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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

"Overall, it is a very good solution. It is a simple solution and very easy to set up."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Cisco's support is better nowadays."
"Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy."
"Cisco Umbrella is absolutely stable."
"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."
"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."
"You can manage and create policies based on a group of users. It can permit some URLs and block others."
"Some clients only want DNS security, while others want more of the advanced features that it has available."
"Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense furthers the existing security posture rather than replacing or trying to replace any existing products."
"The most useful aspect of Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is its user-friendly interface and its powerful analytic reporting."
"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."
"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 of this solution is the granularity for which you can categorize what you want to block versus what you don't want to block."
"The most important features for us are preventing DDOS DNS attacks."
"The stability of Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is near perfect at a rating of ten."
"Overall, I would rate the Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense as 8.5 out of 10."
 

Cons

"I would like to see a graphical representation of the entire network."
"I would like for them to continue building on IPS and IDS functionalities."
"There should be a way to monitor traffic at the user level."
"Cisco Umbrella can be improved in terms of limited coverage and wind vulnerability. The product can only shield a small area, making it less effective for larger spaces or multiple users."
"It's somewhat pricey for us, however, it's an awesome solution."
"Network connectivity was a bit of a challenge at the beginning, but we were able to get the right help from Cisco."
"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."
"If we're trying to deploy it to a Mac through Meraki, it's impossible. The method of deployment for a Mac, and the features available in Meraki, are not compatible at all."
"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."
"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 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 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."
"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 initial setup is not a simple "click-click-next" installation. It requires some level of experience ."
"The product is slightly more expensive compared to other DNS solutions."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be lower."
"The licensing and pricing structure of Cisco Umbrella is in line with standard systems on the market, and we have no specific requirements in this area. Overall, we have found it to be an acceptable pricing model for our organization."
"It has a reasonable price. It is certainly not as expensive as it used to be. It is in line with other offerings on the market. There are a number of different flavors of Umbrella. They could bring Umbrella SIG down a bit because its price is a little bit high for what it does, but I also understand why its price is high."
"The price is quite good."
"Cisco Umbrella is expensive and could be cheaper."
"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."
"It was a little bit expensive on a per seat basis, but the company I was running was only a midsize Australian company, and it was a reasonable budget per computer for that system. It started off being a free product, and then Cisco bought it, and it went to a reasonable price. I was using Cisco AMP as well. So, my per computer cost was reasonably high, but for a small company, it was within an acceptable level."
"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 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."
"It's a pricey solution because it's for the advanced kind of customer."
"When you buy the subscription, there are no additional costs to add any additional buttons."
"Infoblox BloxOne offers pretty good documentation. Check its documentation, then do a PoC. Infoblox is very good at providing PoCs."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Domain Name System (DNS) Security solutions are best for your needs.
883,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
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: February 2026.
883,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.