Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

Akamai and Cisco are both solutions in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category. Akamai is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.0, while Cisco is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.2. Additionally, 100% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Cisco users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Cisco Umbrella and Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise both enhance network security, with Cisco holding an advantage in pricing and support, while Akamai stands out for its extensive feature set.

Features: Cisco Umbrella emphasizes robust threat intelligence and DNS-layer security, providing reliable cloud-based protection. It ensures solid security essentials with a user-friendly interface. Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise offers advanced capabilities such as Zero Trust and comprehensive traffic analysis, adding value for complex environments with its broader functionality and detailed traffic insights.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Umbrella supports user-friendly deployment with intuitive configuration, facilitating quick setup and responsive customer support for swift problem resolution. Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise, on the other hand, involves a more complex deployment process that may require additional resources and time, complemented by competent customer support to handle challenges effectively.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco Umbrella offers competitive pricing with minimal setup costs, providing immediate ROI through straightforward implementation. Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is positioned at a higher price point but justifies its cost with extensive security features, promising longer-term ROI. Cisco's affordability contrasts with Akamai's comprehensive offerings, catering to various budget levels and security requirements.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise vs. Cisco Umbrella Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise vs. Cisco Umbrella

February 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 881,757 peers since 2012

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

Featured Reviews

reviewer2701851

Managing Director

Enhances web security with a single pane of glass and flexible deployment

I don't see any need for improvement; one of the really good things about iboss as a company is that they listen to customer feedback. I have suggested enhancements, and they are responsive, making changes for the better, and they do a lot of testing. To improve iboss, although we haven't used it, we considered the VPN solution that comes with the highest tier licensing, which includes DLP and various other add-ons. We prefer using another product which automatically logs you back onto your network when turning on your PC. With iboss, the connection is manual, which doesn't meet our needs. Additionally, sizing can be tricky because, although the initial recommendations may seem adequate, actual usage may require more gateways than anticipated.

Read full review

MeshwaShah

Senior Analyst at Deloitte

Have successfully routed high-volume application traffic through secure channels and maintain compliance across client environments

CDN capability is what I appreciate about Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise. It protects applications that are internet-facing or public-facing. Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is a product which has very good features and capabilities. I have worked on Radware also, but Radware has some limited capabilities. Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise has positively impacted my organization. We have around 62 applications within our firm which are now routing traffic through Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise. It has fewer false positives, which is something we haven't encountered yet. I assess the impact of Akamai's real-time threat filtering as 10 out of 10, and I am satisfied with this feature.

Read full review

Emilio Montoya

CTO at PROA

Ensures internet navigation safety and boosts productivity

The features of Cisco Umbrella I prefer most are DNS protection and traffic redirect. With Cisco Talos's threat intelligence, we reduce the impact of malware traffic in our network, and we currently see the behavior of equipment and choose the correct sites. Cisco Talos has helped us reduce the impact of malware traffic. We can see the behavior and choose the correct sites. We're currently testing secure access with Umbrella in order to secure access to core applications. It's a product that the user doesn't even know is there, even though it is protecting them. It's not hard on the equipment. And, for us, it centralizes everything, which improves productivity. With the Experience Insights feature of Cisco Secure Access, we've seen impacts on the management of user connectivity by allowing us to deliver safe connectivity. We are testing the Secure Access product with Cisco Umbrella to improve our connectivity with our users in order to secure access to the corporate applications. Cisco Umbrella is in the cloud, which is nice.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."

"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."

"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."

"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."

"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."

"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."

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

"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."

More iboss pros

"Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is a product which has very good features and capabilities."

"The best feature of Akamai SPS Threat Avert is that it's very user-friendly compared to other technologies."

"The threat intelligence feature is particularly valuable when used with another product of Akamai, as their researchers continuously update this threat feed database, making it an effective tool for defending against and blocking bad actors, public malicious IPs, harmful hashes, and malicious URLs."

"Web proxy adds an effective layer for security."

"The most valuable features are the protection against ransomware and phishing."

"The customer experience is very good, and the product improves security posture."

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

"The initial setup is very easy and takes only a few minutes."

"Improves security through DNS visibility, which can block malware, phishing, C&C, etc."

"What we like most is security and how easy it is to integrate with other appliances."

"With the Experience Insights feature of Cisco Secure Access, we've seen impacts on the management of user connectivity by allowing us to deliver safe connectivity."

More Cisco Umbrella pros

Cons

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

"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."

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

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

"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."

"Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc. It is easy to gain access if, for example, hackers obtain my username and password."

"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."

"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."

More iboss cons

"Their support response time needs improvement. They take on average one week to respond, which is not satisfactory given how critical applications are to the organization."

"Akamai SPS Threat Avert's pricing could be improved because it's a very expensive enterprise solution."

"From a financial standpoint, I do not believe Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is cost-effective when compared to other solutions available in the industry."

"It should have a real-time malware classification engine. It should check the malware on the website. It would be good if it had a real-time malware check for the websites because currently, it just compares the DNS queries of the blacklist. It should also have malware control over file execution and the types of files that the users are allowed to download."

"We would like them to add more features to Cisco Umbrella."

"There are some situations where we would like to block things for specific user groups. I know that Umbrella does that, but it's not that easy.... when you want a specific task for specific rules and policies for user groups, you have to go three levels down in the menu, and it's hard to find where you do that task."

