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Cisco Umbrella vs Skyhigh Security 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.7
iboss offers significant ROI by saving bandwidth and enhancing security, despite increased costs from cloud migration and device pricing.
Sentiment score
7.2
Cisco Umbrella enhances security, reduces costs, and integrates easily, offering quick deployment and significant financial returns within a year.
Sentiment score
5.5
Organizations report a 150% ROI from Skyhigh Security, with users expressing satisfaction despite some lacking complete clarity.
With iboss, whenever you turn on your laptop, the iboss agent automatically connects to the iboss cloud, enforcing all security policies. So with respect to the security side, it strengthens measures.
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I have seen some cost effectiveness from iboss; it has reduced certain support requirements, making it a more hands-off solution.
Managing Director
Cisco is a big brand in the networking domain, but in security, they are pushing a lot and improving day by day.
Chief Technology Officer at Binary Global Limited
From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using the solution is that it makes it a lot easier to delegate some of the tasks that were traditionally used, such as building policies on the firewalls and doing it through Cisco Umbrella.
Network Engineer at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees
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.
Senior Network Engineer at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.8
Iboss support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge, with some concerns about communication but generally favorable reviews.
Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco Umbrella offers professional, reliable customer support with expertise, though some users desire faster response times and streamlined processes.
Sentiment score
7.8
Skyhigh Security's customer service is highly rated, but technical support experiences vary due to response times and technician expertise.
They are very fast, responsive, and knowledgeable.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
The quality of the support is fantastic.
Educational Technology Coordinator at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
We had promising discussions about resolving these issues, but no real action followed.
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
I would rate customer support ten out of ten due to the excellent assistance throughout the POC process.
Manager Cyber Security Department at Mana
Cisco's support is fantastic, providing assistance when needed, especially during the initial installation process.
Director at Infosonik Systems Ltd
If I don't need to go to support all the time, that means the product is working fine, so I'm very happy with them.
Network Engineer at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees
We can know the case severity such as P1, P2, or P3, allowing easy interaction from the customer support side.
Technical Associate Network Security at Valuepoint Systems
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Iboss efficiently scales to meet growing resource demands, supporting large user bases with robust support and adaptable infrastructure.
Sentiment score
8.2
Cisco Umbrella offers a scalable, adaptable, and efficient solution for various company sizes, simplifying user and site management.
Sentiment score
6.8
Skyhigh Security scales effectively for various organizations but faces challenges like portal slowdowns, excelling in cloud adaptability.
They are also able to meet on-demand requirements based on your contract with them, and can easily provide adequate resources and scalability.
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.
If I start seeing sluggishness or anything like that, I just reach out to my rep, and they connect with their dev team, typically resolving it the same day.
Educational Technology Coordinator at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
Cisco Umbrella scales incredibly with the growing needs of my organization.
Network Engineer at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cisco Umbrella scales really well with the growing needs of my company, bringing the ability to ensure that people are safe and connected.
Senior Network Engineer at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
Cisco Umbrella scales effectively with the growing needs of my company; it's excellent, and I have experienced no issues.
Senior Network Engineer at Boys Town
Scalability is very good, and I can give a rating up to nine out of ten for scalability.
Technical Associate Network Security at Valuepoint Systems
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Iboss is generally stable with reliable support, despite initial deployment challenges, and is often praised for minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
8.3
Cisco Umbrella is praised for its stability, reliability, minimal maintenance, and quick resolution of rare connectivity issues.
Sentiment score
7.6
Users praise Skyhigh Security's stability and reliability, noting resolved minor issues and effective maintenance alerts for minimized disruptions.
It's been pretty solid; I've never had an outage with them, and if I ever had, it's only been once out of the seven years.
Educational Technology Coordinator at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
We've experienced zero downtime.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device despite our ClearPass sending information to the iboss box.
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
I have not experienced any major stability issues with Cisco Umbrella.
Director at Infosonik Systems Ltd
Cisco Umbrella Secure Access is pretty stable in my mind, and we have not seen many glitches that would have interrupted services at customer locations.
Chief Technology Officer at Binary Global Limited
The stability and reliability of the Cisco Umbrella platform have been great.
Senior Network Engineer at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
We did not face any downtime on that site, so it is quite reliable.
Technical Associate Network Security at Valuepoint Systems
It has many gaps, so I think some customers take three months and up to six months for the deployment of Skyhigh Security.
Secure at ESCARE COLtd
 

Room For Improvement

Iboss struggles with Mac support, ISP integration in India, and needs improvements in security features and cloud integration.
Cisco Umbrella needs enhancements in reporting, integration, user-friendliness, protection, licensing, infrastructure, and support for an improved user experience.
Skyhigh Security's platform has performance, scalability, and integration issues, with a confusing interface and limited training resources.
It is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
We also had a problem with a transition when we upgraded from one appliance of theirs to another, but their engineer lost a good deal of our data.
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc.
Making it more flexible and easy to deploy, particularly when integrating with other technologies like Active Directory and proxies, would be beneficial.
Manager Cyber Security Department at Mana
The product can only shield a small area, making it less effective for larger spaces or multiple users.
Director at Infosonik Systems Ltd
I have to write an email to Umbrella support to get assistance, unlike the other products where I can call the Cisco technical assistance center and get an engineer.
CTO at Next Technologies Ltd
Skyhigh Security is quite simple, but if there is any improvement in the GUI, it will be quite easy for us because it looks a legacy interface.
Technical Associate Network Security at Valuepoint Systems
The solution has room for improvement in its DDoS protection.
Network Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
The UI is another area where there is room for improvement in the product.
Secure at ESCARE COLtd
 

