Cisco Umbrella Reviews

We're using that solution to essentially sort DNS attacks. We also use it to add that increased layer of protection at the DNS level for our customers. That's what we're using it for right now. We're trying to cut back on cyberattacks, malware, phishing, man and control callbacks, et cetera.

We had a fairly large DNS attack and that made us realize we needed basic DNS protection in place, however, we wanted something that was a little more advanced. That really pushed us over the edge for that enhanced DNS protection. It's got that ease of installation and billing along with just being a great product that's been tried and tested. That made our decision.

When we had that DNS attack, we saw a huge spike in issues. It's definitely gone down by a fair amount since implementation. We're seeing 800 fewer trouble tickets compared to the previous year. We can see (via the dashboard now) that we have billions of threats coming in every day. We're adding that extra layer of security for our customers. We're breathing a little easier now as it's actively protecting against all these threats that are coming in every day.

It helps us lead processes and blocks malicious DNS queries daily, which is very beneficial. We've seen a reduction of about eight hundred trouble tickets compared to the previous year. The customers are having a better overall experience as less bandwidth is being taken up by DNS acres. We're not having to constantly police that part of our network. It's a little bit of a better process and a better experience for our customers. 

We use the Easy Connect product, which works well.

The solution enables you to extend data protection to devices and remote users or distribute the locations. However, most of our use for the product is at the DNS level for our entire network and not really at the device level. We do have another added layer from a different company for the device security component.

The solution is pretty flexible.  

With the reduction of trouble tickets, it would be reasonable to say the solution has saved us money on security operations. 

Umbrella discovers new vulnerabilities every year. That's absolutely important to us. As our technology changes, the way we're attacked changes and will continue to change. It's important for us to be made aware of new threats and protect against them. 

The pricing could be improved.

I've been using it for almost a year, since February 2023.

I did not previously use another solution to this extent. 

We've seen an ROI with our trouble ticket call volumes going down. We've saved an estimated $30,000 so far this year.

Start working with your rep early and budget well in advance. Billing is fairly straightforward, but can be expensive.

We're customers and end-users.

We do not plan to purchase any additional security solutions in our environment in the near future. We have other layers of products in place already. 

For someone who's researching threat detection and prevention solutions, I'd have them consider Cisco Umbrella. You can see the threats that are being blocked, and you can help customers understand that you're doing everything you can to make sure that their online experience is safe and protected. People are working from home. People are doing telemedicine. There's a lot of more sensitive information being shared online. That in and of itself is a good selling point. You want to make sure that your customers are as protected as possible.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is for filtering and security reasons. We send our DNS queries to Umbrella. It will see if we go to a site that has malware or a virus and it will stop it. It detects if the URL has malware.

The multilayers of defense have improved my organization. We have a lot of defensive layers and DNS queries from Cisco is one of them. 

The most valuable feature is its ability to detect if a URL has malware or is vulnerable.  

I would like for their support to be faster. 

We have been using Cisco Umbrella for six to seven years. 

I have never experienced a stability issue where the site went down. 

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. 

Support doesn't always get back to me right away but they'll send me an email with the solution. It's not critical. I don't have an issue with it. I would rate their support an eight out of ten. I took two points off because it can take a day or two for them to get back to me. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy. There is good documentation. I can deploy it within a day or two. There's a page that shows you the health of the agent. It makes me more comfortable knowing that my configuration is healthy. 

I did the deployment myself. 

We have definitely realized ROI through the protection Umbrella offers. 

The pricing is decent. The price is user-based, per month. 

I would rate Cisco Umbrella a nine out of ten. I also use it on a personal level. It helps me to protect my endpoints so that they won't go to a malicious site. 

I am a Solutions Architect in a mining company, and the size of the company is around five to 10,000 employees.

We wanted to replace an existing solution and give a better experience to our users, and we wanted to have a superior solution that could give us insights into how secure our users are and what their browsing behaviors are to track down and narrow down issues. Of course, the first and foremost use case is protecting our users. Cisco Umbrella gave us all those things in one and having it integrated into our environment was a very seamless process, and we're very happy using it right now.

It gives you a single pane of glass to see what's going on with your environment and your DNS queries. It has consolidated a lot of previous efforts into the visibility of what's going on.

It saves time. You're protecting your users in a manner that you don't need to do anything after. If, for example, somebody tries to open a malicious website or tries to download something, it just won't allow that. That's it. Previously, there were loopholes and ways for users to get around the proxy, which gives you more work. In that sense, we're saving the support team's time. When you're investigating a problem, it quickly gives you insights into what you're looking for as simple as possible. You can see when a user was accessing a website, was it blocked or was it allowed? Of course, you could test connectivity for specific users and computers. That saves time in troubleshooting. It saves hours per week in comparison to the previous solution. 

