Cisco Umbrella vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense comparison

Cisco Umbrella vs. Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Download the complete report

Helped 884,371 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

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

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
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella	20.5%
Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense	4.9%
Other	74.6%

Domain Name System (DNS) Security

Featured Reviews

Bryan Bettencourt

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.

Read full review

reviewer2703357

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has certainly saved us time. If we go and look at what's rejected on the requests from the hospital itself, it has saved about 5% or 6% time."

"The customer service and technical support of Cisco Umbrella are great."

"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."

"It enables us to go granular in the customization of blocking some categories on the DNS."

"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."

"Provides dependable DNS monitoring of external devices."

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

"I would describe the experience deploying Cisco Umbrella overall as super easy. It was awesome. It was lovely to deploy it."

More Cisco Umbrella pros

"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 of this solution is the granularity for which you can categorize what you want to block versus what you don't want to block."

"Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense furthers the existing security posture rather than replacing or trying to replace any existing products."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is policy redirecting and security reports."

"The most useful aspect of Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is its user-friendly interface and its powerful analytic reporting."

"The product is stable."

"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."

More Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense pros

Cons

"User interface could be a little smoother and more intuitive."

"The firewall capabilities could be better. Cisco is starting to introduce some layer 7 capabilities now, but there's still some room to grow. They should continue with the development of Umbrella so that it is a full-blown cloud-managed firewall solution."

"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."

"It would be useful if they had a malware protection engine running inside their own VM."

"Although Cisco Umbrella has an excellent global network footprint, there is still room for improvement and growth in this area. Additionally, there are bandwidth limitations associated with the connectors that need to be addressed. To be a viable solution for larger offices, Cisco Umbrella must continue to expand and improve its capabilities in these areas."

"In the future, they should combine some of the Cisco AMP features that they already have, for anti-malware purposes."

"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 pricing could be improved."

More Cisco Umbrella cons

"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."

"The initial setup is not a simple "click-click-next" installation. It requires some level of experience ."

"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."

"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."

"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 product could be cheaper."

"Endpoint solutions need to improved."

"They could work on the UI of their website and make their website more user-friendly."

More Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco Umbrella is expensive and could be cheaper."

"Pricing depends on the automation requirements of the organization."

"Cisco has a model called ELA. With ELA, if you buy the solution you will have the complete security portfolio and you can pay it yearly or after three years, it depends on the contract."

"In terms of licensing, we're not able to be extremely clear with the customer because it's based on their reporting. It's not based on the actual traffic. If they say they have 50 users but they have 80, we'll just buy for 50 users. That's something where we'd like to have more flexibility."

"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."

"The price depends on the use case, and it's a bit linear. But it depends on the customer's strategy and how Cisco plans to optimize the costs."

"The pricing was marvelous."

More Cisco Umbrella pricing and cost advice

"When you buy the subscription, there are no additional costs to add any additional buttons."

"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."

"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."

"The licensing is set up such that you pay for the number of active users that you're defending at the moment."

"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."

"Infoblox BloxOne offers pretty good documentation. Check its documentation, then do a PoC. Infoblox is very good at providing PoCs."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Domain Name System (DNS) Security solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

884,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

17%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	50
Midsize Enterprise	30
Large Enterprise	51

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	12

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.

Zscaler Internet Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Comparisons

Compared 19% of the time

Cisco Secure Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 8% of the time

Palo Alto Networks DNS Security vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 7% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 4% of the time

Cloudflare vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 2% of the time

More Cisco Umbrella Competitors

Palo Alto Networks DNS Security vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Compared 12% of the time

EfficientIP DNS Guardian vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Compared 10% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Compared 8% of the time

BlueCat Edge vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Compared 8% of the time

F5 BIG-IP DNS vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Compared 7% of the time

More Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Umbrella

Download Cisco Umbrella product report

Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Download Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense product report

Also Known As

OpenDNS

BloxOne Threat Defense, Infoblox ActiveTrust, Infoblox ActiveTrust Cloud

Overview

Cisco Umbrella provides fast-deploying DNS-layer security with powerful threat protection capabilities. Trusted by over 30,000 entities, it ranks highly in DNS security and effectively supports secure remote work environments.

Cisco Umbrella offers comprehensive DNS security, web filtering, and ease of use, enhancing network security through robust threat protection and malware prevention. It processes over 600 billion requests daily, making it a leader in its field. The seamless integration with existing infrastructures and cloud-based nature makes it suitable for remote and distributed work environments, ensuring consistent security throughout. Management is streamlined with a single-pane interface that simplifies administration, while in-depth reporting capabilities provide valuable insights for continuous monitoring.

What are the key features of Cisco Umbrella?

DNS Security: Provides leading protection by managing DNS queries and blocking malicious sites.
Web Filtering: Offers granular control over web content to safeguard internet usage.
Ease of Integration: Fits well into existing infrastructures, simplifying deployment and use.
Intuitive Management: Single-pane management streamlines administration and enhances usability.
Cloud-Based Flexibility: Supports secure remote work environments.

What benefits can users expect from using Cisco Umbrella?

Superior Threat Protection: Reduces risk by effectively detecting and preventing cyber threats.
Consistent Security: Provides uniform protection across network environments.
Efficiency and Visibility: Leverages comprehensive reporting for better security insights.
Easy Deployment: Quick and straightforward setup with minimal disruption.

Cisco Umbrella is widely adopted in industries requiring advanced DNS-level security to counteract malware, phishing, and cyber threats. Its ability to monitor and protect remote and roaming employees makes it an attractive option for sectors highly dependent on cloud services. By managing DNS queries and blocking harmful sites, Cisco Umbrella enhances cybersecurity across networks, providing an added layer of protection for businesses worldwide.

Cisco

Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense strengthens and optimizes your security posture from the foundation up, giving you the visibility, control and automation to secure the hybrid workplace. Operating at the DNS level, BloxOne Threat Defense uncovers threats that other solutions do not and stops attacks earlier in the threat lifecycle. Through pervasive automation and ecosystem integration, it drives efficiencies in SecOps, increases the effectiveness of the existing security stack, secures digital and work-from-anywhere efforts and lowers the total cost for cybersecurity.

Infoblox

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

Cisco Umbrella vs. Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense