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Cisco Umbrella vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comparison

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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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), ZTNA as a Service (10th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (9th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (14th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.0%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 11.4%, down from 13.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 9.8%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

Featured Reviews

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
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.
Jagadeesh Gunasekaran - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves us time, has good visibility, and a single dashboard
The solution is user-friendly and provides great visibility into threats. There are easy options available for specific workflow inspections. We can also get support by going through the Microsoft documentation, which is straightforward. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us prioritize threats across our enterprise. It covers us from a compliance perspective and protects our organization's data. Data protection is a very important aspect of any new organization, as we need to protect our data from both external attacks and insider threats. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us monitor for abnormal activity by insiders, which is one of the most important access points for attackers today. Additionally, the different cloud apps that Defender for Cloud Apps supports provide us with much more visibility into potential threats and activities on the internet. We have integrated Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps alerts with Sentinel. The integration is straightforward. We can find the configuration details on Microsoft's official documentation website. If we are familiar with how Microsoft products work, we will be able to follow the instructions clearly. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Sentinel work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment. Our integrated Microsoft solutions provide comprehensive threat protection, covering most of the tactics and techniques relevant to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Sentinel allows us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. When implementing an SIEM solution, there are always prerequisites such as Active Directory logs, security logs, firewall logs, and DNS logs. These are important logs that need to be ingested into the environment. Sentinel has many third-party connectors available that make integrations straightforward. Microsoft provides the configuration details in the Sentinel platform. It is important to integrate all relevant log sources into the SIEM solution so that we can detect and be alerted to any type of threat factor, whether it is from an internal or external source. Integrating third-party solutions into the platform requires a separate configuration, but Microsoft provides the necessary information. However, we need to have the appropriate permissions to execute these setups. Sentinel provides a centralized dashboard that covers threat management and configuration. It gives us complete insight into what entities are accessing, as well as full details for investigation. We can see how the alerts and threats are relevant to suspicious activities, whether they are related to malicious IP addresses, suspicious ASHAs, or any other indicators of compromise. All of this relevant data can be seen in a single pane. Recently, Microsoft introduced a new investigation experience in a single pane. This means that we can now get a lot of details in a single pane, without having to go there and execute a query. There are a lot of new insights being developed in the Sentinel platform these days. It has software intelligence. They recently introduced Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence, which covers almost all IOCs. This protects organizational assets from threats and suspicious traffic associated with IOCs. If a match is found, alerts are generated. This is a very interesting feature. Another great feature is automation and logic apps. We can create a number of operations, such as posting in a team's channel if a severe incident occurs or sending an email notification. There are many operations available, so we can automate a lot of tasks. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us stay compliant. It has predefined mechanisms in place to prevent attacks. For example, if an external user tries to access our SharePoint folders or files, an attack will be blocked. This is why it is important to give appropriate access to guest users. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has many features and benefits. It provides a number of policies that can be configured to meet the specific needs of our security team. These policies can be used to customize cloud applications so that only authorized users can access them and perform operations that benefit the organization. In terms of safety and security, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is top-notch. Using the solution's automation features, we can suppress false positive alerts. We can also close alerts, lower their severity from "high" to "low" or "informational," or close them immediately with the appropriate commands. This will depend on the configuration automation rule and the perspective from which we are testing. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps provides a single console. We are also provided with Microsoft templates to enable workbooks instantly. Alternatively, we can build our own customized workbooks to provide better insights and improve our SOC efficiency and overall performance. Consolidating all of our security data into one dashboard has saved our security operations team a significant amount of time. From an analyst's perspective, it is now much easier to correlate events, investigate alerts, and visualize specific entities. For example, an analyst can quickly see all of the alerts associated with a particular IP address, or they can view all of the activity for a specific entity over the past 24 hours or 7 days. This level of detail and insight would not be possible if our data were siloed in multiple dashboards. The single dashboard saves our operations approximately 20 hours per week by eliminating the need to access multiple consoles and tabs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps threat intelligence can help us prepare for potential threats before they happen. However, it depends on how we develop the policies for the database to block or ignore things in our environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The console is cloud-based, which is something I really appreciate."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"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."
"The iboss system is highly reliable. The false positive rates are small compared to some other systems we've experienced through other partner agencies who use competing solutions."
"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."
"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."
"The customer experience is very good, and the product improves security posture."
"If it didn't have a single pane of glass, we would not be using it. The single pane of glass gives you a one-stop shop. It's like going to Home Depot. You find all your stuff there. You can see all your threats and your endpoints. It's a very important feature and makes things very simple."
"The initial setup is very easy and takes only a few minutes."
"It analyzes the domain security helps us implement the securest policy."
"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."
"I like the DNS layer security."
"The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long."
"I like the web GUI/the management interface. I also like the security of Microsoft. As compared to other manufacturers, it's less complex and easy to understand and work with."
"Everything from Microsoft is integrated. You receive regular reports on them all. You can push your reports, logs, and security alerts, which are all integrated. It is crucial that these solutions work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment."
"I like the alert policies because they are quite robust. It has some built-in templates that we can easily pick up. One of them is the alert for mass downloads, when a particular user is running a massive download on your SharePoint site."
"There are a lot of features with benefits, including discovery, investigation, and putting controls around things. You can't say that you like the investigation part but not the discovery. Everything is correlated; that's how the tool works."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that we are primarily using only the Defender for Cloud on the Azure Cloud."
"Better logging allows us to find problems and take appropriate steps to lock them out."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is to stop shadow IT."
 

