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Cisco Umbrella vs Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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 Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (8th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Netskope Next Gen Secure We...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.3%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 10.2%, down from 19.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway is 2.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella10.2%
iboss3.3%
Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway2.3%
Other84.2%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
BB
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.
BT
Experto de Seguridad Informática at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Granular web controls have improved user-specific access and reduced security incidents
For the moment, the solution is going quite well, and I cannot think of anything specific we could improve at the moment.Perhaps in file control, the maximum size of the files that can be analyzed is a negative aspect or an improvement that I consider necessary in Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"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."
"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"We chose iboss for both zero trust and proxy (SWG) because their SWG was superior."
"As I mentioned, the return on investment is significant, as it saved our office locations' bandwidth because when you are working remotely at home, your internet traffic routes directly to iboss and will not go to your office building, saving bandwidth bottlenecks and ensuring that issues with our building internet circuits will not impact your internet connectivity because you are directly going to the iboss data center."
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device."
"I like that it integrates with the infrastructure. I also like the kind of data and intelligence that's built-in. It helps create innovative reports for security."
"From a DNS perspective, Cisco Umbrella is the number-one technology now."
"The weekly reportings are great, the investigation is super and the application management is equally great."
"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."
"Cisco Umbrella is specifically designed for DNS protection, with features including a user-friendly console and the easiest installation, and it offers very prominent threat feeding from different Talos sources, securing multiple platforms while helping protect from malware and unsafe sites and mitigating DNS attacks to ensure secure browsing for end users."
"Meraki features and cloud-based functionality are advanced and easy to manage centrally."
"Umbrella is probably one of the best tools out there in all the security landscape."
"It enables us to go granular in the customization of blocking some categories on the DNS."
"It allows customers to consolidate and eliminate multiple technologies onto Netskope and just kind of turn the dial and use more features, such as CASB, VPN, and SWG, and you can monitor and govern all the traffic."
"One of the valuable features of the solution is that everything is on the cloud. It has no on-premise hardware to deal with."
"Overall, the product is nice, and I like the URL filtering, CASB, and other security stacks like threat prevention."
"Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to have total control and visibility over which users access and which websites they visit."
"The solution's CASB, DLP, and threat protection features are very good."
"My advice for others looking into implementing the solution it is easy to use, and it is one of the best solutions on the market."
"So far, the solution has been excellent."
"The solution has some useful features, such as microservices. They have sandboxing that allows the prevention, encryption, and remote browser isolation."
 

Cons

"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability within the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing."
"Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You feel that you are running into that support wall."
"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."
"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"Fold that in with the risk intelligence they're getting from all of the different subscriptions they are a part of. Now, these security companies subscribe to things like emerging threats, databases, etc. You can fold all this intelligence to decide what's happening on an endpoint. I would love to see them start moving into that space. That would compete directly with Microsoft. Maybe that's why they haven't. Having that ability native within the solution would be great. The other area in which I would love to see improvement is more detailed descriptions of why they block websites."
"One of the issues with Umbrella is as you get into endpoint detection and response, such as EDR point solutions, some of them will not integrate well with Umbrella. Sometimes when you want to use technology, such as Always On VPN, it will not work. There are some looming issues as one type of technology starts to crossover with Umbrella. That is the challenge and Umbrella should find a way to be more compatible with some of the endpoint response solutions that are coming out on the market."
"I'd like to see improvement in its overall integration with all the other platforms."
"I'd like to see this solution more closely integrate with other products Cisco has in its portfolio."
"The channel of support needs improvement. It is not under normal Cisco support, and I cannot simply call for support."
"The solution could be faster as the process is very slow."
"Improvements could be made with the user interface, it could be a little smoother and more intuitive."
"It needs better integration with external threat feeds to improve scoring."
"The solution's technical support is not very good."
"The solution lacks a good reporting feature."
"The stability of the solution to be very good. It is not the best and could improve but it is better than other solutions, such as Forcepoint."
"Netskope can only provide the high level related to threats."
"The initial setup is a bit complex in that it takes a lot of time. In order to get the product to work as you need it to, there is a lot of configuration required."
"The accuracy could be improved."
"The initial setup and implementation are not straightforward."
"There is room for improvement in streamlining policies. So what happens is that when you apply a specific Netskope policy, you never know the kind of content it will automatically block, or it will allow."
"The solution lacks a good reporting feature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"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."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"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."
"There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."
"The price could be lower."
"You get what you pay for if you break the solution up into tiers."
"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."
"You can request an evaluation license​."
"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."
"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 price is fair, and the licensing cost is based on the number of users. We have seen a good ROI."
"The license model is based on the number of users. You have the possibility to have 10,000 users if you wish."
"We pay a licensing fee of $10,000 on a yearly basis."
"The product is cheap."
"The solution's overall cost is cheaper than regular web security solutions."
"The price is average. Because the license is user-based, you can increase it as per the user quantity."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Non Profit
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise51
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We used iBoss mainly for Internet Access by having an Agent on Windows laptops Primarily because when we try to use i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
I am not involved in pricing, but as per the information I have, during that time, the Blue Coat proxies we were usin...
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 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 bu...
Which lesser known firewall product has the best chance at unseating the market leaders?
Netscope, Zscaler if they continue route they are on now. FIrewalls needs great deal of automation on each end, datac...
Which lesser known firewall product has the best chance at unseating the market leaders?
Those firewalls that allow extend the perimeter. Nowadays, there is a issue with the static perimeter and all is goin...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
No data available
 

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
Arrow, Cloudrise, Sainsbury, Evalueserve, Stroock, Apria, Ather Energy, CSA, AVX Corporation Nuna, City of San Diego Case, Genomic Health Case Study, Oak Hill Advisors, MaRS Discovery District.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.