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Cisco Umbrella vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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
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), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Infoblox BloxOne Threat Def...
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 22.4%, down from 27.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is 5.9%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

Alessandro Braga - PeerSpot reviewer
Has comprehensive reporting and scales easily
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. The integration between Cisco Secure solutions is pretty good. We have been able to deliver the solution in a few days. The integration of Umbrella and Meraki is literally one click away from the customer. One of the reasons why we chose Umbrella was its capability to perform end-to-end detection of malware and web traffic. In the last two years, we have been covered, detection has been faster, and we have been able to contain some potential threats along the way. We use the Umbrella stack from DNS protection to web and content protection. Our workforce is made up of 150 Macs; thus, we use Mac as a client. We have some PCs and integration with the network in our co-working spaces. Utilizing Cisco Secure has helped us save time. Being a nimble organization, we don't have IT staff who are fully dedicated to security. The maintenance is also not very time-consuming. In terms of the amount of time saved, it would be half an FTE a year, given the fact that we are informed and notified when threats arise. In terms of operating expenditures, we have been able to negotiate a better cyber insurance rate with our insurance company due to the fact that we are covered by Umbrella. Another benefit of using Cisco Umbrella is application scanning. We have been able to understand how many other applications we were consuming in the cloud, address them, and save money. Without Cisco Umbrella, we would not have realized that we had so many cloud applications in the company. We have been able to close at least four or five applications that were duplicates of others that we were already using in the company. We have realized approximately 10,000 to 12,000 euros a year of immediate savings in an organization of 150 people, which is quite significant.
Igor Van Den Ouden - PeerSpot reviewer
A hybrid solution for DNS security with insights and security reports
The most valuable feature is policy redirecting and security reports. It detects threats and blocks them. Also, it offers DNS handling and data extraction. It provides a centralized view of connected users and incoming data sources. It is integrated via the API to different monitoring systems that send out alerts. We haven't had any false positives due to this solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The user interface is great. It's very easy to tailor to our client's environment and needs."
"I think recently with many people working from home, Cisco Umbrella has been very useful. For example, we can manage the device and the network when the employee is not working on the local host. Cisco Umbrella is very valuable for this kind of infrastructure."
"When we have laptops that leave the building, they could connect to public WiFi before they establish a VPN connection back into the company. For that duration or that period of time when they're not docked in the network or on a VPN, they effectively don't have that full layer of security that I provide inside the building. This tool stands in during that period of time, and we extend the security settings through their basic firewall or their cloud-based firewall at that time. So, we do content filtering and control access, but they also are looking at new domains, IP addresses, and bad requests. They're blocking them on my behalf when a laptop is not sitting behind our security appliances."
"I also think that the dashboard view is really helpful. Whenever sites get blocked, we get the details and the users who are connecting to them."
"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."
"Cisco Umbrella's integration with other solutions has been a great feature in terms of ease of administration. Administration and troubleshooting are faster. The single pane of glass is great as well. Another great feature of Cisco Umbrella is remote browser isolation. With this feature, you open a virtual browser, and it's seamless to the user. If the user ends up going to a bad website that's passed a policy and something bad tries to download, it will not download into the machine because it is a virtual window somewhere in the cloud. You are protected by this feature."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to detect if a URL has malware or is vulnerable."
"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."
"Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense furthers the existing security posture rather than replacing or trying to replace any existing products."
"Our ability to detect data exfiltration was minimal before Infoblox and the cloud portal was instituted for us. In terms of DNS security as a whole, we had some capability with our firewalls, but this is a lot more specialized because we're sending all of our DNS requests to Infoblox. I'd say we improved 100%."
"The dossier feature is perfect for starting an investigation."
"The most important features for us are preventing DDOS DNS attacks."
"When it comes to helping to detect DNS threats, BloxOne is good on all fronts. The number of false positives is very low, close to none. More than once it has detected new names or lookalike names and protected us and saved us from bad characters."
"With the model we have, we are able to scale very easily if we need to."
"The reporting ability is helpful. It allows us to control what our users are able to resolve, and then be able to see reports on that."
"Infoblox has helped us improve in the way that we look at data as it comes in and out. We monitor and manage queries from every device that sits inside our company, e.g., every user, every laptop, and every query. When you type something into the web, Infoblox will scan or manage that. If it is going somewhere bad, then it will block them. From a metrics perspective, it gives us data, letting us go back and find those impacted or infected clients to either clean their devices or remove them from the network."
 

