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Axis Security vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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)
10th
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
8th
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (11th)
Axis Security
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
20th
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
10th
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
12th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
ZTNA as a Service (12th)
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
113
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Axis Security is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 18.4%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

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.
Rohan Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent
The most valuable thing is how easy it is to deploy. We did it with 9,000 users at my last job, and it took a week to get to all the endpoints. Doing that without having to physically touch all those endpoints was very simple. The single pane of glass management makes it very easy to manage your rollout. We get a lot of "single panes of glass" and, eventually, you need a pane of panes of glass. But it's always good to have a clear and graphical view, and Umbrella's is nice and easy to read. Definitely, of the panes of glass that we do have, it's one of the easiest to use. The single pane of glass is good to group users together and separate people out. Some people need different types of security. Some people are more vulnerable. Some have more highly valuable assets, like C-suite people. It's really good to be able to have end-users defined inside of that. You don't have to jump around. You don't have to figure out who's who. It's all done through one pane of glass. What most people don't realize is that it's running in the background, which is a really nice aspect when it comes to security. Often, when you deploy a security tool, it takes up CPU performance. Everything slows to a grind. But Umbrella is so simple and easy and it doesn't affect the end-user experience. It's the best of all worlds. It's nice when people realize that they're being protected when they go to the wrong site. I think people are happy that they're protected, but it's nice that they rarely notice it. It's generally easy to maintain network connectivity, but with Umbrella, the nice part is that whichever connectivity you're on, you're always secure. With Umbrella, as long as you're online, you're going to be protected.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"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."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"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."
"I rate Axis Security ten out of ten."
"The most valuable aspect is its ability to restrict unauthorized access, ensuring that only approved devices can connect to the network. T"
"The way the access connectors work is valuable."
"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."
"It blocks malicious DNS queries daily which is very beneficial."
"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."
"It is a good cloud-based solution for DNS security."
"We are very new users of the solution and are still in the exploration stages, but we are happy with the product thus far."
"I like the DNS layer security."
"Reports provide insight into internet usage and information helpful in creating QoS rules."
"We've found it to be stable and good for our customers."
"For us and for customers, it's the ease of integration with Meraki. It's just a couple of clicks. That allows us to deploy very fast, and it doesn't change the way a customer uses his service. It's just more secure."
 

Cons

"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You feel that you are running into that support wall."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc. It is easy to gain access if, for example, hackers obtain my username and password."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"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."
"The support team should be more skilled in offering assistance."
"I would appreciate more automated learning capabilities or increased integration with other security tools, allowing us to establish automation."
"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."
"There should be a notification alarm with geofencing."
"I would like more detailed logging in the Axis Security interface."
"The reporting could be improved by way of the information that's displayed. For example, when you pull a report, it shows an internal employee going to many websites, but you can spin that right down by saying a lot of it is being cached."
"Cisco Umbrella is difficult to manage and needs to include a dashboard. It needs to improve pricing as well."
"We need to work on integration as it is very complex."
"It needs better integration with external threat feeds to improve scoring."
"It would be good if the more complex versions of Umbrella are simplified so that we can offer them in a more standardized way. We, as a telco, do not operate the same as a traditional integration partner would, who can sell all its services. We try to have a standardized approach as much as we can so that we can sell the solution with as many services added to it as possible. If you look at the structure of businesses in Switzerland, 95% of them have 10 persons or less, and they do not have a security specialist. Therefore, the higher the automated and standardized features, the better it is for them."
"It's a very new product, so it's quite immature at the moment. It can be more user friendly."
"We would like to see the enhancements made to the EDR, as we see features that are running endpoint management."
"The price could be better. The price is definitely a bit high, but we have to pay a premium for Cisco products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"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."
"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 price could be lower."
"In the region I'm from, that of EMAR, Europe, the Middle East, Eastern Asia and Africa, our organizations do not have many liquid cash assets, so the price could be better."
"The pricing is great and very competitive with the rest of the market."
"There are three models for licensing with different feature sets."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"In terms of licensing, we're not able to be extremely clear with the customer because it's based on their reporting. It's not based on the actual traffic. If they say they have 50 users but they have 80, we'll just buy for 50 users. That's something where we'd like to have more flexibility."
"Our costs were negotiated, and they are okay."
"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."
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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
8%
University
5%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctl...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We used it for student and faculty filtering on campus.
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Axis Security?
Axis Security is affordable. While I cannot provide financial specifics, we have never had complaints about pricing.
What needs improvement with Axis Security?
There should be a notification alarm with geofencing. When a person is at the gate, a notification alarm should alert...
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
 

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: April 2025.
848,253 professionals have used our research since 2012.