Cisco Umbrella vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security comparison

Cisco Umbrella vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security

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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

Cisco Umbrella

Ranking in Internet Security

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

113

Ranking in other categories

Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (3rd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)

Perception Point Advanced E...

Ranking in Internet Security

6th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Email Security (17th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Internet Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 36.9%, up from 36.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perception Point Advanced Email Security is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Internet Security

Featured Reviews

Alessandro Braga

Chief Digital Officer at Talent Garden

Has comprehensive reporting and scales easily

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. The integration between Cisco Secure solutions is pretty good. We have been able to deliver the solution in a few days. The integration of Umbrella and Meraki is literally one click away from the customer. One of the reasons why we chose Umbrella was its capability to perform end-to-end detection of malware and web traffic. In the last two years, we have been covered, detection has been faster, and we have been able to contain some potential threats along the way. We use the Umbrella stack from DNS protection to web and content protection. Our workforce is made up of 150 Macs; thus, we use Mac as a client. We have some PCs and integration with the network in our co-working spaces. Utilizing Cisco Secure has helped us save time. Being a nimble organization, we don't have IT staff who are fully dedicated to security. The maintenance is also not very time-consuming. In terms of the amount of time saved, it would be half an FTE a year, given the fact that we are informed and notified when threats arise. In terms of operating expenditures, we have been able to negotiate a better cyber insurance rate with our insurance company due to the fact that we are covered by Umbrella. Another benefit of using Cisco Umbrella is application scanning. We have been able to understand how many other applications we were consuming in the cloud, address them, and save money. Without Cisco Umbrella, we would not have realized that we had so many cloud applications in the company. We have been able to close at least four or five applications that were duplicates of others that we were already using in the company. We have realized approximately 10,000 to 12,000 euros a year of immediate savings in an organization of 150 people, which is quite significant.

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Jijin Joseph

Technical Director at Channelnext

Gives in-depth analysis reports to end users for any malicious content found in emails

Our users would like the solution to scan outgoing emails. So, if my system is compromised, and I have malicious content in my system, then there is a possibility that I send malicious email to my colleague. There is a dependency on AWS cloud.This means if the cloud service is down, which may impact the perception point's email delivery.So it would be great if there is any HA for the solution. I would like a user-friendly configuration, like APIs. This solution is API-friendly configuration by following the steps provided. It would be great if it could be automate it, like the Avanan.Also, it would be good if Perception Point Advanced Email Security could have an MSP model. During the early stages of working with this solution, there were some constraints and issues.

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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

"By using Cisco Umbrella, you are sure of inspecting all the traffic. Whenever the user machine is connected to your network, it is inspected. That's the best thing. It means you are sure that nothing is being exported or imported without your choice. That is the best feature."

"We use Cisco Umbrella for DNS filtering and as a secure gateway."

"The weekly reportings are great. The investigation is super and the application management is equally great."

"Application performance has greatly improved and there are less operational issues. Productivity has been going up because we have less operational issues. Also, we have happy customers."

"Some clients only want DNS security, while others want more of the advanced features that it has available."

"A single pane of glass saves time... This does have a lot of options available for us to see who's doing what, what trends, what errors. We can set up our alerting through it as well. It is definitely a great dashboard."

"The insight into what our users are doing via Cisco Umbrella is valuable. Knowing that we're protecting our users as they leave our network is also valuable now because we've got more hybrid working."

"Helps block personal email accounts."

More Cisco Umbrella pros

"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"Another feature that we really like, one that was introduced a few months back, is the way it categorizes threats into groups, such as Emotet, Qbot, Formbook, and the like. It's not only telling you that something is malware, but it's also giving you insight into what kind of malware... You understand what you are facing and whether you are a target for a specific group of threats..."

"The solution’s effectiveness when it comes to detection is very good. It is stopping malicious emails and tagging emails noted as spam. So, we are able to disseminate those emails, get what we need, and block clearly malicious emails. It saves us a lot of valuable time. It keeps our users safe, e.g., the majority of emails that they would have gotten in the past don't even make it into their inbox."

"The most valuable features of the solution are the ones that are related to finding impersonation attacks and detecting attempts to steal credentials. In scenarios where attackers get you to follow URLs to a malicious site that looks similar to a good site, and then ask for the user credentials to try to steal them, it is very useful."

