We use the solution for DNS security and web filtering. Our industries include banking and insurance.
Account Manager at Axians
A DNS security solution that is useful for web filtering
Pros and Cons
- "The customer experience is very good, and the product improves security posture."
- "Cisco Umbrella is difficult to manage and needs to include a dashboard. It needs to improve pricing as well."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The customer experience is very good, and the product improves security posture.
What needs improvement?
Cisco Umbrella is difficult to manage and needs to include a dashboard. It needs to improve pricing as well.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the product for three years.
Buyer's Guide
Cisco Umbrella
May 2026
Learn what your peers think about Cisco Umbrella. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate Cisco Umbrella's stability a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate the tool's scalability an eight out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
The tool's deployment is easy; I rate it a nine out of ten. The speed of deployment depends on various factors, including our communication with other customer contacts.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
Cisco Umbrella is the best solution for DNS security in the market. Our customers are enterprise businesses. I rate it an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Chief Technologies Officer at ASTORG PARTNERS
A highly stable solution that can be used for DNS filtering and as a secure gateway
Pros and Cons
- "We use Cisco Umbrella for DNS filtering and as a secure gateway."
- "I would like to have more applications being recorded."
What is most valuable?
We use Cisco Umbrella for DNS filtering and as a secure gateway.
What needs improvement?
Users need to have a bit of understanding regarding setting policies in Cisco Umbrella. I would like to have more applications being recorded. If you want to do things the right way in the console, functions have to be more automated in terms of classification, application, and recording.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco Umbrella for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the solution a nine out of ten for stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Around 170 users are using Cisco Umbrella in our organization.
I rate the solution an eight out of ten for scalability.
How are customer service and support?
The solution should provide more helpful technical support to help us understand some settings.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
The solution’s initial setup is straightforward.
On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup a seven out of ten.
What about the implementation team?
A basic setting can be done in minutes. If you want to go deep, it would take several hours. The solution's deployment time depends on how deep you want to go.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution’s pricing is reasonable.
What other advice do I have?
Cisco Umbrella filters more traffic and gives us insights into what's being accessed. Cisco Umbrella is useful for protecting endpoints and internet access. Cisco Umbrella is deployed on the cloud in our organization.
Cisco Umbrella is detecting threats more often because we've set it up more effectively than the other security solutions we have in place. It's catching threats in the first place because it's more strict.
We're using the Meraki firewall. Some Cisco Umbrella settings are directly linked to the Meraki console, which was quite easy for us.
Cisco Umbrella is very efficient and needs to be deployed on all endpoints. The solution requires some settings. Depending on how much you set it up, you should check its usage because it would require some day-to-day administration.
Overall, I rate Cisco Umbrella an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
Cisco Umbrella
May 2026
Learn what your peers think about Cisco Umbrella. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.
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Network Engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Very easy to accomplish content filtering, we don't need to do a lot of customization for it
Pros and Cons
- "It makes it really easy to accomplish content filtering. We don't have to do a lot of customization. You just click the box for the content category and it's up to date."
- "I would like for them to continue building on IPS and IDS functionalities."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case for Cisco Umbrella is for content filtering and for different access lists. We have different lists for different departments of what they can access.
How has it helped my organization?
It makes it really easy to accomplish content filtering. We don't have to do a lot of customization. You just click the box for the content category and it's up to date.
This ability is very important to my organization because we're in the financial sector and security is at a premium.
What is most valuable?
Cisco Umbrella is pretty straightforward and simple to use. We recently did social media blocking and it was really easy for our marketing department to access it. It's pretty straightforward.
It helped free up IT staff for other projects. It saves us a lot of time by blocking potential breaches. It's very reliable.
Umbrella has definitely helped us improve our cybersecurity resilience by blocking malicious links and adware.
What needs improvement?
I would like for them to continue building on IPS and IDS functionalities.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Cisco Umbrella for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's been very reliable. I haven't had any issues with it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is easy. It's deployed through group policies.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We're a Cisco shop. We have a lot of their products.
What was our ROI?
We have seen ROI through its pop-up blocking.
What other advice do I have?
We hope that Cisco will help us consolidate tools more than it is now by incorporating more IPS and IDS functionality.
My advice to someone considering Cisco Umbrella would be to focus on how easy is to use the GUI and how easy it is to navigate. You pretty much just click a box and the content categories work.
