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Cisco Umbrella vs Symantec Cloud 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)
5th
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
7.2
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (3rd)
Symantec Cloud Secure Web G...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.4%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 9.7%, down from 18.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Cloud Secure Web Gateway is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella9.7%
iboss3.4%
Symantec Cloud Secure Web Gateway0.8%
Other86.1%
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.
SS
Sr. Technical Executive at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Has required extensive customization for non-technical users and still needs better simplification
Customization for basic users can be complex, as it is targeted toward only technical users. It would be beneficial if Cisco simplifies the customization process while still ensuring strong security to prevent unauthorized access. Simplifying the customization part could enhance Cisco Umbrella, but overall, it is a good solution for me.
cto543714 - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Simplifies management by shifting from on-premises solutions to cloud-based
Depending on the complexity of your system, you might need additional help during implementation. Considerations such as whether you’re using federated Active Directory or on-premises Active Directory need to be addressed. While setting up a system can be quick, taking only ten minutes to get started, rolling it out for an enterprise requires careful planning. Ensuring you make the right configuration choices is crucial for a successful deployment. It depends on the size of your deployment. While you can handle the setup, larger deployments might require additional support to manage effectively. I rate the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent."
"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."
"The iboss solution gives me the ability to scan the traffic through all the ports, through all the 131,000 PCP and UDP ports, and with this ability, we have the granularity also for consults over social media and applications on mobile, and this is an advantage that the customers are looking for right now."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"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."
"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"I haven't needed to reboot the servers for years due to their excellent stability."
"With many of our customer's end-users on the road, it was easy for their machines to get infected or to lose information, and after we installed this product, these issues were drastically reduced and the number of infections dropped month over month."
"I would recommend Cisco Umbrella to other interested companies; it's a very flexible and secure application — it's very good."
"For me, it's important that I get a connection to my corporate network in a secure and fast way. This product just runs in the background and doesn't need any attention. For me, as a user, it's perfect."
"The most valuable thing is how easy it is to deploy. We did it with 9,000 users at my last job, and it took a week to get to all the endpoints. Doing that without having to physically touch all those endpoints was very simple."
"It has helped reduce my unit's security events."
"The feature that we find most valuable is to be able to filter out those web requests that you don't want."
"For us and for customers, it's the ease of integration with Meraki. It's just a couple of clicks. That allows us to deploy very fast, and it doesn't change the way a customer uses his service. It's just more secure."
"I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy to set up. It was pretty straightforward."
"The product is easy to install and deploy on the cloud."
"This solution does not require much administration."
 

Cons

"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"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."
"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"It's a very new product, so it's quite immature at the moment. It can be more user friendly."
"I would like to see Cisco enable us to get objects from the internet. I would also like to be able to choose groups."
"In the way we are using the solution it would be good for us if they would do some simplification of the analytics. They need to improve this feature so they have analytics to show the content of the user activity."
"Cisco Umbrella should introduce an on-premises device."
"If the virtual appliances could also gather traffic bandwidth reports, that would be great."
"There are cheaper solutions in the market."
"We would like them to add more features to Cisco Umbrella."
"We would like to see the enhancements made to the EDR, as we see features that are running endpoint management."
"The product is cost-effective, considering its features, technology, and support services."
"WSS runs slowly sometimes, I would like for this to be looked into."
"Symantec Cloud Secure Web Gateway can be improved by giving customers more ability to provide feedback on the categorization of websites and the site review portal."
 

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."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"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."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"There are three models for licensing with different feature sets."
"There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."
"Cisco uses subscription models for the pricing and there are three subscription plans."
"Cisco is expensive. For example, we are looking at Nexus Dashboard, and it's costing about 250,000 euros. I ask, "What do I get from it?" I'm still not convinced that we have to spend on it, so pricing is a problem."
"I think Cisco Umbrella is priced well. We have a mix of customers with different verticals such as education. We have clients in the commercial space as well. Umbrella is at a good price point for all of our customers."
"I think it's worth the money."
"In terms of licensing, we're not able to be extremely clear with the customer because it's based on their reporting. It's not based on the actual traffic. If they say they have 50 users but they have 80, we'll just buy for 50 users. That's something where we'd like to have more flexibility."
"In the region I'm from, that of EMAR, Europe, the Middle East, Eastern Asia and Africa, our organizations do not have many liquid cash assets, so the price could be better."
"The price is fixed and affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Non Profit
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Performing Arts
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise52
No data available
 

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 Symantec Web Security Service?
Most products in this space are still maturing. Organizations rushing toward implementing zero-trust models often enc...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Cloud Secure Web Gateway?
Symantec is now part of Broadcom, and their pricing is comparable to others in the market. It's reasonably priced rel...
What advice do you have for others considering Symantec Cloud Secure Web Gateway?
Customers are increasingly adopting web isolation to enhance their network security. While this technology is costly,...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
Symantec Web Security Service
 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Symantec Cloud Secure Web Gateway and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.