The agent that gets installed on the endpoints or on people's laptops and devices is a Cisco AnyConnect Umbrella module. It's one of the most impressive things because you are able to protect your users anywhere they are.

Its reliability and the response time of the support team can be better. 

In terms of features, I know Cisco Umbrella has a lot of potential, and I'm not sure if we're using it to its full potential. I'm not aware of all the functionality, and for the functionality for which we're using it, it has been great. There probably is one place for improvement. We'll love to see any new features, new functionalities, and maybe better integration with other cloud platforms, but for us, it's good as it's now.

We've been using Cisco Umbrella for around four and a half years.

In terms of availability, we've seen it down a couple of times. It has become very stable recently, but we've seen it down. Maybe that's one area that they can improve on. It was not for a long time, but it caused a little panic among our users.

Scalability is happening with ease with Cisco Umbrella because you're either deploying another appliance in your branch office or another office, or you're pointing the endpoints to the existing appliances in your head office or any other place, and you're good to go. It's very scalable and easy to use, and you can have a new office ready in a day or less.

It's great. We've had some cases and issues, but they were resolved quickly and in a timely manner, and we're happy with it. I'd rate them an eight out of ten. They could be a little quicker, but technically, they're great.

Positive

The previous solution was a proxy solution. I'd not state the name of the solution, but it was a proxy solution. It was heavy. It was slow, and there was no easy way for tracking old things. And of course, you can't protect your users outside of the company environment.

I found it easy to implement. Cisco Umbrella has great documentation and great support teams, and implementing it was very easy for us. We just deployed the appliances, and we got through the initial basic policies. We were prepared to do it, so for us, it was very easy.

We did it ourselves. The documentation was good. We're experienced architects and network-oriented guys, so for us, it was just a great experience doing it.

The return on investment is in terms of time savings. It saves time and helps focus on other important things instead of digging into problems with users.

Because we're mostly Cisco-oriented, the solution was obvious. It was already integrated with all of our equipment. We already had Cisco AnyConnect, so it was just a matter of adding the module to it. We're Cisco-oriented, and that was just an obvious choice.

Do your math and check the competitors, but in the end, you won't find a much better solution that's already integrated with your Cisco environment. If you are a Cisco company, that's the way to go.

I'd rate Cisco Umbrella an eight out of ten. 

It's for the VPN nomad connection. We capture all the DNS requests, log them, and check them in case of troubleshooting for security or malware issues.

Through Cisco Umbrella, we managed to deploy our M365 system and our connection. It was very good for deploying access to those cloud systems. It was a very important requirement to check all the connections from outside when the laptops are remote, and we managed to capture all the DNS requests. It was a security requirement.

It hasn't saved us time, but we managed to deploy the connectivity to the cloud system such as Azure or M365.

We can have a full overview and a quick overview of all the DNS requests. For us, it's quite important.

Cisco Umbrella is a good solution. It meets all of our needs. They can maybe simplify the configuration. For example, sometimes, the proxy part is quite difficult, and that's why we didn't deploy that.

We've been using it for two years.

We have no issues at the moment. It has been two years, and we did not have any issues. So, for us, it's quite good.

We have about 6,000 devices. So, I have no problem with scalability.

Their support is very good. We have a lot of feedback from our partners and our Cisco contacts. They get in touch to be sure that we are using the product correctly and whether we have any questions. I have had no problem with them. It's super good. I'd rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We didn't use any other solution previously. It's the first time we are using such a solution.

We were already using Cisco AnyConnect, and for us, it was a simple plugin. We didn't spend much time. We did some tests. We worked with a local French team, and after that, we deployed it. For us, it was very simple to deploy.

We deployed it ourselves with the help of a partner in France. The partner company is called Nomios, and we had a good experience with them. They know a lot of Cisco products, which is very good. They are into security and network architecture.

We haven't yet seen an ROI.

Its price for us is quite expensive because it's a subscription, and we just use it for the DNS log. So, for us, it's quite expensive.

We didn't evaluate any other solution. We went for Cisco Umbrella because we already had Cisco AnyConnect. We just used the plugin, and it was very simple for us to deploy it.

I'd rate Cisco Umbrella an eight out of ten. For me, it's quite a good product. 

We use Cisco Umbrella for DNS security. We also have the roaming clients deployed on user laptops.