"The most valuable feature is the hardware-assisted platform module."

"Their security engines are very effective at stopping malware and potential attacks before they reach a user's mailbox. They have the best detection engine."

"The most valuable feature I have found is the speed of scanning emails."

"The most valuable feature of Perception Point Advanced Email Security is the filtering and securing of emails."

More Perception Point Advanced Email Security pros

Cons

"Cisco Umbrella can be improved in terms of limited coverage and wind vulnerability."

"In my experience with Umbrella support, sometimes the response times take a bit more time than we would like... sometimes, if you go through email, it can take quite a while to get a response."

"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."

"The pricing is a bit high. Being outside of the USA, we have issues with the exchange rate."

"The locks and management could be better. The product is fairly new, and it may take some time to get all the features up and running."

"The design of the screens could be improved. Sometimes you're trying to look for information, for what you think is critical that should be on that first screen of the dashboard so that you can quickly take screenshots to have people help out, but you have to hop between screens to find little pieces of evidence."

"It has happened in the past that Cisco Umbrella has denied us access to secure websites."

"The API is very Cisco orientated, which is absolutely fine if you're using Cisco Firepower and SecureX kind of products, but if you want to integrate with third parties, it is a bit tricky. There are some key API connectors for the more prevalent SIEM tools. I would really like to see in Cisco Umbrella the ability to create customized reports and then assign the rights to view these reports to people within a group. I should be able to create a customized report, which is viewable by anybody who has the rights. I should be able to create groups within Cisco Umbrella, and then assign reports to groups and have those reports split out automatically only to those groups. I can kind of do it by restricting my email list, but it is a half-complete way of doing it."

More Cisco Umbrella cons

"To improve the solution, maybe a portal for end users to consult their emails would be helpful. The end user could access the portal and see their emails or events. They could also refresh the names."

"We have had a few false positives, not that many, but a few... they have a feature where someone from the Incident Response team can look at an email and mark it as 'verified malicious.' You might think that if an engine detects it is malicious, and an IR team member has flagged it as malicious, it will definitely be malicious. But that's not always the case."

"In terms of architecture, and I know that they're going to improve this, the solution needs to be much more redundant. There was an outage a month ago in AWS, and that basically stopped the service for two or three hours. Although in two years, this was the first time that something like that happened, our expectation from a company like Perception Point is that it should work with either a multi-cloud or multi-region architecture, to improve the resilience."

"I think the interface could be improved in the next release."

"Perception Point Advanced Email Security should make available more use cases."

"Its websites for analysis need to be a bit more approachable for people who are less technical. Technically, it is a fire-and-forget solution. So, you want to be able to implement this solution for a lot of companies who don't have security operation teams (SOCs) behind them. You need to have something where a secretary can jump onto this console and release whatever she needs to release. Therefore, it needs to be written in a very specific non-technical language."

"There is room for improvement in terms of adding the DLP (Data Loss Prevention) solution, which would be a good option for Perception Point to look into."

"Our users would like the solution to scan outgoing emails. So, if my system is compromised, and I have malicious content in my system, then there is a possibility that I am sending a colleague that malicious content."

More Perception Point Advanced Email Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We did a good negotiation, and at the moment, its price is fine."

"Its price for us is quite expensive because it's a subscription, and we just use it for the DNS log. So, for us, it's quite expensive."

"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."

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

"The pricing model is easier compared to some of the other solutions, and it is also competitive."

"When talking about Cisco solutions in general there pricing model is horrible. For example, you can sell a Meraki-based solution, but if the customer starts shopping around, someone is going to have access to the pricing at a level that you cannot compete because they do not have uniform pricing. Not everybody gets fair pricing. Unless you are one of the real major corporations selling the solution your ability to compete is impossible. Cisco will acknowledge the situation and assure you next time it will be in your favor but it never becomes favorable for you. Cisco is not very good in this regard. However, Umbrella is good."

"The pricing is pretty fair. It's good."

"We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good."

More Cisco Umbrella pricing and cost advice

"Pricing is lower in comparison to Proofpoint."

"We would always like it to be cheaper and save more money. However, we are getting the value from it."

"We were able to get reasonable pricing that matches the ROI we want, so I think that it is the correct price point."

