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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 6.1%, down 10.9% compared to last year.
Cisco Umbrella, on the other hand, focuses on Domain Name System (DNS) Security, holds 18.7% mindshare, down 25.3% since last year.
IT Vendor Risk Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Bitsight6.1%
OneTrust GRC8.8%
RSA Archer7.0%
Other78.1%
IT Vendor Risk Management
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella18.7%
Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection9.4%
Palo Alto Networks DNS Security8.1%
Other63.8%
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

"The solution is user-friendly."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Offers open ports from an external point of view."
"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 found the malware protection feature valuable. It is helpful and deliverable and is able to protect my entire organization from getting compromised. It also prevents us from visiting any malicious sites which are not visible to the users."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Cisco's support is better nowadays."
"Cisco Umbrella's integration with other solutions has been a great feature in terms of ease of administration. Administration and troubleshooting are faster. The single pane of glass is great as well. Another great feature of Cisco Umbrella is remote browser isolation. With this feature, you open a virtual browser, and it's seamless to the user. If the user ends up going to a bad website that's passed a policy and something bad tries to download, it will not download into the machine because it is a virtual window somewhere in the cloud. You are protected by this feature."
"I like that it integrates with the infrastructure, and I also like the kind of data and intelligence that's built-in, as it helps create innovative reports for security."
"You can manage and create policies based on a group of users. It can permit some URLs and block others."
"In general, it increases the security level, helps us prevent threats from being accessed, and increases the visibility into internet-bound traffic, so overall it increases the internet security of the organization."
"Umbrella is probably one of the best tools out there in all the security landscape."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the Web Filtering and the APT."
 

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."
"At the moment, when the vulnerability score decreases, it remains the same for quite a while, even though issues are resolved in 24 hours."
"BitSight could improve the classes and lower-level detections of anomalies that compound the information used to compute the rating."
"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."
"The solution’s benchmarking should be improved."
"Data enrichment is the major issue."
"Its factor analysis feature could be better."
"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."
"In the way we are using the solution it would be good for us if they would do some simplification of the analytics. They need to improve this feature so they have analytics to show the content of the user activity."
"Their support should be improved. It is necessary that the support is efficient. It is not really easy to get a resolution for an issue from Cisco support. They should be faster and more efficient."
"I'd like to see improvement in its overall integration with all the other platforms."
"Cisco Umbrella should add some more documentation on proxies."
"I don't think our workers like it all that much. It has actually made employee morale worse because we block a lot of stuff."
"Perhaps an option to be able to block only specific users would be a way to improve the free version of OpenDNS."
"Looking at the full umbrella suite in the light of SASE, Secure Access Service Edge, they are clearly lacking in the inline CASB."
"I'd like to see this solution more closely integrate with other products Cisco has in its portfolio."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's price is average."
"The product has a reasonable price."
"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."
"The licensing and pricing structure of Cisco Umbrella is in line with standard systems on the market, and we have no specific requirements in this area. Overall, we have found it to be an acceptable pricing model for our organization."
"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."
"The licensing part for Umbrella is really flexible."
"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."
"The pricing is pretty fair. It's good."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"You can request an evaluation license​."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
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.
886,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.