I would rate Cisco Umbrella a ten out of ten.
If your needs vary by department, I would advise making different groups for different departments. It's easier to do it that way than to set it up and go back to tie it to different AV groups.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Global CTO at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Video Review
Hassle-free implementation, effective user safeguarding, and high level support
Pros and Cons
- "The primary advantage of Cisco Umbrella is its ability to safeguard our users no matter where they are working from - whether it's in the office or remotely, as per the new work model that has emerged globally. This integrated security solution has simplified our lives by combining all the necessary security measures in one product. Additionally, deploying the product is all it takes to protect all our users."
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
We started using the standard version of the Cisco Umbrella to upgrade to a newer version last year.
How has it helped my organization?
As a company with a global presence spanning over 110 countries, Cosentino requires a uniform security solution that can ensure the safety of its users. Our search for an ideal solution led us to seek one that was easily deployable, integrated seamlessly with our existing systems, and offered robust protection. After thorough market research, we found that Umbrella was the most suitable solution for our needs.
Cisco Umbrella has notably enhanced the perception of security among our users. The solution is seamless and transparent for them to use, and they feel protected at all times. This makes it an excellent solution for users in terms of their experience. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, the quick deployment time is critical for our organization, and Umbrella has significantly improved it.
Cisco Umbrella is an ideal product for our organization because it is a standardized solution that can be implemented uniformly across the entire organization. It adheres to industry standards and provides the same high level of security to all users, regardless of their location or role within the organization. This consistency in security measures ensures that every user in the organization is protected to the same degree.
Thanks to the standardized solution offered by Cisco Umbrella, our IT staff has been able to focus on other projects. Once deployed, we no longer have to worry about security in that particular area. The solution is easy to deploy and seamlessly integrated with our infrastructure, making our lives much easier in this regard. Overall, it has significantly reduced the burden on our IT staff and allowed them to focus on other critical projects.
Cisco Umbrella has enabled us to consolidate our various tools and applications by providing comprehensive security coverage for our users, whether they are working in our office or remotely from home. With Cisco Umbrella, we can address all our security needs related to browsing and network security. While it's not mandatory, we have eliminated the need for most physical firewalls worldwide by leveraging Cisco Umbrella's capabilities. This solution has proved to be a game-changer for us, as it simplifies the deployment process significantly, as previously discussed.
What is most valuable?
The primary advantage of Cisco Umbrella is its ability to safeguard our users no matter where they are working from - whether it's in the office or remotely, as per the new work model that has emerged globally. This integrated security solution has simplified our lives by combining all the necessary security measures in one product. Additionally, deploying the product is all it takes to protect all our users.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Cisco Umbrella for approximately four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Cisco Umbrella has generally been a stable solution for us, although we have encountered some issues with the new connectors. Currently, we are experiencing some minor problems with disconnections or other issues, but these occurrences have been infrequent.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
While the solution is currently scalable, we recognize the need to continue expanding our connection points and bandwidth in order to accommodate future growth.
How are customer service and support?
The support provided by Cisco Umbrella is excellent. In addition to the standard support included with the product, we have also opted for an additional support layer provided directly by Cisco. We have been extremely pleased with the level of service we have received thus far.
While there are areas where improvements could be made, such as the RMA process, overall we are satisfied with the level of service provided by Cisco Umbrella.
I rate the support from Cisco Umbrella an eight out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
Deploying Cisco Umbrella proved to be a hassle-free experience for us. Since our SD-WAN is based on Cisco Meraki products, integrating Cisco Umbrella with Cisco Meraki was an effortless process. This integration has enabled us to implement the first SASE solution in our organization, and the combined solution of Cisco Umbrella and Cisco Meraki has helped us to set up new offices in less than 30 days, which is a significant improvement compared to the five to six months it used to take us earlier. This has led to a remarkable enhancement in our deployment speed, which is truly amazing.
What was our ROI?
Calculating the return on investment for a security solution is a challenging task, as it can be difficult to measure. While we have not performed a formal assessment of the return on our Umbrella implementation, I am confident that it has yielded a favorable outcome for our organization.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
One of the main reasons we chose to implement Umbrella over its competitors was due to its extensive global network footprint, which closely matched our own footprint at Cosentino. Additionally, Umbrella's user-friendly interface was preferred by our users over other solutions, making it a more appealing option overall.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others would be to ensure that the Cisco Umbrella footprint aligns with the organization's needs. This is a crucial factor in ensuring that the product works well for the company.