We use it for roaming clients. We also push all our DNS traffic to Umbrella. We do not allow any other DNS traffic. That is kind of how we have fully implemented Umbrella.

We were looking to bridge the gap for DNS security, especially for mobile clients. We wanted to be able to put that roaming client on their PCs and kind of bring that together.

It has improved our organization from a security posture perspective. We feel more confident now knowing that we can block phishing attempts or any type of malware that is DNS-related. This is a very nice feature that provides peace of mind.

Umbrella has absolutely helped us remediate threats more quickly. In fact, it has blocked a lot of threats that may have been able to go through in some instances. Knowing that they are blocking it and being able to find the PC that potentially has the threat on it, that has been very beneficial.

Umbrella has been very good for employee morale. It makes our job a little bit easier.

Cybersecurity resilience is very important for our organization right now. Umbrella does a good job of blocking ransomware, malware, bad threat actors, and phishing attempts.

Being able to control policy sets has been a very nice feature. Being able to have appliances that are separate, where we can send DNS traffic, has been very beneficial as well.

It is a good product for helping workers feel safe, secure, supported, and included. Having the roaming client is probably one of the key factors in being able to do that.

Cisco Umbrella provides single-pane-of-glass management, which is pretty important for my organization. We have a lot of products, including security products, that we manage. Being able to see a lot of those data sets in a single pane of glass is very beneficial for my team. We enjoy having it. It is very easy to use.

It is not very difficult to maintain network connectivity. 

We would like them to add more features to Cisco Umbrella.

We have been using Umbrella for about four years.

Stability has been great. Obviously, there have been some hiccups here and there on the connectivity side. That is out of our control, but it is understandable, as things are in the cloud. I have had more issues with Amazon than I have had issues with Umbrella, where I have had a very good experience.

It is very scalable. If I had more sites, all I would have to do is deploy more VMs and point traffic that way, which is very nice.

We are using roaming clients. We are also using the DNS appliances that we have deployed. I have over 15,000 users and 10 locations. We have deployed each appliance at every location, and then point traffic to that. There are 20 different servers that we are using for Umbrella.

The technical support has been very good. I have not had to open many tickets. I have only opened two in the five years that we have had it. Those two times, the support was very nice and supportive. I would rate them as 10 out of 10.

Positive

We have actually been using Umbrella since it came out. Previously, we just ran our own DNS. From a security product perspective, Umbrella has been the only DNS solution that we've used.

The initial setup is very straightforward. There is a lot of documentation available.

It was deployed in-house.

We have seen ROI. We can show our leadership that we are blocking and preventing things from coming into our network. Not only that, but from a threat perspective, if any of those things were able to infiltrate, then possibly the remediation damages would be way more than the cost that I am paying for Umbrella today.

As an educational partner, we get better licensing structures. We are very happy with that. It has been very nice that Cisco has partnered with the educational sector to bring that. 

Look for all the gaps that you have in your network, then try to find a product that is more rounded to essentially fill those gaps.

I would rate Umbrella as 10 out of 10.

We use Cisco Umbrella for DNS filtering and as a secure gateway.

Users need to have a bit of understanding regarding setting policies in Cisco Umbrella. I would like to have more applications being recorded. If you want to do things the right way in the console, functions have to be more automated in terms of classification, application, and recording.

I have been using Cisco Umbrella for three years.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten for stability.

Around 170 users are using Cisco Umbrella in our organization.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten for scalability.

The solution should provide more helpful technical support to help us understand some settings.

Neutral

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup a seven out of ten.

A basic setting can be done in minutes. If you want to go deep, it would take several hours. The solution's deployment time depends on how deep you want to go.

The solution’s pricing is reasonable.

Cisco Umbrella filters more traffic and gives us insights into what's being accessed. Cisco Umbrella is useful for protecting endpoints and internet access. Cisco Umbrella is deployed on the cloud in our organization.

Cisco Umbrella is detecting threats more often because we've set it up more effectively than the other security solutions we have in place. It's catching threats in the first place because it's more strict.

We're using the Meraki firewall. Some Cisco Umbrella settings are directly linked to the Meraki console, which was quite easy for us.

Cisco Umbrella is very efficient and needs to be deployed on all endpoints. The solution requires some settings. Depending on how much you set it up, you should check its usage because it would require some day-to-day administration.

Overall, I rate Cisco Umbrella an eight out of ten.

In general, we use it for the security of our network.

