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Cisco Umbrella vs Menlo Secure comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
23rd
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (8th), Web Content Filtering (5th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (11th), ZTNA as a Service (15th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (15th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (1st), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Menlo Secure
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
22nd
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (32nd), ZTNA (11th), Cloud Security Remediation (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

GZ
Sep 25, 2021
Stable and quick to set up but needs more clear status information for end users
The solution is a corporate proxy server, an intelligence proxy From a corporate perspective, I understand that it's important to keep the company data safe. From a corporate point of view, it's a good solution. The solution is stable. The solution can scale.  It was a very easy product to…
Theofilos Tzachristas - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 20, 2023
The solution is easy to use, you don't need an expert to operate it
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. The application is really stable. We never have problems with Cisco not working for our end users. We have an internal communication hub. The office implementation is integrated with our security systems and firewalls, but we also have users worldwide working from home. Our employees are pleased with the user experience, and we've never had reports about Umbrella not working properly or being unable to access a site. It's integrated with Cisco AnyConnect, so our users can access it through a VPN solution. Umbrella actively processes and blocks malicious DNS queries daily, which is helpful for us because we're a small team. We heavily depend on the tool to do its job properly. It works nicely out of the box. You have to do a little initial configuration, but after that, it blocks everything we want and nothing we don't. We've gotten some false positives with other products, but we've never experienced that with Cisco Umbrella. Guest internet access is easy to configure. We set more restrictive policies for our guest users, but it hasn't been difficult to spin up consistent policies in three or four different offices. We just attached the policy that we have for guest users to a specific wireless SSID. Umbrella combines multiple security functions into a single dashboard. If you use Cisco SecureX, there is a dashboard in Umbrella, but you have to look at different areas. In Cisco SecureWorks, you can add the tasks and dashboards you want to monitor, but Umbrella is more standardized, so you cannot make many changes. In addition to the dashboard, we have some daily reports and email alerts. It does what we want.
SH
Sep 4, 2022
A cost-effective, browser-agnostic solution that opens the session in an isolated format so that the code doesn't run locally
Right now, the only piece would be one or two reports that I'd love to get my hands on. I don't think they exist. With any system firewall or solution like this, you have to create bypasses, which is an access control list. One of the standard things that we would do in other firewalls is a regular review. We quarterly go and take a look at who we grant access to and if it is still needed. For example, when you're working with a partner, you might do a full bypass to that site as long as they are a partner, but over time, you add 200 extra rules. At some point, that partner you had ends up no longer being a partner, but that old rule is still there. You want to be safe. You need to give them access today, but you don't necessarily need to do that tomorrow. So, you need to be safe about it and block it again. 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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"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."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the Web Filtering and the APT."
"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."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Cisco's support is better nowadays."
"Umbrella, being one pane for managing, being all-encompassing, allows us to quickly go in, make a change, and it applies to either every location, if we want it to, or we can have policies in place that only apply to certain users or certain computers."
"I haven't found any issues related to latency or any other issue."
"We use Cisco Umbrella for DNS filtering and as a secure gateway."
"It blocks malicious DNS queries daily which is very beneficial."
"Meraki features and cloud-based functionality are advanced and easy to manage centrally."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"Its pricing could be better."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"I feel that the application needs other characteristics that are available with other applications in the market."
"There is room for improvement in the dashboard. It could stand to be a bit more detailed. I would also like to be able to customize the dashboard to focus more on what is important for my company."
"The price could be better. The price is definitely a bit high, but we have to pay a premium for Cisco products."
"It's easier for us to have support features with companies who are Cisco representatives, but sometimes, it's hard for us to get the help we need without having to use our contacts within Cisco."
"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."
"The pricing could always be a little bit 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."
"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."
"The user monitoring could still be improved."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Our licensing fees are on a yearly basis."
"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."
"I think Cisco Umbrella is priced well. We have a mix of customers with different verticals such as education. We have clients in the commercial space as well. Umbrella is at a good price point for all of our customers."
"The licensing part for Umbrella is really flexible."
"You get what you pay for if you break the solution up into tiers."
"There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost."
"The pricing model is easier compared to some of the other solutions, and it is also competitive."
"The pricing was marvelous."
"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."
"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."
"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
University
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent. This is a hiccup that iboss should im...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We use iboss for the proxy solution. I used iboss in my organization to block a few sites for a few of my employees.
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...
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...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
What do you like most about Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able t...
What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
The user monitoring could still be improved. We are a government agency, so we purchased Menlo by user. If we have 3,...
What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
We previously used an on-premise proxy or a secure web gateway, but our employees were forced to do hybrid work durin...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Menlo Secure and other solutions. Updated: September 2024.
801,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.