"The pricing compared to the value Perception Point brings is super-competitive. They're not the cheapest in the market, but the value and the quality of the product are superior to anything else in the market, so we don't mind paying more for it."

"The solution is neither cheap nor expensive. There are no additional costs to the standard license."

"In Brazil, the dollar price affects the cost. Perception Point Advanced Email Security is about 50 percent less expensive."

"They are not the most expensive vendor. There are much more expensive vendors. They are not cheap, but they are not the most expensive. They are somewhere in the middle."

"The pricing was fair in comparison with the other solutions. We have received good value for what we paid."

More Perception Point Advanced Email Security pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

26%

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?

Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.

What do you like most about Perception Point Advanced Email Security?

The most valuable feature is the technical support services.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Perception Point Advanced Email Security?

In Brazil, the dollar price affects the cost. Perception Point Advanced Email Security is about 50 percent less expensive.

What needs improvement with Perception Point Advanced Email Security?

To improve the solution, maybe a portal for end users to consult their emails would be helpful. The end user could access the portal and see their emails or events. They could also refresh the names.

Zscaler Internet Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Comparisons

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Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 10% of the time

Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 6% of the time

Palo Alto Networks DNS Security vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 5% of the time

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Avanan vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security

Compared 13% of the time

Proofpoint Email Protection vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security

Compared 11% of the time

IRONSCALES vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security

Compared 10% of the time

Fortinet FortiMail Cloud vs Perception Point Advanced Email Security

Compared 10% of the time

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Product Reports

Cisco Umbrella

Download Cisco Umbrella product report

Perception Point Advanced Email Security

Download Perception Point Advanced Email Security product report

Perception Point Advanced Email Security report

Also Known As

OpenDNS

No data available

Overview

Cisco Umbrella delivers rapid DNS security with over 30,000 customers, providing outstanding threat protection and handling more than 600 billion requests daily. It's recognized for high threat efficacy in the SSE domain and integrates elements like SWG, ZTNA, CASB, and more.

Cisco Umbrella is renowned for its effective DNS-layer security against ransomware and phishing. It offers flexible content filtering and integrates seamlessly with existing networks while providing single-pane-of-glass management for centralized monitoring. Its robust threat intelligence and customizable policies are central to its appeal. Users highlight room for improvement in areas like WHOIS data inclusion, malware enhancement, and reporting analytics. Integration with other threat feeds and better client support are requested for more comprehensive coverage.

What are the key features of Cisco Umbrella?

DNS-Layer Security: Blocks malicious domains, preventing ransomware attacks.
Web Content Filtering: Allows users to manage lists for strict content control.
Seamless Integration: Blends with systems like Active Directory and Meraki.
Remote Protection: Keeps remote users safe across different locations.
Single-Pane Management: Facilitates effective monitoring and reporting.

What should users expect in reviews about Cisco Umbrella?

Threat Intelligence: Provides comprehensive malware and attack data.
Customizable Policies: Enables tailored security measures for users.
Integration Options: Works with diverse systems for holistic security.
Ease of Use: Offers a straightforward experience for administrators.
Remote Worker Security: Ensures protection outside traditional networks.

Industries implement Cisco Umbrella primarily for DNS-level security, web filtering, and protecting remote employees. It strengthens cybersecurity frameworks by blocking malware and avoiding access to harmful sites. The tool is widely integrated with Active Directory and Cisco Meraki, providing consistent internet security for employees.

Cisco

Perception Point Advanced Email Security is a comprehensive solution designed to protect organizations from advanced email threats. Leveraging cutting-edge technology, it offers multi-layered defense mechanisms to detect and block sophisticated attacks such as phishing, malware, and ransomware.

With its advanced threat intelligence capabilities, it can identify and neutralize zero-day threats in real-time. The solution also provides robust data loss prevention features, ensuring sensitive information remains secure. Its user-friendly interface allows for easy management and monitoring of email security, while its seamless integration with existing email platforms ensures a hassle-free deployment process.

Perception Point Advanced Email Security is a reliable and efficient solution that safeguards organizations against the ever-evolving landscape of email-based threats.

Perception Point

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

Information Not Available

Cisco Umbrella vs. Perception Point Advanced Email Security