Cisco Umbrella vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense comparison

Cisco Umbrella vs. Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

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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 Domain Name System (DNS) Security

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

123

Ranking in other categories

Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)

Infoblox BloxOne Threat Def...

Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 20.5%, down from 25.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is 4.9%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella	20.5%
Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense	4.9%
Other	74.6%

Domain Name System (DNS) Security

Featured Reviews

Bryan Bettencourt

Senior Network Engineer at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.

Ensures comprehensive protection with seamless threat logging and efficient policy management

My favorite feature of Cisco Umbrella is probably just the DNS and the fact that when a security threat happens, all of that gets logged in their Umbrella portal, and it's very easy to find who's been accessing the site and how many people have accessed it, so that we can go to them and make sure they're not compromised. The features of Cisco Umbrella benefit my company by providing less time to search for things through logs, to look for what we need. It's just one place to go, and we just search for it, and we find it really fast. The fact that there's a virtual database that has all that information is great on our portal.

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reviewer2703357

Analyst at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees

Valuable analytics integration improves data insights but needs fewer restrictions

What is valuable about the Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is especially the monitoring and reporting, which provides valuable information. The integration with any SIEM is very valuable for getting DNS query analytics, and this is very important. The threat analytics tools in the Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense improve security response through integration with another platform, allowing you to gain insights on your own data happening within your own Infoblox BloxOne.

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

"Umbrella has helped my IT staff in two ways. First, our security team was able to get more insights into the users, their devices, and the sites they browse. Second, our system administration team was able to manage DNS resolutions in a way that is more accessible and less intrusive to our domain system."

"The most valuable feature for us is the DNS-based protection."

"Cisco is a very efficient and on-point solution that controls the whole network and settings on one page. We can monitor the entire network."

"I was able to implement it myself. It was really easy to install. You could install it on a server locally if you want to. If you have the biggest site, you would do that, but for my site, it was just directing all the traffic out through the Cisco Umbrella DNS. It was really handy. When the owners of the company went overseas, I knew that they would be secure because even if they were not on the company network, they would still go through the Cisco Umbrella servers. It was a complete solution for protecting the company with outgoing data."

"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."

"Cisco Talos threat intelligence significantly influences my company's ability to act against emerging threats, giving us the chance to patch our side or take precautions when zero-day vulnerabilities emerge."

"I have found the malware protection feature valuable. It is helpful and deliverable and is able to protect my entire organization from getting compromised. It also prevents us from visiting any malicious sites which are not visible to the users."

"This product is very straightforward and simple to setup."

More Cisco Umbrella pros

"The stability of Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is near perfect at a rating of ten."

"The automatic blocklists are most valuable. A box can maintain several lists from which we can choose if we need to block more or less. We don't have to manually manage the lists ourselves. They're automatically updated."

"If you talk about competitors like F5, BlueCat, no solution is comparable to Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense."

"Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense furthers the existing security posture rather than replacing or trying to replace any existing products."

"Overall, I would rate the Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense as 8.5 out of 10."

"BloxOne provides automatic sharing of network context data, which affects our speed of threat response and provide real-time threat intelligence. Our security operations needs this to do their work. It makes us feel safer."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the granularity for which you can categorize what you want to block versus what you don't want to block."

"The most valuable feature is blocklisting. It's good at what I like to describe as the "silly side cases." We have this annoying security architecture that says we must do this, that, and the other, so we try to make it easier on ourselves."

More Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense pros

Cons

"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."

"Its reliability and the response time of the support team can be better."

"The rule-making process for blocking sites or for blocking characteristics can use some simplification."

"Data reporting could be improved."

"With any Cisco product, it's the licensing side of things that needs improvement."

"Lower costs including licensing, support, and renewals would be beneficial."

"Security, overall, can always be improved."

"It could be improved by having a local data center and caching, which can provide protection support."

More Cisco Umbrella cons

"The product is slightly more expensive compared to other DNS solutions."

