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Cisco Umbrella vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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
123
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Infoblox BloxOne Threat Def...
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 20.5%, down from 25.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is 4.9%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella20.5%
Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense4.9%
Other74.6%
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer2703357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Analyst at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
Valuable analytics integration improves data insights but needs fewer restrictions
What is valuable about the Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is especially the monitoring and reporting, which provides valuable information. The integration with any SIEM is very valuable for getting DNS query analytics, and this is very important. The threat analytics tools in the Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense improve security response through integration with another platform, allowing you to gain insights on your own data happening within your own Infoblox BloxOne.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The biggest return on investment when using Cisco Umbrella for me is the ease of use of the fact that we've deployed this with our Cisco VPN Secure Client, so every computer has the Umbrella module in it."
"The DNS data exfiltration and the blocking of DNS tunneling are the most effective features for threat prevention in our company."
"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."
"Helps block personal email accounts."
"Cisco Umbrella is a totally different solution. They are the first to come up with this idea of security. It's a totally new concept of security for everybody, for every time, real time, perfectionism."
"You can manage and create policies based on a group of users. It can permit some URLs and block others."
"My overall rating for Cisco Umbrella is ten out of ten."
"Cisco Talos threat intelligence significantly influences my company's ability to act against emerging threats, giving us the chance to patch our side or take precautions when zero-day vulnerabilities emerge."
"The stability of Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is near perfect at a rating of ten."
"The automatic blocklists are most valuable. A box can maintain several lists from which we can choose if we need to block more or less. We don't have to manually manage the lists ourselves. They're automatically updated."
"Using the reporting, we can tell that we have gained an extra layer of protection. Just by looking at it, we can see what is being blocked before it even makes it to the firewall. It is definitely working."
"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 most valuable feature is policy redirecting and security reports."
"With the model we have, we are able to scale very easily if we need to."
"Overall, I would rate the Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense as 8.5 out of 10."
"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."
 

Cons

"The channel of support needs improvement. It is not under normal Cisco support, and I cannot simply call for support."
"We need to work on integration as it is very complex."
"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."
"I feel that the application needs other characteristics that are available with other applications in the market."
"It would be useful if they had a malware protection engine running inside their own VM."
"It should have more integrations with multiple end user OEMs."
"There are a couple of different pieces that have different portals. I know they're working on getting them all into one portal, but that's probably the biggest thing that needs improvement right now. It's not a single pane of glass yet."
"My biggest concern, and I'm sure everyone's biggest gripe with TAC, is just turnaround time. If you open a case in the evening, you might get an agent in another region, and then your ticket cycle only goes from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM when you're out of work."
"They could work on the UI of their website and make their website more user-friendly."
"Endpoint solutions need to improved."
"The dashboard and reporting features need improvement. The user needs more informative dashboards so they can get to the results directly without getting deep in the report to get to the information."
"The integration of threat intelligence with other solutions is challenging. If I want to expose threat intelligence, I cannot do it via taxi services. I have to call the API, but the customers are not into creating the APIs. The integration of embedded threat intelligence with other platforms should be better. Infoblox should work on this, and it should be easier for the end user to integrate it. It is very easy to deploy this solution. We should be able to integrate it with other platforms, such as the Next-Generation Firewall, with the same ease."
"The research side and the reporting side need improvement. Both of those are items on the menu. They could use a little bit of cleanup to make their respective information more easily understood."
"The product could be cheaper."
"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."
"I would rate their customer service or technical support as not always good. You can be fortunate if you meet someone knowledgeable because most people try and get you to a certain point."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"You get what you pay for."
"In the region I'm from, that of EMAR, Europe, the Middle East, Eastern Asia and Africa, our organizations do not have many liquid cash assets, so the price could be better."
"The licensing part for Umbrella is really flexible."
"Cisco Umbrella is expensive and could be cheaper."
"The pricing is pretty fair. It's good."
"The licensing is set up such that you pay for the number of active users that you're defending at the moment."
"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."
"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."
"It's a pricey solution because it's for the advanced kind of customer."
"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."
"Infoblox BloxOne offers pretty good documentation. Check its documentation, then do a PoC. Infoblox is very good at providing PoCs."
"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
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise51
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

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 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.
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 can be expensive for the commercial sector, particularly in Egypt, as this sector does not have a huge budget compared to banking or oil and gas, as the regulations ...
What needs improvement with Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense?
If Infoblox invests in network observability, especially from the perspective of DNS and IP address observability, it could be a significant improvement.
 

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 2026.
884,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.