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Bitsight vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Bitsight
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
IT Vendor Risk Management (3rd), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (5th)
Cisco Umbrella
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Bitsight is designed for IT Vendor Risk Management and holds a mindshare of 6.9%, down 11.2% compared to last year.
Cisco Umbrella, on the other hand, focuses on Domain Name System (DNS) Security, holds 20.5% mindshare, down 25.2% since last year.
IT Vendor Risk Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Bitsight6.9%
OneTrust GRC8.7%
SecurityScorecard7.5%
Other76.9%
IT Vendor Risk Management
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella20.5%
Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection10.7%
Palo Alto Networks DNS Security8.1%
Other60.7%
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

SA
Senior AIML Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Continuous monitoring has strengthened external security and improved customer trust
There are areas for improvement; we do notice sometimes finding vulnerabilities which gives us visibility to find them quickly. However, there could be a mechanism they can build on top of that for validation as they identify the issues. What will the real risk be for that identifiable issue? Sometimes it could be open because of the traffic; how they detected it could be seen as vulnerable, but upon testing, it might not be a real issue. It could be a false positive because there could be a honeypot that we built. My thinking is about validation, so if they can build that validation part before they expose the risk to the specific asset, that would help. Additionally, based on their reporting, they could also build risk scores and prioritization, which would also aid us. I would suggest adding dashboards and custom reporting, which could help us by enabling rich custom reports with filters. That is especially for leadership because they will not look at each technical area, but overall they would be looking at the risk score and what the assets or critical exposure areas are. Customizable reporting based on requirements would be valuable. I chose 9 out of 10 because the reporting and dashboards would be the first thing I would consider for improvement, and then the second is about the validation part, which could probably improve to 10 out of 10. I cannot think of too much for additional improvements. Maybe some good automation with the API solutions that could be integrated with the CI/CD pipeline or DevOps tools we are running would also be automated and tested.
BB
Senior Network Engineer at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
Ensures comprehensive protection with seamless threat logging and efficient policy management
My favorite feature of Cisco Umbrella is probably just the DNS and the fact that when a security threat happens, all of that gets logged in their Umbrella portal, and it's very easy to find who's been accessing the site and how many people have accessed it, so that we can go to them and make sure they're not compromised. The features of Cisco Umbrella benefit my company by providing less time to search for things through logs, to look for what we need. It's just one place to go, and we just search for it, and we find it really fast. The fact that there's a virtual database that has all that information is great on our portal.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Bitsight has positively impacted my organization by improving security and customer trust, giving us continuous monitoring so we now find misconfigurations within hours instead of days or weeks, which directly improves our overall security posture and reduces risk as we catch high-risk exposures early, especially unexpected cloud assets or testing endpoints that accidentally went public."
"The product helps us identify the vulnerabilities of internet-facing applications."
"The best thing about BitSight is the comprehensive list of risk vectors, covering compromised systems, diligence failures, and behavioral anomalies."
"If you are exactly looking for external attack surface monitoring, and you are exploring options, then Bitsight is a very good option that you can explore."
"BitSight provides information about the external servers, botnet infection and credential leaks, and also offers open ports from an external point of view, so we benefit before any adversary misuses the particular servers that are exposed externally."
"Bitsight gives me a holistic view of my entire security posture, which is something any organization would want to have after getting a tool such as Bitsight."
"Offers open ports from an external point of view."
"My advice to others looking into using Bitsight is that it provides a lot of information that was not available before, and it is especially good in recon as it can identify many things about an organization that have never been found earlier, making it a valuable tool."
"We use Cisco Umbrella for web security and it's very good."
"By using Cisco Umbrella, you are sure of inspecting all the traffic. Whenever the user machine is connected to your network, it is inspected. That's the best thing. It means you are sure that nothing is being exported or imported without your choice. That is the best feature."
"We can have a full overview and a quick overview of all the DNS requests. For us, it's quite important."
"There was a positive effect on productivity because we could track and confront the users that were frequently using social media or streaming video during the work day."
"The customer experience is very good, and the product improves security posture."
"It was really valuable to me in protecting the outgoing data of the company, we got no viruses and no issues on any computer on the network, which is quite unusual, and it was a very successful product that I'd certainly recommend to any business looking to just add another layer of security around their company."
"The most valuable feature for us is the DNS-based protection."
"Overall, it has been pretty helpful for what we're using it for."
 

