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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

"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 SecureX solution has the best impact for the customer because it has all the visibility of my applications and my users' applications."
"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."
"I like that I don't have to jump around to five different products and log into five different places to view the data that it returns."
"We've reduced our workload by 20 to 30 percent just from being able to focus on the important things, as this product really does a lot of the grunt work for you."
"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."
"Its cybersecurity and resilience have been extremely important for our organization."
"The automation and orchestration tools are the most valuable features."
"The feature that we find most valuable is to be able to filter out those web requests that you don't want."
"Personally speaking, this tool has proven itself invaluable in allowing myself and my team to perform our duties efficiently and securely."
"It has helped reduce my unit's security events."
"We use Cisco Umbrella for DNS filtering and as a secure gateway."
"The implementation is pretty easy."
"We run a real lean networking team, and cloud deployments are super easy."
"Any time someone went off the network, the AnyConnect client had the Umbrella agent built in, and it would realize when their computer connected that they were not on the corporate network. It would monitor and they would have pretty close to the same rules that they had to follow when they were in the office, regarding what kind of website browsing they could do."
"Cisco Umbrella is specifically designed for DNS protection, with features including a user-friendly console and the easiest installation, and it offers very prominent threat feeding from different Talos sources, securing multiple platforms while helping protect from malware and unsafe sites and mitigating DNS attacks to ensure secure browsing for end users."
 

Cons

"If they could make the Cisco Umbrella piece a little bit more advanced or easier to manage, that would help."
"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."
"One of the improvements the product needs is more integration with collaboration platforms."
"For us, the biggest sticking point is that the product is not being designed for multi-tenancy use at present, from an MSP perspective."
"For us, the biggest sticking point is that the product is not being designed for multi-tenancy use at present, from an MSP perspective."
"They could put in more third-party integrations, but also more playbooks out-of-the-box for automation would be helpful."
"It would be nice if they had a different pricing model. Most of our budget for projects goes towards Cisco."
"They could put in more third-party [integrations]... also more playbooks, out-of-the-box, for automation [would be helpful]."
"The product can be pretty expensive."
"This solution is difficult to configure."
"It's easier for us to have support features with companies who are Cisco representatives, but sometimes, it's hard for us to get the help we need without having to use our contacts within Cisco."
"A feature I would appreciate seeing enhanced in Cisco Umbrella would be the ability to add or remove agents that we have, instead of just relying on how long the devices have been connected to the platform."
"It could be improved by having a local data center and caching, which can provide protection support. I would like to be able to channel my intel and my network traffic to their clouds, and this feature is not available. Advanced protection or any malware file support, which might be required, is not available."
"I'd like to see improvement in its overall integration with all the other platforms. There's some integration between Umbrella and Meraki, but an overall Cisco problem is that there are so many different tools, and finding easy, seamless ways of connecting everything together is always a challenge."
"There are a couple of interface issues. I know that they say that there are feature enhancements that are noted. For example, we've got the Cisco Meraki security appliances, and there, we geofence our company to where we're allowed to send and receive traffic. So, in our case, by default, we only allow traffic to six different countries, which allows us to effectively prevent traffic for the majority of bad players in the world, but they don't give you an easy way to do that in Cisco Umbrella. With Cisco Meraki, I can specify or pick the countries. I can say that I want to only allow traffic from these six countries, and I'm done. With Cisco Umbrella, I have to rely on the fact that they're going to prevent traffic to other countries. They're going to decide if it's good or bad."
"Looking at the full umbrella suite in the light of SASE, Secure Access Service Edge, they are clearly lacking in the inline CASB."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is free. It can't get any better than that."
"It would be nice if they had a different pricing model. Most of our budget for projects goes towards Cisco."
"For the value you get, the pricing of the solution is excellent."
"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 comes free with all Cisco products. So, it is a good price."
"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 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 pricing is the best part of this solution. It is free if you buy Umbrella or Duo Security. It is also a good solution."
"The price should be slightly lower than the current price because if you look at the whole solution, it is simply a threat intelligence solution to block blacklisted things. The price should be lower looking at the features provided by the solution. The price isn't too high either, but it could be lower."
"There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."
"Our costs were negotiated, and they are okay."
"Cisco should make the solution cheaper."
"The price could be lower."
"We were using the free version, and we implemented the paid version about two months ago. I'm paying a fair price, but everything is negotiable with Cisco. One of the benefits that I got by having Cisco Umbrella is the licensing of the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client."
"The price is fair, and the licensing cost is based on the number of users. We have seen a good ROI."
"The pricing is great and very competitive with the rest of the market."
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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
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 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.
890,088 professionals have used our research since 2012.