Setup Cost

Iboss offers competitive, transparent pricing with valuable cloud solutions, appealing to enterprises for predictable budgeting and desired functionality.
Cisco Umbrella's pricing is fair yet varies, offering value in security coverage with opportunities to bundle for discounts.
Skyhigh Security is pricier, suiting large enterprises, with discounts for multi-year or McAfee relationships, justifying costs with features.
It offers the same features you would get from a vendor that charges 250,000 British pounds for a fraction of the price.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
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.
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern.
Managing Director
We've bundled that with our firewall stuff and our VPN, which brings the price down and adds the ability to grow.
Senior Network Engineer at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
The only cost associated is the license cost unless additional solutions need to be integrated with Umbrella, which would incur extra costs.
Director at Infosonik Systems Ltd
The prices need to be lower as the current pricing is exceedingly high.
Network Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Iboss provides comprehensive cloud security with advanced features, enhancing data protection and management efficiency for network security.
Cisco Umbrella offers DNS-based protection, ease of use, and integration, enhancing productivity, security compliance, and visibility across networks.
Skyhigh Security offers comprehensive cloud protection with shadow IT detection, user analytics, strong encryption, and scalable deployment options.
The solution's mental health function can detect if someone needs help.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
It's given us a lot more visibility into our computer assets that may be infected with viruses and also shows us people who have unusually large uploads or might be engaging in high-risk activities, such as searches or going to sites not categorized by their web crawler.
Educational Technology Coordinator at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
iboss was the best solution for us because, no matter what domain you were in, everything is under a single pane of glass, which is exactly what we wanted.
Managing Director
The DNS layer security provided by Cisco Umbrella is very effective for our security posture, offering us vast improvements in visibility over DNS queries and potential threats.
Manager Cyber Security Department at Mana
The most valuable feature of Cisco Umbrella is its DNS security.
Network Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The best possible thing is that it is very easy to deploy, easy to configure, and very fast to get onboarded with a customer because this is a cloud-based service.
Chief Technology Officer at Binary Global Limited
The cloud security features are the most valuable.
Network Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
It is actually very flexible, so I think that is the opportunity since it is not resource-intensive.
Secure at ESCARE COLtd
We operate in a major financial sector in India, and that is why we use Skyhigh Security to reroute all our traffic via proxy for our security.
Technical Associate Network Security at Valuepoint Systems
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
6th
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), ZTNA as a Service (8th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Skyhigh Security
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
10th
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (21st), ZTNA as a Service (14th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (12th)
 

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 Skyhigh Security is 3.2%, up from 3.0% 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%
Skyhigh Security3.2%
Other83.3%
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.
KS
Technical Associate Network Security at Valuepoint Systems
Proxy integration has strengthened email security and centralized monitoring for all branches
We have nearly 900 plus branches here, where we have rerouted our traffic through proxy like Trellix Skyhigh Security. We operate in a major financial sector in India, and that is why we use Skyhigh Security to reroute all our traffic via proxy for our security. Only then will it reach our gateway. We monitor all the URLs and the plant IPs in our proxy. We are tracing those IPs to see whether they have a valid code or not. We also check with Trellix Sandbox to determine whether the URL is malicious or not. Additionally, we have included our Cisco Umbrella with our proxy, so the DNS resolution happens on our Umbrella side. We continuously monitor the traffic on our proxy side. The threat protection feature is a major useful thing because for our 900 branches we monitor with this proxy only. If any issue or any URL does not reach, it is quite helpful to check whether the issue is in the proxy side or in the actual end-user side. It is quite easy to monitor. We do not get all those things from the firewall end, and it is quite easy to gather that information from the proxy, which is a major benefit here. It also majorly helps to hide our actual IPs, as we have directed all the IPs from the proxy, making it very helpful to hide our internal servers.
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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
14%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities 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 Business28
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise38
 

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...
What needs improvement with McAfee Web Gateway?
When compared to other technologies, Skyhigh Security is quite simple, but if there is any improvement in the GUI, it...
What is your primary use case for McAfee Web Gateway?
I am currently working on Cisco Email Security Gateway, ESA, and I am also exploring Trellix Skyhigh proxy. I have be...
What advice do you have for others considering McAfee Web Gateway?
For IAM, we are using other tools, as we are a financial institution, so we do not go with a single vendor platform. ...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
McAfee MVISION Cloud, McAfee MVISION Unified Cloud Edge, McAfee Web Gateway, McAfee MVISION CNAPP, and Skyhigh Networks, McAfee Web Gateway
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not 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
Western Union.Aetna.DirecTV.Adventist.Equinix.Perrigo.Goodyear.HP.Cargill.Sony.Bank of the West.Prudential.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Skyhigh Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.