Cisco Umbrella vs Menlo Secure comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Cisco and Menlo Security are both solutions in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category. Cisco is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.0, while Menlo Security is ranked #26. Cisco holds a 9.5% mindshare in WSG, compared to Menlo Security’s 2.3% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Menlo Security users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

Menlo Secure and Cisco Umbrella are in the cybersecurity solutions category. Cisco Umbrella has the upper hand in comprehensive feature offerings, while Menlo Secure shines with effective pricing and customer support.

Features: Cisco Umbrella provides extensive threat intelligence, cloud-delivered network security, and DNS layer protection, ensuring robust security. Menlo Secure focuses on its isolation-based security approach, providing a single console for security policy management and seamless web isolation for users.

Room for Improvement: Cisco Umbrella could enhance its logging and provide clearer user authentication processes when bypassing isolation, as some sites still require whitelisting. An accounting of connected devices would benefit Menlo Secure, along with improvements in certain web content handling and feature requests to meet the evolving needs when it comes to fine-tuning settings.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Umbrella integrates seamlessly with existing networks via its cloud-native model, supported by responsive customer service. Menlo Secure, although featuring a straightforward deployment, stands out with its efficient, responsive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Menlo Secure offers a cost-effective solution highlighting a strong ROI through reduced security incidents, making it appealing for budget-conscious organizations. Cisco Umbrella, though potentially more expensive, provides a high ROI with extensive threat coverage, benefiting enterprises requiring comprehensive protection.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Umbrella vs. Menlo Secure Report (Updated: November 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Umbrella vs. Menlo Secure

November 2026

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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

iboss

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.2%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 9.5%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Menlo Secure is 2.3%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella	9.5%
iboss	3.2%
Menlo Secure	2.3%
Other	85.0%

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula

Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support

The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.

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KamranJameel

Head Of IT at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Secure browsing has protected users from DNS threats and improves malware defense

The major issue is that sometimes when you install the client, it shows you protected and displays that it is live with the backend servers and everything. However, in reality, it was not getting any feed from the main client and is just sending your traffic to open DNS, which sometimes causes an issue because the protection you have implemented can be breached by users. The primary thing that Cisco Umbrella lacked most of the time is their client. Previously, they had a separate Cisco client. Now they have merged everything into the Cisco Secure Endpoint client—one client for everything, for Cisco Endpoint, for Cisco AnyConnect, and for Cisco Umbrella, which they did probably in 2025.

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reviewer2701794

Head Of Bluechip Enterprise at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

Provides strong protection and multiple use cases but struggles with market recognition

There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco. What can be improved is market awareness and adoption of the technology. When selling it in the channel, regardless of how good the technology might be, success depends more on market adoption and awareness.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."

"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."

"Its initial setup was straightforward."

"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."

"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."

"I recommend iboss for organizations looking for strong cloud-based web security and centralized access control."

"iboss is definitely very good in terms of service."

"As I mentioned, the return on investment is significant, as it saved our office locations' bandwidth because when you are working remotely at home, your internet traffic routes directly to iboss and will not go to your office building, saving bandwidth bottlenecks and ensuring that issues with our building internet circuits will not impact your internet connectivity because you are directly going to the iboss data center."

More iboss pros

"The solution is very easy to manage. We found the initial setup, for example, to be quite simple."

"I have found the malware protection feature valuable; it is helpful and deliverable and is able to protect my entire organization from getting compromised, and it also prevents us from visiting any malicious sites which are not visible to the users."

"When it comes to hybrid work it's pretty effective. We've got the agents. We can protect people inside our building and, when they're using their laptops out in the field, they're still protected. It's working well."

"Cisco Umbrella allows us to see threats in real time."

"The interface is well organized, so you can easily find everything. Even if you don't have much experience with Cisco, you can easily navigate the solution and find your way around. Everything has been done well, from the deployment to monitoring."

"Overall, it is a very good solution. It is a simple solution and very easy to set up."

"If it didn't have a single pane of glass, we would not be using it. The single pane of glass gives you a one-stop shop. It's like going to Home Depot. You find all your stuff there. You can see all your threats and your endpoints. It's a very important feature and makes things very simple."

"Threats never come close to your network with security at the DNS level."

More Cisco Umbrella pros

"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."

"We are not aware of a single compromise from the web since implementing the solution."

"Either you have access to something or don't have access to it, and if you do, we can ensure, 100 percent of the time, that there is nothing malicious that is going to impact our system in any way."