We wanted to get an idea of what's happening outside of our network and what's coming to our network. We had no way to know before and we were just sitting there waiting for something to happen. At least now we can be proactive.

It has helped us to be more secure. Cisco Umbrella allows us to see threats in real time. We can also see if there are any bad actors inside of our network who are trying to do malicious things. It gives us a quick glance at the situation, at where we are and how vulnerable we are.

Another definite benefit is that it has helped us to remediate threats more quickly.

It's very important that the solution helps support hybrid work. In the past, we might have had one or two people who were working from home because of illness or pregnancy. Now, with 60 percent of our people working from home, Cisco Umbrella has really helped us out with threats that they might not even know exist on their side. We can monitor them and be proactive about them.

Also, if it didn't have a single pane of glass, we would not be using it. The single pane of glass gives you a one-stop shop. It's like going to Home Depot. You find all your stuff there. You can see all your threats and your endpoints. It's a very important feature and makes things very simple.

Another point is that it's very easy to maintain network connectivity.

I have been using Cisco Umbrella for about eight years.

The stability of Cisco Umbrella is very good.

I haven't had to scale it, but I would assume the scalability would be good.

We haven't contacted them from the time we were up and running.

We did not have a previous solution.

The deployment was straightforward.

I used an integrator, Harness LLC, and the experience with them was all good.

Our ROI is due to the level of threats that we don't have to deal with, threats that are being blocked by Cisco Umbrella.

There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost.

We looked at Trend Micro, but that was several years ago.

Look for programs that have a track record and that are proven. No matter what any individual might say, that person can't do it by themselves. They have to have support, and Cisco Umbrella is a good support.

Resilience in cyber security is like raising kids. You really can't stop. You have to be resilient continually. Every day is a different challenge. Just because you're good on Tuesday doesn't mean you're going to be good on Wednesday.
Cyber security resilience has been key for us, with people going home to work or to other places to do their jobs. That resilience keeps them working and keeps our network safe.

I love it. It's almost like trying to look at WiFi. You can't see the WiFi signal with your naked eye. It's the same with threats. You can't see them by just walking around the building. With a tool like Cisco Umbrella, you can see what you have and how to fix it.

For our employees, it means that their systems are working. They have no idea what we're doing behind the scenes to keep their systems working, unfortunately. I wish I could say, "Hey, guys, today Cisco Umbrella stopped 84 threats."

I had implemented Cisco Umbrella at a previous company. I'm now working at another company where I'm not using this solution. We've got another solution here.

The policy of the company was to make sure all outgoing traffic was sent through a filtering service, and OpenDNS, and then Cisco Umbrella, was chosen for that purpose. Once it was taken over by Cisco Umbrella, it had far more capacity and far more functionality written into it. 

In terms of the deployment model, I just used Cisco services. It would be through Cisco's private cloud. My site wasn't big enough. So, I didn't deploy the Cisco service on-premises. 

It was really valuable to me in protecting the outgoing data of the company. It was good for reporting. Every computer had the Cisco Umbrella program installed. So, I had good reporting on any issues related to outgoing data, such as whether there were any phishing or dodgy sites connected. It protected that part of the business.

A combination of Cisco ASA, Cisco Umbrella, and Cisco AMP connecting to the SecureX portal gave me all-around security for the site because they all reported into a central reporting server. If there were any issues, I could have got full details, even if a crypto locker attempt was made. I never had any security incidents that I'm aware of. So, it was a very effective tool.

It kept itself updated. So, I didn't have to worry about continuing to push out new installs of the program.

I felt safe, supported, and secure, and so did the owner of the company. It worked silently in the background, and no one else really knew it was working on their computers. When we went into lockdown with COVID, I was happy knowing that all the computers that left the business had the app installed and were going to be functioning securely. We got no viruses and no issues on any computer on the network, which is quite unusual. A lot of other people or a lot of other companies I spoke to reported that they had quite a few issues.

It worked 100% in terms of applying and maintaining network connectivity consistently across all workplaces. We never had any issues. The only issues we had were when sites might have been blocked because they were suspected of being within a filtering group. It would report back to the user and say, "This site is currently blocked by your administrator. Please click this button. An email will be sent to your administrator, and they can resolve the issue." I would then get the email, and I'd look at the site, and then I'd release it through whitelisting. It was very user-friendly in that regard.

It certainly helped to remediate threats more quickly because I was able to stay free of any virus outbreaks. It definitely locks out that part of the transmission where the virus will go out and attempt to download a package.

