Cisco Umbrella vs EfficientIP DNS Firewall comparison

Cisco and EfficientIP are both solutions in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category. Cisco is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.2, while EfficientIP is ranked #16. Cisco holds a 23.3% mindshare in DS, compared to EfficientIP’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of EfficientIP users who would recommend it.

Cisco Umbrella

Read 122 Cisco Umbrella reviews

19,688 Views
4,922 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

EfficientIP DNS Firewall

Read 1 EfficientIP DNS Firewall review

324 Views
324 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco Umbrella

EfficientIP DNS Firewall

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 2025

Cisco Umbrella and EfficientIP DNS Firewall are both contenders in the DNS security solutions category. Although Cisco Umbrella has the upper hand in support and pricing satisfaction, EfficientIP is favored for its integration capabilities, making it an attractive investment despite higher costs.

Features: Cisco Umbrella offers robust threat intelligence, seamless cloud integration, and malware prevention. EfficientIP DNS Firewall provides smart DDI, adaptive response strategies, and integrated IP management, enhancing network security with dynamic threat detection.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Umbrella's cloud-based deployment is straightforward, requiring minimal on-site setup and offering comprehensive remote support. EfficientIP DNS Firewall requires more detailed installation and configuration but provides deep technical support and specialized guidance.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco Umbrella offers a competitive pricing model with rapid ROI due to lower setup costs and quick deployment. EfficientIP DNS Firewall incurs higher initial costs but offers favorable ROI through enhanced DNS and IP management features.

To learn more, read our detailed Domain Name System (DNS) Security Report (Updated: October 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Domain Name System (DNS) Security

October 2025

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Helped 873,003 peers since 2012

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 Umbrella

Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

122

Ranking in other categories

Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)

EfficientIP DNS Firewall

Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 23.3%, down from 25.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of EfficientIP DNS Firewall is 1.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Domain Name System (DNS) Security Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cisco Umbrella	23.3%
EfficientIP DNS Firewall	1.7%
Other	75.0%

Domain Name System (DNS) Security

Featured Reviews

Emilio Montoya

CTO at PROA

Ensures internet navigation safety and boosts productivity

The features of Cisco Umbrella I prefer most are DNS protection and traffic redirect. With Cisco Talos's threat intelligence, we reduce the impact of malware traffic in our network, and we currently see the behavior of equipment and choose the correct sites. Cisco Talos has helped us reduce the impact of malware traffic. We can see the behavior and choose the correct sites. We're currently testing secure access with Umbrella in order to secure access to core applications. It's a product that the user doesn't even know is there, even though it is protecting them. It's not hard on the equipment. And, for us, it centralizes everything, which improves productivity. With the Experience Insights feature of Cisco Secure Access, we've seen impacts on the management of user connectivity by allowing us to deliver safe connectivity. We are testing the Secure Access product with Cisco Umbrella to improve our connectivity with our users in order to secure access to the corporate applications. Cisco Umbrella is in the cloud, which is nice.

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reviewer1080873

Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Easy to set up and use, and has a helpful network device inventory function

The vendor needs to do more to promote this product in certain regions, helping it to gain market share in territories where it is not widely adopted. The problem with this vendor is that they are too focused on revenue and sales numbers. If a partner is not able to generate the revenue that they're expecting, they put them on hold until they can generate interest and traction in their region for the products. It comes down to the management's mindset. They have a good product but they don't have much patience for a territory that is slow to adopt.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What we like most is security and how easy it is to integrate with other appliances."

"It will protect, give you more robustness, and faster responses, compared to any firewalls or any of the proxy web servers."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its reliability."

"I was able to implement it myself. It was really easy to install. You could install it on a server locally if you want to. If you have the biggest site, you would do that, but for my site, it was just directing all the traffic out through the Cisco Umbrella DNS. It was really handy. When the owners of the company went overseas, I knew that they would be secure because even if they were not on the company network, they would still go through the Cisco Umbrella servers. It was a complete solution for protecting the company with outgoing data."

"Meraki features and cloud-based functionality are advanced and easy to manage centrally."

"It blocks malicious DNS queries daily which is very beneficial."

"The Secure Internet Gateway benefits my company because now our whole traffic goes to the Umbrella Cloud and it gets checked there, so nothing malicious is coming into our network."

"It has improved our organization from a security posture perspective. We feel more confident now knowing that we can block phishing attempts or any type of malware that is DNS-related. This is a very nice feature that provides peace of mind."

More Cisco Umbrella pros

"This product has an inventory function to help maintain a list of the equipment, which is quite good."

Cons

"Overall, I'm quite happy with Cisco products, but there could be one place where you can check what's going on. There could be one place where you get all the information about these products so that you don't need to look around. You get the status, information about what lately happened, and if there was anything on the machine in one single place."

