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Cisco SecureX [EOL] 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

Cisco SecureX [EOL]
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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)
 

Featured Reviews

Alon K - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO & VP of Cyber Solutions, Israel at Rockwell Automation
Gives our customers visibility and they don't have to go multiple management consoles anymore
One of the examples is related to forensics. The forensics are amazing because when you have enrichment, and the solutions talk with each other, when you need it, you have the ability to know everything in the organization: when, why, whatever. With just one click you have information from email, from the endpoint, from the web. Let's say that tomorrow morning, you have a ransom[ware] attack in your organization and you would like to know from which email it came, or where the customer saved the file, even though the incident didn't occur at the same moment. With SecureX, you have Cisco Threat Response inside. [With] one click, you get all of the flow. That's amazing value. That also releases resources for our customers. The customers don't have to connect many systems and try to register the event on each system, or to go to the SIEM and do a correlation. That's the one-stop shop for the customers, and that's amazing.
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 automation and orchestration tools are the most valuable features."
"SecureX takes all the separate pieces of security within your company, adds in intelligence from different sites and services on the internet, and makes them work together."
"When it comes as a business bundle, we come to customers to provide a one-stop shop, and we provide a return of value on human resources, with an XDR SecureX platform offer that customers love."
"SecureX definitely provides us with contextual awareness throughout our security ecosystem, since it allows us to integrate multiple threat intelligence feeds, as well as multiple security appliances and platforms."
"The ability to create firewalls online has been most valuable including the ability to create rules."
"This solution definitely helps us meet our cyber security goals and we haven't had any problems so far."
"SecureX has been keeping our devices safe during the pandemic and we haven't had any major threats that have come in or that have been found on our devices."
"Our customers find the product's third-party integrations valuable. Our customers are also impressed with the tool's capability to pick up third-party threat feeds and use that as part of the decision-making process."
"Cisco Umbrella offers DNS layer security, a secure web gateway, and cloud access security broker functionality."
"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."
"Overall, Cisco Umbrella is pretty easy to use, pretty easy to deploy, and it does what we want it to do."
"The most valuable features for us include tenant lock, content filtering, and DLP solutions, looking for PII and information being exfiltrated."
"The solution is very easy to manage. We found the initial setup, for example, to be quite simple."
"The insight into what our users are doing via Cisco Umbrella is valuable. Knowing that we're protecting our users as they leave our network is also valuable now because we've got more hybrid working."
"From a DNS perspective, Cisco Umbrella is the number-one technology now."
"We are not using a DNS solution, but we have been using the firewalls and all the proxy firewalls instead, which has really helped us since we now know that the entire network environment is being secured by Umbrella."
 

Cons

"The automation and orchestration could be simpler. It could be that all the other parts are that easy to use so that these stick out as a negative, but that's the trickiest part for us. The workflows within the orchestration are just a bit more difficult."
"I would like it to integrate with another solution, e.g., DNA. I would like it to connect to that solution, but not the security aspect."
"For us, the biggest sticking point is that the product is not being designed for multi-tenancy use at present, from an MSP perspective."
"Sometimes it's a little slow so that is also something Cisco should check."
"The playbooks provided with the product are great, although I would appreciate having more playbooks available. Threats are constantly evolving, so having access to updated playbooks is crucial."
"The documentation can be improved and the on-prem integration. The set of applications that it was integrated with wasn't comprehensive."
"I would like it to integrate with another solution, e.g., DNA."
"They could put in more third-party integrations, but also more playbooks out-of-the-box for automation would be helpful."
"There are some situations where we would like to block things for specific user groups. I know that Umbrella does that, but it's not that easy.... when you want a specific task for specific rules and policies for user groups, you have to go three levels down in the menu, and it's hard to find where you do that task."
"It would be better if there was a little bit of flexibility for organizations that don't have SD One in their environment. Because of the complexity of the environment, it's not easy to actually turn on the feature of the secure internet gateway for our users. We have not been able to explore that option yet."
"In the past, Cisco Umbrella has denied us access to secure websites."
"Data reporting could be improved."
"Cisco Umbrella is expensive and could be cheaper."
"Network connectivity was a bit of a challenge at the beginning, but we were able to get the right help from Cisco."
"Cisco Umbrella can be improved in terms of limited coverage and wind vulnerability."
"The detection of wireless attacks or targeted attacks reports many false rates. This is an area that needs some improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is competitive, especially for education institutions. Licensing can be a little bit difficult to navigate, especially with resellers with Cisco, but for us it has been pretty easy."
"It would be nice if they had a different pricing model. Most of our budget for projects goes towards Cisco."
"Cisco SecureX is more expensive than Trend Micro. However, considering the integration capabilities with other solutions and the quality of technical support, I believe there's justification for the price difference."
"It is free. It can't get any better than that."
"For the value you get, the pricing of the solution is excellent."
"You can spend less money for another solution, but if you really want to have a good solution you have to pay. We are happy that we are getting such a good solution for what we are spending."
"The product is absolutely free to any customer. As such, the only thing one must keep in mind is that as long as he already has one Cisco security product, irregardless of what that product is, SecureX is available for free."
"It comes free with all Cisco products. So, it is a good price."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"The pricing is great and very competitive with the rest of the market."
"The pricing is pretty fair. It's good."
"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."
"We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good."
"The price is quite good."
"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."
"There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
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 Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise51
 

Questions from the Community

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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

Kenna.AppSec, Kenna.VI
OpenDNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NHS, Rackspace, UNC Pembroke, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Missing Piece
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 and others in Cisco Security Portfolio. Updated: April 2026.
894,998 professionals have used our research since 2012.