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Cisco Umbrella vs Symantec Secure Web Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 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 Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (3rd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), ZTNA as a Service (11th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (9th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (3rd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Symantec Secure Web Gateway
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
30th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 18.2%, down from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Secure Web Gateway is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

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
Rohan Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent
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. The single pane of glass management makes it very easy to manage your rollout. We get a lot of "single panes of glass" and, eventually, you need a pane of panes of glass. But it's always good to have a clear and graphical view, and Umbrella's is nice and easy to read. Definitely, of the panes of glass that we do have, it's one of the easiest to use. The single pane of glass is good to group users together and separate people out. Some people need different types of security. Some people are more vulnerable. Some have more highly valuable assets, like C-suite people. It's really good to be able to have end-users defined inside of that. You don't have to jump around. You don't have to figure out who's who. It's all done through one pane of glass. What most people don't realize is that it's running in the background, which is a really nice aspect when it comes to security. Often, when you deploy a security tool, it takes up CPU performance. Everything slows to a grind. But Umbrella is so simple and easy and it doesn't affect the end-user experience. It's the best of all worlds. It's nice when people realize that they're being protected when they go to the wrong site. I think people are happy that they're protected, but it's nice that they rarely notice it. It's generally easy to maintain network connectivity, but with Umbrella, the nice part is that whichever connectivity you're on, you're always secure. With Umbrella, as long as you're online, you're going to be protected.
Malik Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Has an easy deployment process, but the data center's capability to manage the traffic could be better
We use Symantec Secure Web Gateway to apply URL policies for cloud security, data protection, and SSL The product is easy to deploy. It has a faster implementation process compared to other products. The platform’s data center is not capable of managing most of the traffic. We have been using…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"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 would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."
"The console is cloud-based, which is something I really appreciate."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"Cisco Umbrella's integration with other solutions has been a great feature in terms of ease of administration. Administration and troubleshooting are faster. The single pane of glass is great as well. Another great feature of Cisco Umbrella is remote browser isolation. With this feature, you open a virtual browser, and it's seamless to the user. If the user ends up going to a bad website that's passed a policy and something bad tries to download, it will not download into the machine because it is a virtual window somewhere in the cloud. You are protected by this feature."
"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."
"It is a good cloud-based solution for DNS security."
"It's very stable, reliable and does its job."
"It has helped reduce my unit's security events."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard, visibility, and reporting capabilities. Our customers can see how much Umbrella is protecting their organization. If you don't know what you've got, you can't protect it. With Umbrella, you get the visibility and see the protection that it's providing. We can get PDF reports on a weekly basis of any malware activities and any denial of service or command-and-control-type activities."
"Cisco Umbrella is a totally different solution. They are the first to come up with this idea of security. It's a totally new concept of security for everybody, for every time, real time, perfectionism."
"What we like most is security and how easy it is to integrate with other appliances."
"The most valuable feature is the endpoint security."
"It has a faster implementation process compared to other products."
"Typically, Symantec is more or less like any other platform that performs proxy functions."
"I find the product to be very straightforward."
"In terms of most valuable features, I like the ICAP capability and URL filtering the most."
"The most valuable features are the website blocking capability and SSL interception."
"It is a stable solution."
"It's nice to have it in the cloud where we can pull the reporting together for it so we can see what's happening in machines at different locations."
 

Cons

"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"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."
"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."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"Looking at the full umbrella suite in the light of SASE, Secure Access Service Edge, they are clearly lacking in the inline CASB."
"I would like to see integration with SecurNX in the future."
"If the virtual appliances could also gather traffic bandwidth reports, that would be great."
"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."
"Support for multiple domains is important to us."
"Their support should be improved. It is necessary that the support is efficient. It is not really easy to get a resolution for an issue from Cisco support. They should be faster and more efficient."
"Cisco Umbrella hasn't integrated customized reporting yet. With Cisco Secure Endpoint Hub, I can see a report on user downloads and set it up to constantly get an email alert. Based on my understanding, Cisco Umbrella can't do that. You can set it up with third parties, but it would be better if that were built into the platform."
"There are some situations where we would like to block things for specific user groups. I know that Umbrella does that, but it's not that easy.... when you want a specific task for specific rules and policies for user groups, you have to go three levels down in the menu, and it's hard to find where you do that task."
"It's not user-friendly, and we end up making too many phone calls to get things fixed."
"The major challenge is their support. The support from Broadcom is quite poor. It takes forever for them to get back to you, and when they get back to you, they ask you for so much information, which makes it more difficult. That's the only problem I have with Broadcom. This is one of the reasons why we are switching to another solution. Another reason for switching is that we have a plan to adopt solutions in the cloud so that we can offload the administration efforts to the vendor. In future releases, they can improve its reporting and the process for rules creation. They can also improve Broadcom on things such as security information and event management so that from my same platform, I can carry out functions and probably block websites. Such a feature would be nice. Currently, Broadcom is integrated with McAfee to block access to certain sites automatically. It would be nice if they can expand their integration to IBM Resilient Security Orchestration and Automation Response."
"AI-driven security could be helpful, yet how effective it will be remains unclear."
"The reports could be better."
"It needs to be easier to set up rules for what sites it should allow or not allow us in certain areas of our computer for programs. It would also be nice really nice to have it give you better information about what it's finding. A lot of the alerts we get are very difficult to understand what it's actually telling you. It's too generic."
"Depending on the severity of the issue, I think they can be a bit slow - a few days for the low severity cases, but for the severe cases normally they contact you back in a couple of hours."
"Difficult and time-consuming to deploy and update."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"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."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"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."
"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."
"The price of Cisco Umbrella is a little higher than similar solutions, like Gateway."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"You get what you pay for if you break the solution up into tiers."
"Our licensing fees are on a yearly basis."
"It has a reasonable price. It is certainly not as expensive as it used to be. It is in line with other offerings on the market. There are a number of different flavors of Umbrella. They could bring Umbrella SIG down a bit because its price is a little bit high for what it does, but I also understand why its price is high."
"Its price for us is quite expensive because it's a subscription, and we just use it for the DNS log. So, for us, it's quite expensive."
"You get what you pay for."
"Pricing and licensing is stunted and licensing is expensive. We have many customers who are now thinking about other solutions due to the cost."
"There is an additional charge for advanced security features."
"Symantec Secure Web Gateway is less expensive than one of its competitors."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
23%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
9%
 

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?
I have a couple of thoughts for improvement, but usually when I address them with my rep, they put it into the featur...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We use it primarily for simpler filtering because we're a K12 entity.
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 Symantec Secure Web Gateway?
It has a faster implementation process compared to other products.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Secure Web Gateway?
I believe that pricing is on par with peers. Symantec and other vendors offer discounts when cutting a deal with a cu...
What needs improvement with Symantec Secure Web Gateway?
AI-driven security could be helpful, yet how effective it will be remains unclear. I plan to evaluate whatever new fe...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
OpenDNS
Symantec Complete Website 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
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Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Symantec Secure Web Gateway and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.