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Cisco Secure Firewall vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 30, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.8
Cisco Secure Firewall offers ROI through reliability, preventing costly incidents, improving efficiency, and easy integration despite ROI quantification challenges.
Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Umbrella improves security, reduces costs, and enhances productivity, offering quick ROI and increased efficiency with threat prevention.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Cisco Secure Firewall users praise efficient customer service but note occasional inconsistency; direct contracts improve support quality.
Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco Umbrella is praised for efficient support and extensive resources, with minor delays in email and purchasing processes.
I have to provide many logs, yet problems remain unresolved, often requiring workarounds rather than solutions.
I have been working with them on firewalls, wireless, switching, and routing, and the support is the best.
If I have a priority one case, I am able to call the manager to raise the severity.
I would rate customer support ten out of ten due to the excellent assistance throughout the POC process.
Cisco's support is fantastic, providing assistance when needed, especially during the initial installation process.
The support channel isn't like the usual Cisco support where I could call instantly for a hardware issue like a router or switch.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
Cisco Secure Firewall is scalable and flexible for businesses, but costs and hardware vary, requiring careful needs assessment.
Sentiment score
8.1
Cisco Umbrella offers scalable, cloud-based infrastructure, enabling easy deployment and management across diverse organizational sizes globally.
Scalability presents a challenge.
Compared to FortiGate and Palo Alto, it lags in configuration and other aspects.
Cisco Umbrella is scalable for our company.
It is a scalable solution but requires improvement in specific areas.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.9
Cisco Secure Firewall is praised for stability, reliability, minimal issues, rapid updates for bugs, and exceptional performance under pressure.
Sentiment score
8.3
Cisco Umbrella is praised for its excellent stability, high uptime, and reliability despite rare minor connectivity issues.
Cisco Secure Firewall offers exceptional performance and stability.
I have not experienced any major stability issues with Cisco Umbrella.
I will give stability a score of seven, as there are some glitches from time to time.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Secure Firewall users seek improvements in routing support, cost efficiency, UI design, integration, and performance enhancements.
Cisco Umbrella needs improved integration, user experience, reporting, and regional data centers for better security and network performance.
Firepower Management Center is quite out of date compared to other vendors.
The integration between Cisco products themselves presents difficulties, such as SD-WAN configuration.
Cisco Firewalls require FMC for management.
Making it more flexible and easy to deploy, particularly when integrating with other technologies like Active Directory and proxies, would be beneficial.
The product can only shield a small area, making it less effective for larger spaces or multiple users.
I have to write an email to Umbrella support to get assistance, unlike the other products where I can call the Cisco technical assistance center and get an engineer.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Secure Firewall is costly but valued for performance, support, and discounts, appealing to security-focused enterprises.
Cisco Umbrella pricing is fair yet expensive, with flexible plans, negotiable discounts, and complex scalability for large enterprises.
It's considered a premium, but people pay that price for Cisco.
The licensing process for Cisco Secure Firewall is convoluted, involving many steps to request and enter a license key.
The only cost associated is the license cost unless additional solutions need to be integrated with Umbrella, which would incur extra costs.
The prices need to be lower as the current pricing is exceedingly high.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Secure Firewall offers robust security, easy management, and integration with high availability, scalability, and centralized policy creation.
Cisco Umbrella offers DNS-based protection, web filtering, and integration, enhancing security and productivity for hybrid work environments.
It includes features like IPS, malware protection, and other security features.
Cisco Firewall has very good features, like trusted applications and restricted access for users based on keywords.
The most valuable features of Cisco Secure Firewall include the next-generation firewall and its strong anti-malware capabilities.
The DNS layer security provided by Cisco Umbrella is very effective for our security posture, offering us vast improvements in visibility over DNS queries and potential threats.
The most valuable feature of Cisco Umbrella is its DNS security.
Cisco Umbrella offers DNS layer security, a secure web gateway, and cloud access security broker functionality.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Secure Firewall
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
411
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (7th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (3rd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Firewall is 6.6%, up from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 12.0%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cisco Security Portfolio
 

Featured Reviews

Maharajan S - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhances security with precise access control but has integration challenges
Overall, I would rate the product six out of ten. Because of the support and cost, I moved away from Cisco, but otherwise, it is a good product. Recommendation depends on the requirement. If lacking a proper team and being dependent on the OEM and partner, Cisco is not suitable. However, if the team is qualified with Cisco-certified people and the requirement is a big network, it can be considered. In today's hybrid work world, having an expanded gateway is more typical than having a single one. Thus, Cisco is unlikely to be recommended for a hybrid requirement unless in-house skills align. Otherwise, depending on partners and Cisco, it can be a risk. I rate the overall solution six out of ten.
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.
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Comparison Review

it_user206346 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 11, 2015
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto Networks
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto: Management Goodies You often have comparisons of both firewalls concerning security components. Of course, a firewall must block attacks, scan for viruses, build VPNs, etc. However, in this post I am discussing the advantages and disadvantages from both vendors concerning…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
41%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
4%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better NGFW: Fortinet Fortigate or Cisco Firepower?
When you compare these firewalls you can identify them with different features, advantages, practices and usage at large. In my opinion, Fortinet would be the best option and l use Fortinet too...
Which is better - Fortinet FortiGate or Cisco ASA Firewall?
One of our favorite things about Fortinet Fortigate is that you can deploy on the cloud or on premises. Fortinet Fortigate is very stable, reliable, and consistent. We like that we can manage the e...
How does Cisco's ASA firewall compare with the Firepower NGFW?
It is easy to integrate Cisco ASA with other Cisco products and also other NAC solutions. When you understand the Cisco ecosystem, it is very simple to handle. This solution has traffic inspection ...
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 do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
 

Also Known As

Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Firewall, Cisco ASA NGFW, Adaptive Security Appliance, Cisco Sourcefire Firewalls, Cisco ASAv, Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall
OpenDNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

There are more than one million Adaptive Security Appliances deployed globally. Top customers include First American Financial Corp., Genzyme, Frankfurt Airport, Hansgrohe SE, Rio Olympics, The French Laundry, Rackspace, and City of Tomorrow.
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 Cisco Secure Firewall vs. Cisco Umbrella and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.