"It has reduced security events to follow up on. While it is not 100%, there has been probably a 90% or more reduction. We were getting hit left, right, and center constantly from people browsing the Internet and hitting bad websites. It was not just bad websites that were stood up to be malicious, but good sites that were compromised."

"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."

"For us, the primary goal is protection on the web, and that's extremely important. We're not using any of the other services at this time. The web part is key to the success of the organization. It gives us the ability to protect. It can isolate. It opens the session in an isolated format so that the code isn't running locally. It is running over in the Menlo environment, not in ours. It is not running on the local computer, whereas if you were to go to a normal website, it would run Java or something else on the local machine and potentially execute the malicious code locally. So, it does give us that level of protection."

"We have definitely seen ROI, as we save a ton of money and time because the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools prior to implementing them had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged."

"The solution is invisible to our end users, so it doesn't have any impact on their work or performance."

More Menlo Secure pros

Cons

"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."

"I would like to see simpler dashboards, more detailed reporting, and faster performance in iboss."

"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."

"The reporting feature needs improvement. It doesn't give you the expected results. It is quite difficult to get the specific reports needed, and it is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform."

"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."

"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."

"The dashboards for local use could be better."

"I appreciate that iboss's single pane of glass console gives centralized visibility into web traffic, user activity, security policies, and alerts from one dashboard, allowing us to quickly investigate incidents and monitor policy violations without switching between multiple tools, improving operational efficiency; however, the dashboard customization and reporting could be more flexible."

More iboss cons

"It could be improved by having a local data center and caching, which can provide protection support. I would like to be able to channel my intel and my network traffic to their clouds, and this feature is not available. Advanced protection or any malware file support, which might be required, is not available."

"It's somewhat pricey for us, however, it's an awesome solution."

"For us, as an MSP, the initial licensing changes were a roadblock, and they still could be a lot clearer. Specifically, it's an honor-based licensing system. We'd like it to be more specific to our traffic or our users so that we can make sure that the customer is paying for all their licensing."

"The reporting could be improved by way of the information that's displayed."

"My experience is that it is a bit slow. The response is a bit slow, but they provide support."

"Something on our end that might make it better is alerting going to our ticketing system. It's not something that we have discussed, but that would be a proactive option for us to provide a learning experience for the staff."

"The channel of support needs improvement. It is not under normal Cisco support, and I cannot simply call for support."

"They should provide more integrations and bring things together so that there is a more standard feel to their platform. We also use Cisco ISE, and it has a very different feel from Cisco Umbrella."

More Cisco Umbrella cons

"The user monitoring could still be improved."

"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."

"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."

"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists."

"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."

"Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."

"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."

"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."

"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."

"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."

"I am not sure, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think it's $1.00 or so per device/month."

"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."

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

"There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."

"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."

"Cisco is expensive. For example, we are looking at Nexus Dashboard, and it's costing about 250,000 euros. I ask, "What do I get from it?" I'm still not convinced that we have to spend on it, so pricing is a problem."

"We were using the free version, and we implemented the paid version about two months ago. I'm paying a fair price, but everything is negotiable with Cisco. One of the benefits that I got by having Cisco Umbrella is the licensing of the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client."

"The price of Cisco Umbrella is a little higher than similar solutions, like Gateway."

More Cisco Umbrella pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."

"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."

"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

14%

Construction Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	51
Midsize Enterprise	31
Large Enterprise	51

No data available

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?

iboss could be improved by making the dashboard more user-friendly, providing more detailed real-time alerts, and imp...

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What is your primary use case for iboss?

iboss is primarily used for cloud security, helping to protect users when they access websites and cloud applications...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?

The pricing and licensing for iboss were reasonable for the security features. The setup costs were manageable, thoug...

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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. Zs...

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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-nat...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Umbrella?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing reveals that the pricing is acceptable, but it is marginally a ...

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What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto....

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

People are mainly using it for zero trust web access. Menlo Secure is built from the ground up to provide zero basic ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?