"Cisco Umbrella is difficult to manage and needs to include a dashboard. It needs to improve pricing as well."

"They should provide more integrations and bring things together so that there is a more standard feel to their platform. We also use Cisco ISE, and it has a very different feel from Cisco Umbrella."

"Lower costs including licensing, support, and renewals would be beneficial."

"The API is very Cisco orientated, which is absolutely fine if you're using Cisco Firepower and SecureX kind of products, but if you want to integrate with third parties, it is a bit tricky. There are some key API connectors for the more prevalent SIEM tools. I would really like to see in Cisco Umbrella the ability to create customized reports and then assign the rights to view these reports to people within a group. I should be able to create a customized report, which is viewable by anybody who has the rights. I should be able to create groups within Cisco Umbrella, and then assign reports to groups and have those reports split out automatically only to those groups. I can kind of do it by restricting my email list, but it is a half-complete way of doing it."

"It's somewhat pricey for us, however, it's an awesome solution."

"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."

"Cisco Umbrella should add some more documentation on proxies."

More Cisco Umbrella cons

"The vendor needs to do more to promote this product in certain regions, helping it to gain market share in territories where it is not widely adopted."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is pretty fair. It's good."

"It needs a better price point."

"In my opinion, Cisco Umbrella now has a good price in the basic packages. When it comes to Cisco Umbrella SIG Essentials package and Cisco Umbrella Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) Advantage package, it depends on whether the project has a good price or not"

"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."

"We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good."

"Cisco uses subscription models for the pricing and there are three subscription plans."

"The price could be lower."

"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."

More Cisco Umbrella pricing and cost advice

"The price of this product is very reasonable, especially considering that a company's reputation is priceless."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Comms Service Provider

18%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	49
Midsize Enterprise	30
Large Enterprise	51

No data available

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

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...

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What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?

Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.

See all answers

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Comparisons

Zscaler Internet Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco Secure Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 8% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 7% of the time

Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco Umbrella Competitors

BlueCat Edge vs EfficientIP DNS Firewall

Compared 36% of the time

Palo Alto Networks DNS Security vs EfficientIP DNS Firewall

Compared 23% of the time

Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection vs EfficientIP DNS Firewall

Compared 14% of the time

Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense vs EfficientIP DNS Firewall

Compared 13% of the time

More EfficientIP DNS Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Umbrella

November 2025

Download Cisco Umbrella product report

Buyer's Guide

Domain Name System (DNS) Security

October 2025

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Also Known As

OpenDNS

No data available

Overview

Cisco Umbrella delivers rapid DNS security with over 30,000 customers, providing outstanding threat protection and handling more than 600 billion requests daily. It's recognized for high threat efficacy in the SSE domain and integrates elements like SWG, ZTNA, CASB, and more.

Cisco Umbrella is renowned for its effective DNS-layer security against ransomware and phishing. It offers flexible content filtering and integrates seamlessly with existing networks while providing single-pane-of-glass management for centralized monitoring. Its robust threat intelligence and customizable policies are central to its appeal. Users highlight room for improvement in areas like WHOIS data inclusion, malware enhancement, and reporting analytics. Integration with other threat feeds and better client support are requested for more comprehensive coverage.

What are the key features of Cisco Umbrella?

DNS-Layer Security: Blocks malicious domains, preventing ransomware attacks.
Web Content Filtering: Allows users to manage lists for strict content control.
Seamless Integration: Blends with systems like Active Directory and Meraki.
Remote Protection: Keeps remote users safe across different locations.
Single-Pane Management: Facilitates effective monitoring and reporting.

What should users expect in reviews about Cisco Umbrella?

Threat Intelligence: Provides comprehensive malware and attack data.
Customizable Policies: Enables tailored security measures for users.
Integration Options: Works with diverse systems for holistic security.
Ease of Use: Offers a straightforward experience for administrators.
Remote Worker Security: Ensures protection outside traditional networks.

Industries implement Cisco Umbrella primarily for DNS-level security, web filtering, and protecting remote employees. It strengthens cybersecurity frameworks by blocking malware and avoiding access to harmful sites. The tool is widely integrated with Active Directory and Cisco Meraki, providing consistent internet security for employees.

Cisco

DNS Firewall prevents connected devices from becoming infected with malware and blocks their activity by enabling recursive DNS servers to stop or redirect queries from clients that want to access identified malicious domains and/or IPs.

EfficientIP

Sample Customers

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

De Montfort University, STMicroelectronics, Leeds Beckett University

Buyer's Guide

Domain Name System (DNS) Security

October 2025

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