Cons

"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"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."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"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."
"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."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"There should be a way to monitor traffic at the user level."
"I would like to see DLP integration in the next release of this solution."
"We would like to see the enhancements made to the EDR, as we see features that are running endpoint management."
"It had the ability to do a lot of app control. So, every single app that went through that portal was registered, but there is a general issue with the whole app control. As soon as you add a mobile phone to your network, all of the apps get registered through the system, and you can approve, reject, or just let them go through. When I looked at it, it was impossible to manage app control. There was just so much data. I didn't apply that service because I just didn't have the time to manage it. It would be good if there was a way to categorize applications."
"The design of the screens could be improved. Sometimes you're trying to look for information, for what you think is critical that should be on that first screen of the dashboard so that you can quickly take screenshots to have people help out, but you have to hop between screens to find little pieces of evidence."
"It needs better integration with external threat feeds to improve scoring."
"If I want to see which users access a website, I need an Active Directory registered on Umbrella's cloud."
"In the next release, I would like to see the integration of VDI NSX with Cisco Umbrella."
"Sometimes, we'll get false positive alarms. For example, when a SharePoint path has no file sharing, but there is an external user, it will trigger an alarm that the file has been shared with an external user... the alerting mechanism should be more precise when giving you an alert about what activity has been done with the file..."
"Generally, the pricing can always be improved along with the management system."
"There are some features, such as user navigation content filtering, that are disabled by default, and it probably makes sense to enable them by default."
"In the future, I would like to see more plug-and-play capabilities that use AI to tell you what needs to be done. It would be helpful if it scanned our devices and made security suggestions, on a configuration basis."
"Currently, reporting is not very straightforward and it needs to be enhanced. Specific reports are not included and you need to run a query, drill down, and then export it and share it. I would love to have reports with more fine-tuning or granularity, and more predefined reports."
"There are challenges with detection and there are challenges with false-positive rates."
"It doesn't actually decrease the time to respond. This has been an issue with Microsoft recently. Sometimes, there is a delay when it comes to getting an alert policy email... Sometimes it takes two or three hours for that email to be sent."
"Sometimes the support is actually lacking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"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."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"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."
"You get what you pay for if you break the solution up into tiers."
"The price is quite 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 of Cisco Umbrella is a little higher than similar solutions, like Gateway."
"We were using the free version, and we implemented the paid version about two months ago. I'm paying a fair price, but everything is negotiable with Cisco. One of the benefits that I got by having Cisco Umbrella is the licensing of the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client."
"Our licensing fees are on a yearly basis."
"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."
"We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good."
"The pricing is in the middle. It isn't too cheap or expensive compared to other antivirus or security products. It is priced according to industry standards."
"Microsoft offers bundle discounts and a pay-as-you-go option."
"It has pretty good pricing."
"We have an educational licensing agreement. It's a customer agreement for multiple years."
"Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly."
"It is a little bit expensive. When you want to have the complete package with Office 365, Defender, and everything else, it is expensive."
"The pricing is a little bit high but right now, we are okay with it because of the compatibility with Office 365, Teams, and Azure AD."
"Its pricing is on the higher side. Its price is definitely very high for a small-scale company. As an enterprise client, we do get benefits from Microsoft. We get a discounted price because of the number of users we have in our company. We have a premier package, and with that, we do get a lot of discounts. There are no additional costs. It only comes in the top-tier packages. Generally, the top-tier license is the best license that you can get for your organization. If you want, you can buy it separately, but that's not a good idea."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Educational Organization
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 Exxon...
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...
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...
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...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
What do you like most about Microsoft Cloud App Security?
It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notificatio...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
My impression on the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that it's fair. I do...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Cloud App Security?
An area of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps that needs to be improved or enhanced is the reporting function. In the ...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
 

Overview

 

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.
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
Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.