Cons

"Security, overall, can always be improved."
"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."
"The integration with Cisco could be better."
"I would like to see Cisco enable us to get objects from the internet. I would also like to be able to choose groups."
"We would like them to add more features to Cisco Umbrella."
"Missing a real data leakage prevention solution."
"This solution does not give us full, 360-degree protection."
"Data reporting could be improved."
"This is not just Infoblox, this could be any portal provider, cloud provider, sometimes they change the look of the customer-facing options and it's not completely clear why they make the change."
"We would like to see more reporting capabilities that are now offered only with the on-premises reporting appliance."
"The product is slightly more expensive compared to other DNS solutions."
"Endpoint solutions need to improved."
"Within the past two years, we discovered certain bugs in their products. The resolution of these bugs took a little too much time, especially if our production environment is down for a certain amount of time, then we are losing money. That is hard to convey to Infoblox support, e.g., we actually need the system up and running again within two or three hours. The awareness of these so-called production down incidents is not really easy to convey."
"The initial setup is not a simple "click-click-next" installation. It requires some level of experience ."
"The documentation needs to be improved because there are a lot of different models that it can be deployed in, and it's somewhat confusing determining what you need and how to set it up to best cover your use cases."
"The setup was horrible. About a year ago, Infoblox made us re-enroll all our on-prem DNS servers by a set date to a specific version, or it would stop working. I told my colleague, "Oh, here, we have to upgrade the servers and reconnect them to the CSP." That did not go well at all."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think it's worth the money."
"The pricing model is easier compared to some of the other solutions, and it is also competitive."
"The price is fair, and the licensing cost is based on the number of users. We have seen a good ROI."
"You get what you pay for."
"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."
"When talking about Cisco solutions in general there pricing model is horrible. For example, you can sell a Meraki-based solution, but if the customer starts shopping around, someone is going to have access to the pricing at a level that you cannot compete because they do not have uniform pricing. Not everybody gets fair pricing. Unless you are one of the real major corporations selling the solution your ability to compete is impossible. Cisco will acknowledge the situation and assure you next time it will be in your favor but it never becomes favorable for you. Cisco is not very good in this regard. However, Umbrella is good."
"Its price for us is quite expensive because it's a subscription, and we just use it for the DNS log. So, for us, it's quite expensive."
"The price could be lower."
"There is a significant charge for this product but I think that it's worth it when we look at what it's able to prevent."
"It's a pricey solution because it's for the advanced kind of customer."
"Infoblox BloxOne offers pretty good documentation. Check its documentation, then do a PoC. Infoblox is very good at providing PoCs."
"The licensing is set up such that you pay for the number of active users that you're defending at the moment."
"It is a very expensive system. You need to go over the licensing before purchase to make sure you're getting what is needed, not anything extra."
"If you only wanted the DNS filtering and none of the other products built into Threat Defense, it would be nicer if they could do that a la carte since we are not really using a lot of the solution."
"When you buy the subscription, there are no additional costs to add any additional buttons."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 do you like most about Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense?
The most valuable feature is policy redirecting and security reports.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense?
Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is quite expensive, especially due to the significant increase in the subscription fee after the first year. This unexpected increase was a problem for us.
What needs improvement with Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense?
The UI performance could be better in the future, as sometimes there are delays. Additionally, DNS resolution speed could be improved to match that of Google DNS or Cloudflare DNS ( /products/cloud...
 

Also Known As

OpenDNS
BloxOne Threat Defense, Infoblox ActiveTrust, Infoblox ActiveTrust Cloud
 

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
Council Rock School District, EagleView, Schneider Electric, Baptist Memorial Health Care, American University
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.