It worked silently and didn't use too many computer resources. It was really silent in its operation on the network. It had a really good impact on me. I'd love to put it in my new company, but we've gone down a different pathway. That's being resolved through Office 365 now, and I'm not proposing to change that technology.

I wanted to ensure that all outgoing traffic went through Cisco AMP servers. So, if we did get a crypto locking incident or any malicious sites that wanted to direct traffic to particular websites, they would be unable to do that because they would be blocked by the Cisco Umbrella DNS servers.

It also did website filtering for preventing access to porn sites and gambling sites. It had all other standard features. It had a good section where you could whitelist and blacklist websites.

I was able to implement it myself. It was really easy to install. You could install it on a server locally if you want to. If you have the biggest site, you would do that, but for my site, it was just directing all the traffic out through the Cisco Umbrella DNS. It was really handy. When the owners of the company went overseas, I knew that they would be secure because even if they were not on the company network, they would still go through the Cisco Umbrella servers. It was a complete solution for protecting the company with outgoing data.

The other useful feature was that if we were to get a malicious actor onto a server or service running somewhere, it would still have to go out through the Umbrella servers. So, it would more likely be blocked through there. It had multiple features that were super handy.

It had the ability to do a lot of app control. So, every single app that went through that portal was registered, but there is a general issue with the whole app control. As soon as you add a mobile phone to your network, all of the apps get registered through the system, and you can approve, reject, or just let them go through. When I looked at it, it was impossible to manage app control. There was just so much data. I didn't apply that service because I just didn't have the time to manage it. It would be good if there was a way to categorize applications. However, that's dangerous too because you can be turning off an app in a group because you don't know what it is doing. It could be a vital company app. So, App control is the main area in which they need to keep working.

Originally, Cisco Umbrella was called OpenDNS. I have used OpenDNS and Cisco Umbrella for about six years.

It is very stable. I never had any issue with it.

It is highly scalable. You don't even have to install it on your computers. You just change your DNS, and it'll start to work internally immediately. I never had any issues with performance or anything like that. I'm sure it would suit larger companies as well, but larger companies would install their own Umbrella service on their own systems and deal with the capacity that way. So, it is very scalable.

Their support is good. They always got back to me and answered issues. They showed me how to do my own debugging. They were always very professional and helpful. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

We previously used proxy servers, but I wanted a more modern interface, and that's why I chose Umbrella.

It was super easy. I'm a general IT person, and I was able to deploy it. I read the documentation, changed some settings, changed the DNS on my servers, and then rolled it out to the team. It was a pain-free implementation.

I deployed it. It was pretty intuitive. I didn't have a consultant help me. I was able to implement the solution myself and manage it myself. That's a really good rating for an application. There are different systems you get to manage these days, and you can't have training on all of them. Because I rolled it out, I knew I rolled it out properly, and the system was working effectively. It was good. I liked using it.

The return on investment was that we kept the company secure. Nothing happened, which is the ultimate return on investment.

It was a little bit expensive on a per seat basis, but the company I was running was only a midsize Australian company, and it was a reasonable budget per computer for that system.

It started off being a free product, and then Cisco bought it, and it went to a reasonable price. I was using Cisco AMP as well. So, my per computer cost was reasonably high, but for a small company, it was within an acceptable level.

Not having reviewed other systems, I can't tell how they compare, but I know that when you do special security licensing with Microsoft, it is on par. So, it is probably standard within the industry.

At the time, we were using OpenDNS, and then OpenDNS went to Cisco Umbrella. Because we'd had such success with OpenDNS, we just stayed on with the product. So, I didn't evaluate any other products at that time.

It is just another layer that you need to wrap around your company to keep it safe unless you could just shut off that possible attack vector from external parties.

To leaders who want to build more resilience within their organization, I would say that they've got to keep doing it, and they've got to keep working on it. I'm constantly looking for better ways to secure the company. Cisco Umbrella would be a very useful addition to their set of tools. 

A part of my plan in the long term was to implement the full suite. I never got around to that, but it was really good to know that I could go right down to app-level control. It was a very successful product, and I'd certainly recommend it to any business looking to just add another layer of security around their company.

In terms of providing a single pane of glass management, security does involve multiple systems, and I could log them all into the Cisco SecureX system. From there, I could get my single point where I could resolve issues with viruses, et cetera. So, in itself, it was a single pane of glass for DNS protection. It was fine, but I don't think there is ever going to be a single pane of glass anywhere. You're always going to have many different systems that you're using, but overall, it had a lot of features. It did the job it needed to do.

I would rate it a 9 out of 10. It is just app control that I want them to develop more.