I rate Cisco Umbrella a nine out of ten.
My main goal with Cisco Umbrella is to ensure protection for my users, regardless of their location. Additionally, the solution provides a positive user experience and is overall a great product.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Senior Product Manager Security B2B at Sunrise UPC
Video Review
Is easy to install, works seamlessly in the background, and is stable and easy to scale
Pros and Cons
- "One of the great advantages of Umbrella DNS is that it's really simple to deploy. It's easy to install, the users do not notice that it's there, and it doesn't interfere with your work. The simplicity and transparency are great advantages of Cisco Umbrella."
- "It would be good if the more complex versions of Umbrella are simplified so that we can offer them in a more standardized way. We, as a telco, do not operate the same as a traditional integration partner would, who can sell all its services. We try to have a standardized approach as much as we can so that we can sell the solution with as many services added to it as possible. If you look at the structure of businesses in Switzerland, 95% of them have 10 persons or less, and they do not have a security specialist. Therefore, the higher the automated and standardized features, the better it is for them."
What is our primary use case?
Cisco Umbrella is a first line of defense. It protects the users from going to sites that should be avoided. Cisco Umbrella also protects against malware and phishing. It's a simple and very effective product that works seamlessly in the background. It doesn't disturb you in any way unless you access a website you shouldn't. Then, it will interfere with it and stop you from going there.
What needs improvement?
It would be good if the more complex versions of Umbrella are simplified so that we can offer them in a more standardized way. We, as a telco, do not operate the same as a traditional integration partner would, who can sell all its services. We try to have a standardized approach as much as we can so that we can sell the solution with as many services added to it as possible. If you look at the structure of businesses in Switzerland, 95% of them have 10 persons or less, and they do not have a security specialist. Therefore, the higher the automated and standardized features, the better it is for them.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been offering Umbrella for three to four years.
I've been working with Cisco's products for several years now. We in the B2B area of Sunrise work with Cisco kind of exclusively, it's really our main partner. I look after security products and Umbrella. The cloud-based security products around Umbrella have been the focus of my work.
As a reseller, the value we bring to our customers is the fact that instead of just selling them connectivity or access to the internet, we offer them a base level of security with it. I think that is highly valued by customers since security is typically a topic they struggle to deal with.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
When it comes to the stability or performance of Umbrella, we have been very pleased. When you add security on top of unsecured transport, you may have certain delays, but our technical colleagues consider them to be not too bad. Stability has never come up in a customer context as an issue.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
When we look at the scalability of Umbrella, we can see the great advantage of it being a cloud-based service. Therefore, scalability is not an issue on our side. We can assume that it will always be around and that the performance will always be good.
How are customer service and support?
I've had very few interactions with Cisco support, and the ones I've had have been good. I'd give Cisco's technical support a rating of nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We sold a different solution previously, which provided a much simpler DNS protection. It did not have the power and is not really comparable to Umbrella. It was more of a consumer-level product that did not have much of an impact. I had it installed on my internet access at home, and it never intercepted anything I did. It's only once I installed Umbrella that I saw differences in the ways my DNS calls were intercepted. The main reason why we offer Umbrella is its business-grade security.
How was the initial setup?
One of the great advantages of Umbrella DNS is that it's really simple to deploy. It's easy to install, the users do not notice that it's there, and it doesn't interfere with your work. The simplicity and transparency are great advantages of Cisco Umbrella. Cisco could take Umbrella DNS as a good example and also improve on other products.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Cisco solutions are generally perceived to be rather expensive. We have constant internal discussions as to whether we should offer lower-priced security solutions from some of the competitors.
What other advice do I have?
If you are looking for the first time at Umbrella, you should really understand what is behind the solution. Behind Umbrella is Cisco Talos, a research team within Cisco, which is one of the largest private ones in the world. All the input out of the activities of Talos goes into Umbrella and makes it a really valuable product.
As a service provider, we know that other service providers are using Cisco Umbrella, and that was a big factor for us in choosing it as well. Also, we had seen large telcos like TIM in Italy using it for many years and being satisfied with it.
Customers are always worried that somebody in their organization will click on something he or she should not click on. Umbrella does a good job of protecting a business from ruin in worst-case scenarios. It works in the background and is like an airbag.