Cons

"We found that some of the findings are clear false positives, but they still report that, and based on that, the rating goes down until we rectify them."
"There are areas for improvement; we do notice sometimes finding vulnerabilities which gives us visibility to find them quickly. However, there could be a mechanism they can build on top of that for validation as they identify the issues."
"Its factor analysis feature could be better."
"The solution’s benchmarking should be improved."
"At the moment, when the vulnerability score decreases, it remains the same for quite a while, even though issues are resolved in 24 hours."
"I chose 8 out of 10 because if we receive invites from clients every 45 days, our subscription ends, and we have to renew it."
"BitSight could improve the classes and lower-level detections of anomalies that compound the information used to compute the rating."
"Since if the number of findings increases for a particular month, your overall risk score decreases, which can become a challenge for a team working on this particular issue."
"The product can be pretty expensive."
"The design of the screens could be improved. Sometimes you're trying to look for information, for what you think is critical that should be on that first screen of the dashboard so that you can quickly take screenshots to have people help out, but you have to hop between screens to find little pieces of evidence."
"If you wish to inspect all the traffic and it's integrated with Cisco AnyConnect, all the traffic basically goes through Cisco AnyConnect, which is not a good idea. That means you need to have more internet capacity as a data sampler, so in the case of a split tunnel, we cannot inspect the traffic that is being migrated through the local internet. I'm not sure whether there is a possibility wherein Cisco Umbrella can also inspect the traffic that is outside the AnyConnect tunnel."
"Basically, it is not fully mature, which means it's not yet ready to replace the WSA, however, over a period of time, it could to a certain extent."
"They need to improve analytics so they report on more of the specifics of user activity."
"The only thing I can think of is that I'd like to see a little more flexibility in policy creation. The way that policy is currently structured is like a "first hit succeeds" kind of policy. It would be nice if it were more hierarchical."
"Looking at the full umbrella suite in the light of SASE, Secure Access Service Edge, they are clearly lacking in the inline CASB."
"Cisco Umbrella could be improved by making the policies more granular, as in some cases, it's difficult to find the correct link to open a specific site securely."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's price is average."
"The product has a reasonable price."
"There is a subscription cost."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."
"Licensing with Cisco can be a little complex, but I think it's comparable with that of other similar products. It's always hard to put a price on security, but the price is fair for the value it provides."
"Cisco should make the solution cheaper."
"The pricing model is easier compared to some of the other solutions, and it is also competitive."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"When talking about Cisco solutions in general there pricing model is horrible. For example, you can sell a Meraki-based solution, but if the customer starts shopping around, someone is going to have access to the pricing at a level that you cannot compete because they do not have uniform pricing. Not everybody gets fair pricing. Unless you are one of the real major corporations selling the solution your ability to compete is impossible. Cisco will acknowledge the situation and assure you next time it will be in your favor but it never becomes favorable for you. Cisco is not very good in this regard. However, Umbrella is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise51
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with BitSight?
There are areas for improvement; we do notice sometimes finding vulnerabilities which gives us visibility to find them quickly. However, there could be a mechanism they can build on top of that for...
What advice do you have for others considering BitSight?
My advice for others looking into using Bitsight is that it is definitely a great tool, especially to identify blind spots. If your applications are internet-facing and you have customers using you...
What is your primary use case for BitSight?
My main use case for Bitsight is finding vulnerabilities in the wild, especially in internet-facing web applications and networks. A specific example of how I have used Bitsight is that we do not k...
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. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security functi...
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-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Umbrella?
The pricing for Cisco Umbrella is fair compared to other platforms out there for DNS security. We acquired it as a bundle with other Cisco purchases.
 

Also Known As

No data available
OpenDNS
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cabela's, Belgium Center for Cybersecurity, Fordham University, RBC, Max Life Insurance, Schneider Electric
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 SecurityScorecard, OneTrust, BitSight and others in IT Vendor Risk Management. Updated: March 2026.
885,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.