"I would like them to make some videos, practical videos, the kind with steps that people can use to learn and deploy"

"If the virtual appliances could also gather traffic bandwidth reports, that would be great."

"From my perspective, I would Cisco Umbrella to give more exposure to my sales engineers. I know I can call them whenever I have an issue, however, more frequent meetings would be awesome."

"They need to improve analytics so they report on more of the specifics of user activity."

"There are cheaper solutions in the market"

More Cisco Umbrella cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

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

"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 expensive compared to one of its competitors."

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

"Provided the features Akamai SPS Threat Avert provides, it is bound to be expensive."

"The pricing is great and very competitive with the rest of the market."

"In the region I'm from, that of EMAR, Europe, the Middle East, Eastern Asia and Africa, our organizations do not have many liquid cash assets, so the price could be better."

"The licensing part for Umbrella is really flexible."

"You get what you pay for."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"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."

"Pricing and licensing of Cisco Umbrella is a bit confusing because you have to separate the DNS solution and the full-feature solution. Cisco in Portugal helped us understand which one was the right one for us."

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

More Cisco Umbrella pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Domain Name System (DNS) Security solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

16%

Government

Marketing Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	5

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	50
Midsize Enterprise	30
Large Enterprise	51

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?

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

See all answers

What is your primary use case for iboss?

Previously when I used iboss, we did the POC for iboss for ExxonMobil. Four or five people wanted to move from our ol...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?

Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern. There are cheaper alte...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Akamai SPS Threat Avert?

Since Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is not being used in our campus environment, as our users do not route...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Akamai SPS Threat Avert?

Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise is designed to protect users' access to the internet.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Akamai SPS Threat Avert?

Our organization does not utilize the internet access feature of Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise because our...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?

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

See all answers

Comparisons

Netskope vs iboss

Compared 12% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs iboss

Compared 10% of the time

FortiSASE vs iboss

Compared 8% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs iboss

Compared 6% of the time

Cisco Secure Access vs iboss

Compared 2% of the time

More iboss Competitors

Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway vs Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise

Compared 12% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise

Compared 12% of the time

F5 BIG-IP DNS vs Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise

Compared 9% of the time

Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense vs Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise

Compared 8% of the time

Palo Alto Networks DNS Security vs Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise

Compared 8% of the time

More Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise Competitors

Zscaler Internet Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 19% of the time

Cisco Secure Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 9% of the time

Palo Alto Networks DNS Security vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 6% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 4% of the time

Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 4% of the time

More Cisco Umbrella Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

iboss

January 2026

Download iboss product report

Buyer's Guide

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

January 2026

Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise report

Download Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Umbrella

February 2026

Download Cisco Umbrella product report

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform

Akamai Enterprise Threat Protector, Akamai ETP, Akamai SPS Threat Avert

OpenDNS

Overview

Iboss offers a comprehensive cloud-based security platform valued for its scalability and autonomous features, ensuring robust security with easy deployment and management capabilities.

Renowned for its robust security architecture, Iboss integrates seamlessly within diverse networks, delivering efficient granular filtering and advanced content categorization. Its single pane of glass console provides ease of management, allowing rapid scalability suitable for rapidly deploying environments. Operates in BYOD setups due to inline filtering without device installation. Integration with cloud-based applications enhances user control, and features like SASE, SSL inspection, and ChatGPT risk protection stand as highlights. Despite its strengths, users have pointed out areas for enhancement like direct navigation in reports, SSL decryption, and better cloud integration while having room to improve data loss prevention.

What are the most important features of Iboss?

Scalability: Supports rapid deployment across diverse networks.
SASE: A consolidated approach to secure access.
SSL Inspection: Ensures safe data transmission.
Granular Filtering: Detailed control over accessible content.
Single Pane Management: Unifies control through a centralized console.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Cost-effectiveness: Offers competitive pricing with robust features.
Autonomous Operation: Reduces management overhead.
Responsive Support: Provides assistance when needed.
Flexible Deployment: Available for both cloud and on-premises environments.

The usage of Iboss spans educational institutions, specifically K-12, to enforce internet policies, protect data, and support remote work environments. It provides web filtering and security frameworks to ensure safe browsing. Its platform-as-a-service model offers flexibility for both cloud-based and on-premises requirements, integrating seamlessly to deliver enhanced security features suitable for various deployment needs including zero trust, CASB, and network security for work-from-home setups.

iboss

Safely connect users & devices to the internet with a secure web gateway.

Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise (SIAE) enables security teams to proactively identify, block, and mitigate targeted threats such as malware, ransomware, phishing, and data exfiltration that exploit the Domain Name System (DNS). Powered by real-time intelligence from Akamai Cloud Security Intelligence and Akamai’s proven, globally distributed recursive DNS platform, Enterprise Threat Protector efficiently delivers security, control, and visibility to the enterprise while easily integrating with your existing network defenses.

Akamai

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

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.

MCNC, Educational Testing Service

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

Buyer's Guide

Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise vs. Cisco Umbrella

February 2026

Free Report: Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise vs. Cisco Umbrella

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise vs. Cisco Umbrella and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Akamai Secure Internet Access Enterprise vs. Cisco Umbrella report.

See our list of best Domain Name System (DNS) Security vendors and best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.

We monitor all Domain Name System (DNS) Security reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.