I would rate Umbrella Easy Protect, which is the simplest on the Umbrella DNS side, at nine out of ten. Because Umbrella SIG is still under development and is very promising, I'd give it an eight out of ten.
Our partnership with Cisco is overall good. It has its ups and downs. Cisco is not always an easy beast to work with. Sometimes you see that traditionally they have a very strong enterprise focus, but we as a service provider have a different need than enterprises, and that sometimes has its challenges.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller
Principal Security Consultant at Vohkus
Video Review
Has easy single-pane-of-glass administration and is stable and scalable
Pros and Cons
- "Cisco Umbrella's integration with other solutions has been a great feature in terms of ease of administration. Administration and troubleshooting are faster. The single pane of glass is great as well. Another great feature of Cisco Umbrella is remote browser isolation. With this feature, you open a virtual browser, and it's seamless to the user. If the user ends up going to a bad website that's passed a policy and something bad tries to download, it will not download into the machine because it is a virtual window somewhere in the cloud. You are protected by this feature."
- "I would like to see more integrations with more products. Some of the integrations need to be simpler as well. For example, the integration with Cisco Secure Firewall could be simpler. It would be good to make reporting simpler. For those who don't use SecureX, it would be good to make Umbrella really simple to use upfront. It's not a difficult product, but it can be daunting for someone who isn't exposed to it because there are so many options."
What is our primary use case?
With Cisco Umbrella, our clients usually always start with simple needs such as URL filtering and move to providing a consistent experience whether the employees are at home or in the office. We also have clients with a large Cisco Meraki portfolio. Umbrella ties into Cisco Meraki. You can log into one place, configure your policies for your users when they're away from home, but then those policies can be pushed down to the Meraki deployments. So if you've got 100 branch offices, which some of our clients do, it's one click to edit a policy and have it be effective in all of the branches. It will also be effective for the home users. Through a single pane of glass, you can have a consistent policy everywhere. This comes down to the integration that Cisco has built into the different products.
What is most valuable?
Cisco Umbrella's integration with other solutions has been a great feature in terms of ease of administration. Administration and troubleshooting are faster. The single pane of glass is great as well. Another great feature of Cisco Umbrella is remote browser isolation. With this feature, you open a virtual browser, and it's seamless to the user. If the user ends up going to a bad website that's passed a policy and something bad tries to download, it will not download into the machine because it is a virtual window somewhere in the cloud. You are protected by this feature.
The integration between Cisco Secure products is a lot better now than it used to be, especially with Cisco SecureX knitting everything together. Previously, they were solutions on their own with a single dashboard, and it made troubleshooting difficult. You may have contained a threat from one place but not in another place. Cisco has worked hard over the last three or four years to allow these products to inter-operate, which makes troubleshooting and finding threats a lot faster.
The benefit we have seen from using the Cisco Secure suite is the threat response. When you have a product on its own, there might be a threat, and you can click a button, deal with it, and think it's done, but you would have to rely on someone to go and check the other products. With integration, you don't have to do that. You can log into a single dashboard like SecureX, which fits everything together. Even Umbrella ties in with Meraki, Cisco Secure Firewall, and Endpoint. Thus, you can be quite confident that if you contain the threat in one place that it's automatically contained in other places as well.
Threat hunting with Cisco Secure is easy with Cisco Threat Response and SecureX. When the suite of products are tied in with SecureX, you can then dive into one dashboard when there is an alert. With a couple of clicks, it will launch Cisco Threat Response. You will be able to stop the threat at the endpoint or firewall and also see what other devices are potentially compromised. If it's bad software, you can make sure that if it's detected again that it's never allowed into your network. The client that's compromised can be shut off completely. Before integration, you either wouldn't have been able to do that or it would've been a long-winded process. Then, the damage might have already been done because the threat response came too late. Integration has enabled faster threat responses.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see more integrations with more products. Some of the integrations need to be simpler as well. For example, the integration with Cisco Secure Firewall could be simpler.
It would be good to make reporting simpler. For those who don't use SecureX, it would be good to make Umbrella really simple to use upfront. It's not a difficult product, but it can be daunting for someone who isn't exposed to it because there are so many options.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using Cisco Secure products for 20 years, and we've been offering Cisco Umbrella since its inception.
