Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Axis Security vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
12th
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
8th
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (4th), ZTNA as a Service (12th)
Axis Security
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
20th
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
10th
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
13th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
ZTNA as a Service (13th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
2nd
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Robert Oglesbee - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy, improved reliability and performance of our connectivity, and greatly reduced costs
Atmos is good for securing infrastructure from end to end, detection and remediation of threats, but there may be a few features that could be added to make it a little easier for networking and security folks to analyze the traffic. There are bad actors out there and they may or may not show up through the tool. That's something they can add. They need to improve the networking and security tools a little in the troubleshooting and "bad-actor" areas to help us analyze security threats a little better. They have some things built in, but I would like to see more advanced tools. There are major vendors out there, and if you use their VPN connection that's not going to help you without buying one of their other products. So that's a similar type of situation. However, they do give you a little more bang for the buck when it comes to monitoring. So I can see an improvement there, in Atmos, in the future.
Alessandro Braga - PeerSpot reviewer
Has comprehensive reporting and scales easily
The reports and notifications are the most useful part of the platform. As soon as you deploy the security layers, the reporting is very comprehensive. It helps you to have, at a glance, a clear view of what's going on. The integration between Cisco Secure solutions is pretty good. We have been able to deliver the solution in a few days. The integration of Umbrella and Meraki is literally one click away from the customer. One of the reasons why we chose Umbrella was its capability to perform end-to-end detection of malware and web traffic. In the last two years, we have been covered, detection has been faster, and we have been able to contain some potential threats along the way. We use the Umbrella stack from DNS protection to web and content protection. Our workforce is made up of 150 Macs; thus, we use Mac as a client. We have some PCs and integration with the network in our co-working spaces. Utilizing Cisco Secure has helped us save time. Being a nimble organization, we don't have IT staff who are fully dedicated to security. The maintenance is also not very time-consuming. In terms of the amount of time saved, it would be half an FTE a year, given the fact that we are informed and notified when threats arise. In terms of operating expenditures, we have been able to negotiate a better cyber insurance rate with our insurance company due to the fact that we are covered by Umbrella. Another benefit of using Cisco Umbrella is application scanning. We have been able to understand how many other applications we were consuming in the cloud, address them, and save money. Without Cisco Umbrella, we would not have realized that we had so many cloud applications in the company. We have been able to close at least four or five applications that were duplicates of others that we were already using in the company. We have realized approximately 10,000 to 12,000 euros a year of immediate savings in an organization of 150 people, which is quite significant.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"From a use-case scenario, what I like the most is the plug-in. I like the fact that we can do the filtering of these devices offsite independent of the network they are connected to, and we do not have to have traffic coming back inside our network."
"The way the access connectors work is valuable."
"I would give it an A-plus for securing access to our applications, devices, and network. It does an extremely good job. Our security folks have analyzed it and tried to find loopholes, but they found none."
"The most valuable aspect is its ability to restrict unauthorized access, ensuring that only approved devices can connect to the network. T"
"The most valuable part so far has been Axis Security's ability to create identity connections to various servers, allowing users to access them. By doing so, we've managed to replace any old or existing VPN access with Axis Security. We are slowly but surely getting rid of our traditional VPN."
"The entire suite and the entire ZTNA process are very valuable."
"My overall rating for Cisco Umbrella is ten out of ten."
"Web proxy adds an effective layer for security."
"For me, it's important that I get a connection to my corporate network in a secure and fast way. This product just runs in the background and doesn't need any attention. For me, as a user, it's perfect."
"Cisco is a very efficient and on-point solution that controls the whole network and settings on one page. We can monitor the entire network."
"It offers good visibility for the Administrator. The administrator has full visibility of what is blocked or has the knowledge of where users go when they are surfing the internet."
"The weekly reportings are great. The investigation is super and the application management is equally great."
"There is much differentiation within the licensing so if anyone wants DNS security from the DNS security log, we are there already, and if anyone wants to go to a secure internet gateway, that is also available. We can get the integrated cloud DLP license keys. That is a good benefit with Cisco Umbrella. You can get a complete solution in a single licensing."