Secure file sharing and data protection is not exactly what Menlo Secure is designed to do. While it can handle some ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs iboss

Compared 10% of the time

Netskope vs iboss

Compared 8% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs iboss

Compared 7% of the time

FortiSASE vs iboss

Compared 5% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs iboss

Compared 5% of the time

More iboss Competitors

Zscaler Internet Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 23% of the time

Palo Alto Networks DNS Security vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 13% of the time

Cisco Secure Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 4% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 3% of the time

Check Point Web Gateway vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 2% of the time

More Cisco Umbrella Competitors

Check Point Harmony SASE (formerly Perimeter 81) vs Menlo Secure

Compared 11% of the time

Prisma Access Browser vs Menlo Secure

Compared 10% of the time

Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway vs Menlo Secure

Compared 10% of the time

Cloudflare One vs Menlo Secure

Compared 8% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs Menlo Secure

Compared 3% of the time

More Menlo Secure Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

iboss

October 2026

Download iboss product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Umbrella

October 2026

Download Cisco Umbrella product report

Buyer's Guide

Menlo Secure

October 2026

Download Menlo Secure product report

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform

OpenDNS

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security

Overview

iboss is the Zero Trust SASE platform that gives organizations complete visibility and governance over their AI, data, and applications through one unified platform, one console, one policy engine, and one data lake.

Your endpoints may already stop malware. Your data and application activity can still be invisible. iboss decrypts and understands every connection, then turns that signal into answers security leaders can act on.

The platform leads with three capabilities in this order: AI Security and Visibility, Data Security and Visibility, and App Visibility and Control. Zero Trust Network Access, VPN replacement, and SD-WAN sit underneath as the access fabric that carries those three. Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.

What are the most important features of Iboss?

- AI Security and Visibility: conversation capture, shadow-AI discovery, AI DLP, and agent governance across Claude, Co-Work, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok, and emerging services.

- Data Security and Visibility: full SSL/TLS decryption, deep content inspection, MIP label compliance, and one-click compliance reporting.

- App Visibility and Control: signatureless CASB, dual risk scoring, in-app controls, and SSPM for major SaaS.

- Containerized Zero Trust SASE: dedicated containers, isolated SSL keys, one console, one policy engine, one data lake.

- Access fabric: ZTNA, VPN replacement, and SD-WAN under the same platform.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

- Complete visibility over AI, data, and applications from one platform instead of separate point tools.

- Encrypted traffic is inspected by default so data decisions use content and context together.

- Shadow SaaS and new web tools appear as they are used, with enforceable controls in one console.

- Native data sovereignty through dedicated containers, in-region inspection, and per-customer SSL key custody.

- Scale proven in published materials: 10M+ users, 100+ countries, 150B+ transactions, 2.5B+ threats blocked.

Economic buyers are CISOs, CIOs, and VPs of Security. Champions include security architects, network and infrastructure leaders, SecOps, and GRC. Primary segments: enterprise and business, financial services, government (including FedRAMP Gov Cloud), healthcare, manufacturing, legal and professional services, retail and hospitality, and MSP/MSSP partners. Education, including K-12, is one vertical among these.

iboss

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

Menlo Security Secure Application Access

Menlo Security Secure Application Access makes zero trust access easy, giving users secure connectivity to private applications, including web and legacy applications. At the core of Secure Application Access is the Menlo Secure Cloud Browser, which fetches, secures and delivers the content for users.

In addition to providing simple-to-deploy, clientless ZTA, Secure Application Access and the Menlo Secure Cloud Browser protect applications from attacks such as session hijacking, cookie manipulation, and other tactics that employ protocol manipulation.

Secure Application Access protects applications from Internet threats and provides granular controls for added protection of the application and associated data. These security controls include Read-only/Read-write, Upload/download, Copy/paste, AV scanning, Sandboxing, and Data Loss Prevention.

Last Mile Data Protection

Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection identifies and prevents sensitive data from leaving your company by meticulously inspecting all file uploads and user input across browsing sessions. Leveraging the Secure Cloud Browser, users are protected from the internet and you can protect your organization from data loss with comprehensive traffic monitoring and controls. This approach addresses the growing concerns surrounding data leakage in the age of AI tools like ChatGPT.

By identifying sensitive data through file types, regular expressions, or predefined libraries, Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection empowers security teams to regulate data input into AI platforms and prevent unauthorized uploads. This capability provides crucial protection for intellectual property, PII, and other confidential information.

The solution leverages the Menlo Cloud Security Platform's visibility and control over traffic to reliably detect and prevent data leaks originating from both browser submission forms and non-browser traffic. With the ability to inspect encrypted web traffic, Menlo Last-Mile Data Protection enforces DLP policies consistently across all users and devices, ensuring comprehensive data protection.

Menlo Security

Sample Customers

Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Umbrella vs. Menlo Secure

November 2026

Free Report: Cisco Umbrella vs. Menlo Secure

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Menlo Secure and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.

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