors who are providing more features at a lesser price.

Reliability and Availability

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.

Using Cisco Umbrella

Users and Roles

2000 - All our users use cisco umbrella for their dns query resolution. Our users include students, staff and faculty.

Support Headcount Required

3 - We have cybersecurity personnel who handle and support cisco umbrella. however, since it's a cloud service there is no need to actively work on it always.

Business Processes Supported

DNS Security
URL Filtering
User Activity Monitoring

Future Planned Uses

Remote Work
Securing BYOD devices

Cisco Umbrella Support

Support Rating

The support has improved over the years. Before it used to take days to get a response from the support. However, in recent days we can expect within one day. Moreover, there is a technical checkup by a senior technical manager quarterly to access the proper usage and to take any feedback.

Cisco Umbrella Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Knowledgeable team Problems get solved No escalation required Support understands my problem Support cares about my success	Difficult to get immediate help

Premium Support

We didn't purchase premium support as it costs more. Moreover, they assign a technical engineer who will always be the first point of contact with us. However, we don't feel the need to have this feature as it does not benefit us in any way.

Bug Resolution

Exceptional Examples of Cisco Umbrella Support

It's a normal support and we never had any need for any exceptional one.

Using Cisco Umbrella

Usability

It's is very straight forward to use cisco umbrella. All the rules are in one place, and you just have to place them in order of execution. However, if you want fine tune the categories then you will have to go through multiple sub menu and categories.