"The implementation is pretty easy."
 

Cons

"The reporting feature needs improvement. It doesn't give you the expected results. It is quite difficult to get the specific reports needed, and it is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform."
"Fold that in with the risk intelligence they're getting from all of the different subscriptions they are a part of. Now, these security companies subscribe to things like emerging threats, databases, etc. You can fold all this intelligence to decide what's happening on an endpoint. I would love to see them start moving into that space. That would compete directly with Microsoft. Maybe that's why they haven't. Having that ability native within the solution would be great. The other area in which I would love to see improvement is more detailed descriptions of why they block websites."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"Its pricing could be better."
"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers. This type of encryption is tough for any appliance in a BYOD environment."
"They need to improve the networking and security tools a little in the troubleshooting and 'bad-actor' areas to help us analyze security threats a little better. They have some things built-in, but I would like to see more advanced tools."
"I would appreciate more automated learning capabilities or increased integration with other security tools, allowing us to establish automation."
"The support team should be more skilled in offering assistance."
"I would like more statistics about what's going on in terms of usage. There is little-to-no usage reporting. That's one thing we've requested, and I think they're working on it."
"I would like more detailed logging in the Axis Security interface."
"The locks and management could be better. The product is fairly new, and it may take some time to get all the features up and running."
"I'd like to see this solution more closely integrate with other products Cisco has in its portfolio."
"We need to work on integration as it is very complex."
"The API is very Cisco orientated, which is absolutely fine if you're using Cisco Firepower and SecureX kind of products, but if you want to integrate with third parties, it is a bit tricky. There are some key API connectors for the more prevalent SIEM tools. I would really like to see in Cisco Umbrella the ability to create customized reports and then assign the rights to view these reports to people within a group. I should be able to create a customized report, which is viewable by anybody who has the rights. I should be able to create groups within Cisco Umbrella, and then assign reports to groups and have those reports split out automatically only to those groups. I can kind of do it by restricting my email list, but it is a half-complete way of doing it."
"There are some situations where we would like to block things for specific user groups. I know that Umbrella does that, but it's not that easy.... when you want a specific task for specific rules and policies for user groups, you have to go three levels down in the menu, and it's hard to find where you do that task."
"It's a very new product, so it's quite immature at the moment. It can be more user friendly."
"I would like to see integration with SecurNX in the future."
"We faced an issue regarding virtual appliances (VAs) during deployment. They could improve the quality and management of the virtual appliances offered right now. You can't see much because it is a Linux machine, and they have customized it. You don't have any route access to the machine, only seeing limited things in it. When we opened a ticket, they didn't know much about VAs themselves. So, that is where it is lacking right now. I know this will improve in the long run."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"The pricing is quite fair. It's better than what we gave up, which was Cisco AnyConnect."
"The pricing is very competitive from what I've seen."
"The pricing is great and very competitive with the rest of the market."
"​The pricing is fair."
"I am not sure, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think it's $1.00 or so per device/month."
"Cisco solutions are generally perceived to be rather expensive. We have constant internal discussions as to whether we should offer lower-priced security solutions from some of the competitors."
"You get what you pay for if you break the solution up into tiers."
"There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."
"Cisco uses subscription models for the pricing and there are three subscription plans."
"There are no hidden costs with Umbrella. Everything is included in the package."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
14%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
I have the same complaint about them that I have about other software companies. Sometimes when you call in support, ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We are a PreK-12 public school district, and we use iboss to filter internet content for our students at home and sta...
What do you like most about Axis Security?
The most valuable aspect is its ability to restrict unauthorized access, ensuring that only approved devices can conn...
What needs improvement with Axis Security?
The support team should be more skilled in offering assistance.
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zs...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-nat...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
No data available
OpenDNS
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Cardenas Markets, Armis, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Visionworks
Chart Industries, City of Aspen, Eastern Mountain Sports, FLEXcon, George Washington University, Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, Ohio Public Library Information Network, PTC, Richland Community College, Smart Motors, Tulane University, VeriClaim
Find out what your peers are saying about Axis Security vs. Cisco Umbrella and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.