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Cisco Umbrella vs iboss comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

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 Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Ranking in Internet Security
1st
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
2nd
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
iboss
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
6th
Ranking in Internet Security
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
7th
Ranking in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Filtering (1st), ZTNA as a Service (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 10.0%, up from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of iboss is 1.7%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
 

Featured Reviews

Emilio Montoya - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Improves security through DNS visibility, which can block malware, phishing, C&C, etc."
"Its simplicity is most valuable. I can install it and get it up and running, and it can be pervasive across my business within a business day. It is pretty simple and straightforward to install and configure. Its remit is reasonably clearly defined. When you look at solutions like Darktrace and Carbon Black, the mission objective isn't as clearly defined. Cisco Umbrella, Sophos Central, or some of the other solutions have a more standardized approach to antivirus, which includes enhanced response from the machine learning or deep learning perspective."
"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."
"We like Cisco Umbrella because of DNS security. It's one step ahead of whatever we are using for regular web filtering. In that way, it's more secure than other web filtering products."
"Using this solution has meant that we've needed to make fewer firewall changes."
"The biggest return on investment when using Cisco Umbrella for me is the ease of use of the fact that we've deployed this with our Cisco VPN Secure Client, so every computer has the Umbrella module in it."
"The implementation is pretty easy."
"Threats never come close to your network with security at the DNS level​."
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device."
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"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."
 

Cons

"With any Cisco product, it's the licensing side of things that needs improvement."
"We faced an issue regarding virtual appliances (VAs) during deployment. They could improve the quality and management of the virtual appliances offered right now. You can't see much because it is a Linux machine, and they have customized it. You don't have any route access to the machine, only seeing limited things in it. When we opened a ticket, they didn't know much about VAs themselves. So, that is where it is lacking right now. I know this will improve in the long run."
"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."
"They need to improve analytics so they report on more of the specifics of user activity."
"In the future, they should combine some of the Cisco AMP features that they already have, for anti-malware purposes."
"It could be improved by having a local data center and caching, which can provide protection support. I would like to be able to channel my intel and my network traffic to their clouds, and this feature is not available. Advanced protection or any malware file support, which might be required, is not available."
"We need to work on integration as it is very complex."
"It would be good to have more extensions to third-party products and a client for other device types."
"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."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"Its pricing could be better."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 fee is paid on a yearly basis."
"There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"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."
"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."
"As an educational partner, we get better licensing structures. We are very happy with that. It has been very nice that Cisco has partnered with the educational sector to bring that."
"The licensing part for Umbrella is really flexible."
"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 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."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Educational Organization
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

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 iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil. While iboss performed well, some competitors offered simpler implementati...
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 old proxies to cloud proxies, and we did POCs with different giants at that time. ...
 

Also Known As

OpenDNS
iBoss Cloud Platform
 

Overview

 

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
More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. iboss and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.