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Cisco Umbrella vs Forescout Platform 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
7.5
Cisco Umbrella improves security, reduces costs, and enhances productivity, offering quick ROI and increased efficiency with threat prevention.
Sentiment score
6.7
Forescout Platform is valued for enhancing security, automating remediation, saving costs, and improving network reliability and privacy.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco Umbrella is praised for efficient support and extensive resources, with minor delays in email and purchasing processes.
Sentiment score
6.7
Forescout Platform's customer service is responsive and helpful, but varies in response time, knowledge, and consistency.
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
8.1
Cisco Umbrella offers scalable, cloud-based infrastructure, enabling easy deployment and management across diverse organizational sizes globally.
Sentiment score
7.7
Forescout Platform scales efficiently with seamless appliance additions, despite potential cost concerns, proving reliable in large deployments.
Cisco Umbrella is scalable for our company.
It is a scalable solution but requires improvement in specific areas.
Scalability can be costly since a physical box needs to be installed for every site.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Cisco Umbrella is praised for its excellent stability, high uptime, and reliability despite rare minor connectivity issues.
Sentiment score
8.0
Forescout Platform is praised for its stability and reliability, with minor issues that do not overshadow its performance.
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.
I would rate its stability as 9.5 out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Umbrella needs improved integration, user experience, reporting, and regional data centers for better security and network performance.
Forescout Platform struggles with usability, integration, false positives, high costs, needing improved analytics, support, scalability, and simplified licensing.
Making it more flexible and easy to deploy, particularly when integrating with other technologies like Active Directory and proxies, would be beneficial.
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.
The product can only shield a small area, making it less effective for larger spaces or multiple users.
The console is a fat client, and a web interface would be preferable.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Umbrella pricing is fair yet expensive, with flexible plans, negotiable discounts, and complex scalability for large enterprises.
Forescout Platform is costly but offers flexible licensing and comprehensive features, competing well with Cisco ISE.
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.
Installing a physical box on each site can be expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Umbrella offers DNS-based protection, web filtering, and integration, enhancing security and productivity for hybrid work environments.
Forescout Platform offers excellent device visibility, network control, and integration, praised for agentless operation, flexibility, and real-time alerts.
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.
The firewall and integration capability with other security solutions are valuable for effective security management.
One of the most valuable features of Forescout Platform is its automation, particularly the ability to automate remediation of rogue devices on the network.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Umbrella
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), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Forescout Platform
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (4th), IoT Security (2nd), Endpoint Compliance (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Umbrella is designed for Domain Name System (DNS) Security and holds a mindshare of 22.4%, down 27.9% compared to last year.
Forescout Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Network Access Control (NAC), holds 13.2% mindshare, up 13.1% since last year.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
Network Access Control (NAC)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Odai Halawani - PeerSpot reviewer
It's an easy and effective solution, especially for device profiling without agents
Forescout Platform's most valuable aspect is its excellent device profiling for devices without agents, which is crucial for our work due to challenges with agent-based devices. Its isolation and blocking actions are particularly effective for network security. The device compliance feature helps us ensure device compliance through immediate actions like updating antivirus software. We have already integrated Forescout with antivirus and vulnerability assessment tools, allowing it to monitor vulnerability scores and automatically isolate devices if critical vulnerabilities are detected.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
31%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
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.
What advice do you have for others considering Forescout Platform?
Forescout is a very powerful NAC product that does not rely on port level configuration. It can detect and block unauthorized devices very quickly. But it has a lot of capabilities and really would...
What advice do you have for others considering Forescout Platform?
I would rate the Forescout Device and Visibility Control Platform at a six out of ten.
What advice do you have for others considering Forescout Platform?
I recommend doing a compression demo. If people use it, they will buy it. So they have to see the product in place. That's the main recommendation is to do a proof of concept. If they do, they will...
 

Also Known As

OpenDNS
Forescout Platform, CounterACT for Endpoint Compliance, ForeScout CounterACT
 

Overview

 

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
NHS Sussex, SAP, SEGA, Vistaprint, Miami Children's Hospital, Pioneer Investments, New York Law School, OmnicomGroup, Meritrust
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Infoblox, Palo Alto Networks and others in Domain Name System (DNS) Security. Updated: March 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.