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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
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
IT Vendor Risk Management (3rd), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (5th)
Cisco Umbrella
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
125
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 (3rd)
 

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 5.8%, down 10.8% compared to last year.
Cisco Umbrella, on the other hand, focuses on Domain Name System (DNS) Security, holds 17.5% mindshare, down 25.0% since last year.
IT Vendor Risk Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Bitsight5.8%
OneTrust GRC8.7%
RSA Archer7.1%
Other78.4%
IT Vendor Risk Management
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella17.5%
Palo Alto Networks DNS Security9.1%
Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection7.3%
Other66.1%
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

"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."
"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."
"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."
"Bitsight has positively impacted the organization by helping with vendor benchmarking and providing outside-in cyber visibility across hundreds of vendors, which is the biggest plus."
"The best thing about BitSight is the comprehensive list of risk vectors, covering compromised systems, diligence failures, and behavioral anomalies."
"Offers open ports from an external point of view."
"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."
"I prefer BitSight due to its patch management capabilities. The score is a valuable feature. I have contacted the customer support through e-mail and their response rate is fast. I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"It provides centralized, device-agnostic management of the Internet experience."
"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."
"Cisco Umbrella is a totally different solution; they are the first to come up with this idea of security and it's a totally new concept of security for everybody, for every time, real time, perfectionism."
"Umbrella has helped my IT staff in two ways. First, our security team was able to get more insights into the users, their devices, and the sites they browse. Second, our system administration team was able to manage DNS resolutions in a way that is more accessible and less intrusive to our domain system."
"We immediately block impersonating users from accessing services over Cisco Umbrella-controlled devices."
"The primary advantage of Cisco Umbrella is its ability to safeguard our users no matter where they are working from - whether it's in the office or remotely, as per the new work model that has emerged globally. This integrated security solution has simplified our lives by combining all the necessary security measures in one product. Additionally, deploying the product is all it takes to protect all our users."
"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."
"Cisco Umbrella provides a cloud management system where we can manage every client from a single workspace in our portal, and the single pane of glass management is user-friendly."
 

Cons

"At the moment, when the vulnerability score decreases, it remains the same for quite a while, even though issues are resolved in 24 hours."
"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."
"Data enrichment is the major issue."
"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."
"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."
"The solution’s benchmarking should be improved."
"I would rate Bitsight closer to nine, or somewhere between eight and nine, because the reasons I do not rate it a ten relate to opportunities for improvement I mentioned, such as broader risk, cyber risk intelligence, and emphasis on supply chain risk intelligence."
"There may be room for improvement in the methodology for identifying findings, as occasional errors occur on the technical side."
"Cisco Umbrella can be improved in terms of limited coverage and wind vulnerability."
"Looking at the full umbrella suite in the light of SASE, Secure Access Service Edge, they are clearly lacking in the inline CASB."
"I feel that the application needs other characteristics that are available with other applications in the market."
"The product can be pretty expensive."
"Perhaps an option to be able to block only specific users would be a way to improve the free version of OpenDNS."
"Instead of creating a TAC case, it would be better if we could just call in and they could answer us immediately."
"It would be useful if they had a malware protection engine running inside their own VM."
"Cisco Umbrella should add some more documentation on proxies."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product has a reasonable price."
"The solution's price is average."
"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."
"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."
"Pricing and licensing of Cisco Umbrella is a bit confusing because you have to separate the DNS solution and the full-feature solution. Cisco in Portugal helped us understand which one was the right one for us."
"You can request an evaluation license​."
"Cisco should make the solution cheaper."
"Cisco Umbrella is not a cheap product. However, it's not a matter of the cost; it's more a matter of the value of security. It is easy to measure this value when you have a security incident. I think the price is a good trade-off for a product that can help you avoid security threats."
"It has a reasonable price. It is certainly not as expensive as it used to be. It is in line with other offerings on the market. There are a number of different flavors of Umbrella. They could bring Umbrella SIG down a bit because its price is a little bit high for what it does, but I also understand why its price is high."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Non Profit
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise52
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with BitSight?
There was one case scenario where a lot of parked domains were observed for a particular organization that we were monitoring via Bitsight. Bitsight flagged a missing web application header althoug...
What advice do you have for others considering BitSight?
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. I have not worked upon any other solution...
What is your primary use case for BitSight?
I was primarily using Bitsight for attack surface monitoring and external attack surface monitoring use case. I was monitoring all the alerts and the risk score that Bitsight provides. We mainly fo...
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: May 2026.
896,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.