We use several Cisco Secure solutions including Firewall, Analytics, Umbrella, Endpoint, and Client.
As an intermediary between Cisco and our customers, the value we add is not only the experience but also the relationships we hold within Cisco. We may know the answer to a customer's question because of our experience. If we don't, our relationship within Cisco is such that we can go straight to the person we need to ask. It shortens the process, and we can deliver the solution faster than the customer going directly to Cisco.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Cisco Umbrella's stability and availability have been 100% uptime since inception. This stat has never gone down.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Because Umbrella is a cloud-based solution, it doesn't matter if you are putting five users through it or 5,000. All of the heavy work of processing is done on Cisco's cloud platform, and it'll always give you 100% uptime.
How was the initial setup?
Deploying Umbrella is really easy. The initial deployment can be done in one to two days. More advanced deployment including creating policies is also quick and can take a few hours to two days because it is cloud-based.
You don't always have to deploy Umbrella live straightaway. Umbrella can be deployed in monitor or audit mode so you can see what's going. You can then use the data to create the policies. That is, you can deploy it without affecting anyone initially just for the visibility and then build policies on the back of it.
Testing is easy as well, which means that you can test the data you've gathered on a small set of pilot users.
What other advice do I have?
To those thinking about Cisco Umbrella, my advice would be to take up the free trial. It takes just a few clicks to deploy it in monitor mode, and you won't be affecting live traffic or your user base. You will be able to see the level of data you get of what all your endpoints are doing.
Given where Umbrella is today and the benefits it offers, especially compared to the competition, I would rate it a nine out of ten.
Our partnership with Cisco is very positive, from our account management team to the systems and sales engineers, to TAC for support. This is because Cisco has a knack for getting us in front of the right person, which is so useful. Other vendors aren't always as good. With Cisco, if you say you need someone who's an expert in deploying Umbrella or Meraki, they'll get you that expert. And no matter what question you throw at them, they'll have the answer. If someone says they're going to get you an answer, they do. That's the power of the partnership with Cisco. They're sort of a trusted partner.
The benefits we get from partnering with Cisco are first of all access to Cisco's expertise to deploy these products. This means we get to know about the products in a bit greater detail than we would of if we weren't a partner. By knowing about the products in greater detail, we can then offer them to clients.
Being partners, you get partner benefits, discounts, and the like. But it's more the knowledge. If we know the products on a deeper level, we can offer them to a client. We can show the client the value add of Umbrella versus a competitor's product.
The benefit that Cisco gets from Vohkus being a trusted partner, is that they know when we deliver a solution, we deliver it right. We deliver it to a standard that Cisco would be happy with. Cisco benefits from this partnership as they get fewer TAC calls because if we've deployed it correctly, the customer won't have to speak with them. Equally, if we've deployed it correctly, we don't have to go speak to them, so we're cutting down on costs, but there is also the brand reputation that's being maintained. If we deployed a Cisco solution and did it badly, it'll look bad on us, but the client will think it could be the Cisco product. By us deploying it correctly with our experience and knowledge, Cisco would know that that solution's going in and the customer isn't going to think, "Oh, it's Cisco that's the problem," if something goes wrong. That brand integrity is maintained.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller
Is simple to administer and implement, and helps consolidate existing tools
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features are the dashboard, visibility, and reporting capabilities. Our customers can see how much Umbrella is protecting their organization. If you don't know what you've got, you can't protect it. With Umbrella, you get the visibility and see the protection that it's providing. We can get PDF reports on a weekly basis of any malware activities and any denial of service or command-and-control-type activities."
- "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."
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features are the dashboard, visibility, and reporting capabilities. Our customers can see how much Umbrella is protecting their organization. If you don't know what you've got, you can't protect it. With Umbrella, we get visibility and see the protection that it's providing. We can get PDF reports on a weekly basis of any malware activities and any denial of service or command-and-control-type activities.
Cisco Umbrella is very simple to administer, and that's what our customers really like. They don't want the complexity that's normally associated with security.
Cisco Umbrella definitely reduced our clients' mean time to repair. It does what it says it does, and it does it effectively.
Cisco Talos is the secret sauce. It's the threat intelligence that feeds security solutions such as Cisco Umbrella. You can have a security solution, but if it is not backed by an organization like Talos and has not been fed, watered, and looked after, then it will be pointless.