"Within the past two years, we discovered certain bugs in their products. The resolution of these bugs took a little too much time, especially if our production environment is down for a certain amount of time, then we are losing money. That is hard to convey to Infoblox support, e.g., we actually need the system up and running again within two or three hours. The awareness of these so-called production down incidents is not really easy to convey."

"The integration of embedded threat intelligence with other platforms should be better."

"We would like to see more reporting capabilities that are now offered only with the on-premises reporting appliance."

"Endpoint solutions need to be improved."

"The documentation needs to be improved because there are a lot of different models that it can be deployed in, and it's somewhat confusing determining what you need and how to set it up to best cover your use cases."

"The initial setup is not a simple "click-click-next" installation. It requires some level of experience ."

"The integration of threat intelligence with other solutions is challenging. If I want to expose threat intelligence, I cannot do it via taxi services. I have to call the API, but the customers are not into creating the APIs. The integration of embedded threat intelligence with other platforms should be better. Infoblox should work on this, and it should be easier for the end user to integrate it. It is very easy to deploy this solution. We should be able to integrate it with other platforms, such as the Next-Generation Firewall, with the same ease."

More Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Cisco Umbrella is a little higher than similar solutions, like Gateway."

"Our licensing fees are on a yearly basis."

"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."

"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."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"Cisco has a set price for a single license up to 100, but whenever we get over 100, we have to ask for a quote."

"You get what you pay for if you break the solution up into tiers."

"The pricing is fair."

More Cisco Umbrella pricing and cost advice

"Infoblox BloxOne offers pretty good documentation. Check its documentation, then do a PoC. Infoblox is very good at providing PoCs."

"The licensing is set up such that you pay for the number of active users that you're defending at the moment."

"It's a pricey solution because it's for the advanced kind of customer."

"If you only wanted the DNS filtering and none of the other products built into Threat Defense, it would be nicer if they could do that a la carte since we are not really using a lot of the solution."

"There is a significant charge for this product but I think that it's worth it when we look at what it's able to prevent."

"It is a very expensive system. You need to go over the licensing before purchase to make sure you're getting what is needed, not anything extra."

"When you buy the subscription, there are no additional costs to add any additional buttons."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

17%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	12

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Umbrella?

The pricing for Cisco Umbrella is fair compared to other platforms out there for DNS security. We acquired it as a bundle with other Cisco purchases.

What do you like most about Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense?

The most valuable feature is policy redirecting and security reports.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense?

Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense can be expensive for the commercial sector, particularly in Egypt, as this sector does not have a huge budget compared to banking or oil and gas, as the regulations ...

What needs improvement with Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense?

If Infoblox invests in network observability, especially from the perspective of DNS and IP address observability, it could be a significant improvement.

Zscaler Internet Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Comparisons

Compared 18% of the time

Cisco Secure Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 8% of the time

Palo Alto Networks DNS Security vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 7% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 4% of the time

Cloudflare vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 2% of the time

More Cisco Umbrella Competitors

Palo Alto Networks DNS Security vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Compared 12% of the time

EfficientIP DNS Guardian vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Compared 9% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Compared 8% of the time

BlueCat Edge vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Compared 7% of the time

F5 BIG-IP DNS vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Compared 7% of the time

More Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Umbrella

Download Cisco Umbrella product report

Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense

Download Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense product report

Also Known As

OpenDNS

BloxOne Threat Defense, Infoblox ActiveTrust, Infoblox ActiveTrust Cloud

Overview

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

Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense strengthens and optimizes your security posture from the foundation up, giving you the visibility, control and automation to secure the hybrid workplace. Operating at the DNS level, BloxOne Threat Defense uncovers threats that other solutions do not and stops attacks earlier in the threat lifecycle. Through pervasive automation and ecosystem integration, it drives efficiencies in SecOps, increases the effectiveness of the existing security stack, secures digital and work-from-anywhere efforts and lowers the total cost for cybersecurity.

Infoblox

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

Council Rock School District, EagleView, Schneider Electric, Baptist Memorial Health Care, American University

Cisco Umbrella vs. Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense