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Cisco Umbrella vs Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense 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 Domain Name System (DNS) Security
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
121
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
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 21.2%, down from 26.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is 6.2%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

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.
Igor Van Den Ouden - PeerSpot reviewer
A hybrid solution for DNS security with insights and security reports
The most valuable feature is policy redirecting and security reports. It detects threats and blocks them. Also, it offers DNS handling and data extraction. It provides a centralized view of connected users and incoming data sources. It is integrated via the API to different monitoring systems that send out alerts. We haven't had any false positives due to this solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the most important features is the security posture check which Umbrella offers when a user accesses any website. That is one of the most unique features that it offers."
"A single pane of glass saves time... This does have a lot of options available for us to see who's doing what, what trends, what errors. We can set up our alerting through it as well. It is definitely a great dashboard."
"Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy."
"I would describe the experience deploying Cisco Umbrella overall as super easy. It was awesome. It was lovely to deploy it."
"The Global Block List is one of the most valuable features because it's really easy to block domain names as well as URLs. Sometimes you don't want to block the whole site, you just want to block one URL. The Global Block and Allow Lists are the best features for us."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to block users from reaching places that they should not even try to reach has been a boon."
"The documentation is good, and we have been able to resolve any issues ourselves."
"The features of Cisco Umbrella benefit my company by allowing us to do protective DNS instead of URL filtering, which lets us avoid having to backhaul traffic and run it through a firewall in a data center."
"When it comes to helping to detect DNS threats, BloxOne is good on all fronts. The number of false positives is very low, close to none. More than once it has detected new names or lookalike names and protected us and saved us from bad characters."
"The reporting ability is helpful. It allows us to control what our users are able to resolve, and then be able to see reports on that."
"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."
"The most important features for us are preventing DDOS DNS attacks."
"With the model we have, we are able to scale very easily if we need to."
"Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense furthers the existing security posture rather than replacing or trying to replace any existing products."
"The most valuable feature is policy redirecting and security reports."
"The product is stable."
 

Cons

"It is a value for money product for sure. However, it does not have that kind of awareness plus brand within the customer, as they are influenced more by brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet."
"I would like them to make some videos, practical videos, the kind with steps that people can use to learn and deploy"
"Cisco Umbrella is difficult to manage and needs to include a dashboard. It needs to improve pricing as well."
"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."
"If I want to see which users access a website, I need an Active Directory registered on Umbrella's cloud."
"The API is very Cisco orientated, which is absolutely fine if you're using Cisco Firepower and SecureX kind of products, but if you want to integrate with third parties, it is a bit tricky. There are some key API connectors for the more prevalent SIEM tools. I would really like to see in Cisco Umbrella the ability to create customized reports and then assign the rights to view these reports to people within a group. I should be able to create a customized report, which is viewable by anybody who has the rights. I should be able to create groups within Cisco Umbrella, and then assign reports to groups and have those reports split out automatically only to those groups. I can kind of do it by restricting my email list, but it is a half-complete way of doing it."
"I'm hoping for the conversion of Cisco ZTNA's features from Duo to Umbrella."
"The prices need to go lower. The price of technology is just crazy."
"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."
"We would like to see more reporting capabilities that are now offered only with the on-premises reporting appliance."
"The product could be cheaper."
"This is not just Infoblox, this could be any portal provider, cloud provider, sometimes they change the look of the customer-facing options and it's not completely clear why they make the change."
"Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense is quite expensive, especially due to the significant increase in the subscription fee after the first year. This unexpected increase was a problem for us."
"Endpoint solutions need to improved."
"The dashboard and reporting features need improvement. The user needs more informative dashboards so they can get to the results directly without getting deep in the report to get to the information."
"I would rate their customer service or technical support as not always good. You can be fortunate if you meet someone knowledgeable because most people try and get you to a certain point."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"Cisco Umbrella is expensive and could be cheaper."
"We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good."
"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 price depends on the use case, and it's a bit linear. But it depends on the customer's strategy and how Cisco plans to optimize the costs."
"The price is quite good."
"Licensing with Cisco can be a little complex, but I think it's comparable with that of other similar products. It's always hard to put a price on security, but the price is fair for the value it provides."
"When you buy the subscription, there are no additional costs to add any additional buttons."
"It's a pricey solution because it's for the advanced kind of customer."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
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 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.
 

Also Known As

OpenDNS
BloxOne Threat Defense, Infoblox ActiveTrust, Infoblox ActiveTrust Cloud
 

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
Council Rock School District, EagleView, Schneider Electric, Baptist Memorial Health Care, American University
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Infoblox BloxOne Threat Defense and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.