Our clients have been able to consolidate applications and tools related to DLP, CASB, web proxy, and SSL decryption. These are natively built into the Umbrella platform. We're now on the cusp of looking at SASE and, maybe, migrating away from the traditional on-premises firewalls and merging more toward the cloud. In the future, as we start the transition to zero-trust network architecture as well as SASE it will certainly help our customers consolidate a lot of their existing tools.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using and selling Cisco solutions since Cisco acquired OpenDNS.
We like to use technology first ourselves. It makes it easier to talk about it and sell it. Also, it's a good reference for customers to see that we actually use it internally. Umbrella has been a fantastic solution for us and our customers.
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment could take a couple of days depending on the deployment model. Cisco Umbrella could be up and running quickly. You can instantly point your DNS servers to use Umbrella's DNS as its recursive DNS, and immediately, you'll be protected by Umbrella. You can take it further and get more granular controls by using AD integration, which can take a little bit longer. From an engineering point of view, it's a very light touch, which is unusual for security solutions. They're normally pretty complex. Cisco Umbrella, however, is a simple but powerful solution.
Given that it's a cloud-delivered platform, Cisco takes care of the upgrades. It requires a pretty light touch in terms of maintenance.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
What other advice do I have?
We choose to sell Cisco because it has done phenomenally well in terms of some of its acquisitions and the way they've integrated Umbrella. It could be a flagship security solution for Cisco. It's been a game-changer for us and has opened up new avenues and new revenue streams as well.
As a Cisco Secure reseller, we're able to articulate the benefits of the solution to the customer because we are a technically-led organization. We've got a lot of in-house skills within the cybersecurity space. We don't sell for the sake of selling. We want to provide the right solution, and Umbrella is absolutely the right solution as far as we're concerned. It is the leader, especially from a DNS level protection.
Cisco Umbrella is a phenomenal security solution. It's got the right balance between complexity and ease of use. Therefore, I would rate it at nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller
Solution Architect at Philips
Improves security and has good integration capability and stability
Pros and Cons
- "The integration features within, for example, the Cisco VPN product and the Umbrella module are valuable."
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
We are using the Cisco Umbrella proxy product. Cisco Umbrella is part of our ongoing project for moving, more or less, to the full Cisco suite. We have Cisco ISE, DNAC, and SD-LAN. We are getting the new SD-WAN from Cisco. It's part of the whole portfolio we are getting from Cisco.
What is most valuable?
The integration features within, for example, the Cisco VPN product and the Umbrella module are valuable. The new features, mainly the security ones, are also valuable. It improves our security, and it's much more integrated and better than the one we have from Zscaler.
What needs improvement?
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. We have very good support, and I don't know whether this can be improved, but that is one thing to do for the final steps to get rid of the other product.
Its scalability could also be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of the solution is very good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It could be improved mainly because the proxy is based on countries, and when you have no point to connect in a country, you can create issues. So, the spread around the world could be better.
We have 80,000 end users, and it's all over the globe.
How are customer service and support?
Their TAC support is very good, but it always depends on people. So, there is no in-general there, but the people we are dealing with are very good. I'd rate them a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
For proxy services, we have been using Zscaler, and for SD-WAN, we have been using Nokia Nuage. For the SD-WAN solution, we made a switch because we had a lot of issues with Nokia Nuage. Don't use Nokia Nuage. It's pretty bad.
For proxy services, we are replacing the Zscaler solution with Umbrella proxy services, but I'm not sure about the reason. It's probably for more security features where using Cisco Umbrella helps us improve our security within. It's much better than the one we have from Zscaler for securing our infrastructure from end to end.
How was the initial setup?
It was very complex because of a little bit of immaturity of the Cisco Umbrella solution in the beginning. All the features were not already enabled. In addition, we also had a moving target where we said, "We would like to have this, and we would like to have that," and when it was not there, we insisted to have it in. It was very difficult and challenging.
What about the implementation team?
We are using BT. I would define our experience with them as big trouble. It's in the name.
On our side, we have three to five people, but it depends on following the sun. We probably have five people worldwide who are supporting this solution.
What other advice do I have?
I'd advise looking into your needs and then comparing those with the features that are really valuable. It has been improved over the last two years, but just look at your needs and what the solution can really deliver.
I'd rate Cisco Umbrella an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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Updated: May 2026
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