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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

Dene Lewis - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Technical Strategy and Direction CAE Technology Services Ltd at CAE Technology Services Limited
A scalable SaaS based platform that helps with cyber threat intelligence and automated hunting
I would rate Cisco SecureX a ten out of ten. I find the product to be a fantastic platform. If you are eligible, start using it straight away. The best way to evaluate it is to start using it and see where it fits within your organization. I think it helps our customers really deliver their SecOps goals, and I see it as a core foundation of CAE's own security strategy going forward. Our partnership with Cisco is one that was built on trust over a long period of time. This has enabled us to work together to be able to provide the solutions that our customers need to drive their organizations forward. The value we add as a reseller is being able to work closer with our customers, understand them, and get intimate with their organizations. That enables us to offer them the right solutions that will help them achieve their goals.
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 most beneficial feature of Cisco SecureX for cybersecurity efforts is its integration with other Cisco solutions and the environment. This sets it apart, as its APIs and overall integration capabilities are very strong. Additionally, its detection capabilities are commendable."
"The ability to create firewalls online has been most valuable including the ability to create rules."
"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."
"Its cybersecurity and resilience have been extremely important for our organization."
"If management wants to ingest reports at a high level from all of the different products, they would only need one login to SecureX to view this information as opposed to separate logins for each of the integrated products."
"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."
"SecureX enables us to have all the threat intelligence and threat event data in one place."
"Using SecureX, we can aggregate the data from all our security products, automate many of our tasks that we had to do manually before, save a huge amount of time, and provide many reports about usage of our systems and networks to our leaders and managers to show what we can do to make our security better."
"The features of Cisco Umbrella benefit my company by allowing us to do protective DNS instead of URL filtering, which lets us avoid having to backhaul traffic and run it through a firewall in a data center."
"Meraki features and cloud-based functionality are advanced and easy to manage centrally."
"Stability-wise, it's good. I have never encountered any bugs."
"It has helped reduce my unit's security events."
"The solution is extremely stable. It has excellent performance."
"The reports and notifications are the most useful part of the platform. As soon as you deploy the security layers, the reporting is very comprehensive. It helps you to have, at a glance, a clear view of what's going on."
"It has the ability to quickly block new threats."
"The weekly reportings are great. The investigation is super and the application management is equally great."
 

Cons

"I would rate this solution 7 out of 10. It's a great idea if it worked consistently, but it has to be way more mature than when I used it."
"It would be nice if they had a different pricing model. Most of our budget for projects goes towards Cisco."
"For us, the biggest sticking point is that the product is not being designed for multi-tenancy use at present, from an MSP perspective."
"If they could make the Cisco Umbrella piece a little bit more advanced or easier to manage, that would help. We use it for filtering and when you compare it to a normal content filter, it lacks some functionality."
"I'm not sure that I would call it a bug, but sometimes the solution is a little slow."
"Remediation stuff could be integrated into the product's automation."
"For us, the biggest sticking point is that the product is not being designed for multi-tenancy use at present, from an MSP perspective."
"One of the improvements the product needs is more integration with collaboration platforms."
"We've noticed some issues with the SWG where, when I'm connected, it thinks I'm in Miami, Florida instead of Savannah, Georgia."
"I don't have an answer for how Cisco Umbrella can be improved, as it has been some time since I've worked with it."
"Although Cisco Umbrella has an excellent global network footprint, there is still room for improvement and growth in this area. Additionally, there are bandwidth limitations associated with the connectors that need to be addressed. To be a viable solution for larger offices, Cisco Umbrella must continue to expand and improve its capabilities in these areas."
"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."
"I would like for their support to be faster."
"The pricing is a bit high. Being outside of the USA, we have issues with the exchange rate."
"Cisco Umbrella should introduce an on-premises device."
"The main issue that we have is with the final steps or the full integration and getting rid of Zscaler. The company still has to fall back to Zscaler when something in Umbrella is not working as expected, such as when we enable SSL inspection. When something is not working 100%, the company is falling back to Zscaler."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing is the best part of this solution. It is free if you buy Umbrella or Duo Security. It is also a good solution."
"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."
"For the value you get, the pricing of the solution is excellent."
"It would be nice if they had a different pricing model. Most of our budget for projects goes towards Cisco."
"It is free. It can't get any better than that."
"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."
"The pricing was marvelous."
"Cisco should make the solution cheaper."
"Cisco Umbrella is expensive and could be cheaper."
"The pricing is great and very competitive with the rest of the market."
"The product is pricey compared to Cisco Firepower."
"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 price is fair, and the licensing cost is based on the number of users. We have seen a good ROI."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
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 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: March 2026.
890,071 professionals have used our research since 2012.