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Cisco Umbrella vs Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.2
Zscaler Private Access improves cloud migration flexibility and reduces costs, with enterprises seeing up to 289% ROI over three years.
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.
The ROI is often cited around 289% over the three years of typical enterprises.
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
I have found Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) to be very effective at providing operational flexibility during my organization's transition to cloud environments.
DevOps at My Heritage
Since we have a very small team, the ROI is around 20% to 30%.
Senior IT Specialist Network and Security at a marketing services firm with 201-500 employees
 

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
6.5
Zscaler Private Access support varies in quality, with mixed reviews on availability, response times, and communication challenges.
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
The technical support for ZPA is excellent, rated ten out of ten.
Technical management of Network Security - Network Hub at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
We had regular calls, and the team was open and willing to assist us whenever required.
Solutions Architect at Direct Line Group
We lack specific root causes, and it's tough to relay information to users, considering multiple contributors such as phone numbers and internet service providers.
Senior IT Specialist Network and Security at a marketing services firm with 201-500 employees
 

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
6.6
Zscaler Private Access offers scalability and efficiency via cloud-based capabilities, benefiting organizations with rapid onboarding and no hardware upgrades.
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
Zscaler ZPA has excellent scalability.
Solutions Architect at Direct Line Group
I rate the scalability of ZPA as ten out of ten because it's a cloud service and can scale as needed.
Technical management of Network Security - Network Hub at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
We need to deploy it and ensure it will be available in two different Availability Zones, but it's not something that can be done with automation, such as auto-scaling.
DevOps Team Member at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
 

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
7.4
Zscaler Private Access is praised for stability and resilience, though minor bugs and post-rollout issues are noted by users.
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.
Even during peak usage or mass remote access events, performance remains consistent, which is critical for an enterprise environment handling business-critical applications.
Senior Network Engineer at Anthology
The architecture uses a global mesh of service edges with built-in fault tolerance and redundancy, providing an always-on experience.
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
We implemented a resilient solution with load balance to ensure stability, which has proven effective thus far.
Solutions Architect at Direct Line Group
 

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.
Zscaler Private Access needs scalability, flexible rules, better pricing, ease of configuration, vendor integration, and intuitive troubleshooting.
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
It complicates whitelisting, as we cannot determine which IP will be used, posing a challenge when needing to integrate with third parties.
Solutions Architect at Direct Line Group
I would appreciate seeing dynamic scaling implemented because it would be beneficial if an instance goes down to automatically start another one.
DevOps Team Member at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
While Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) wants users to utilize their infrastructure for scale benefits, regulated environments such as government and investment banks need on-premises processing for regulations and low latency requirements.
Principle Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

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.
Zscaler Private Access offers premium, per-user pricing, justified by security features and cost-effectiveness within an 11-month payback period.
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
It is expensive.
architect at Tata Consultancy
Although the solution is costly, its features justify the price for securing the organization from various access types.
Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
While it is a premium investment, the short payback period of about 11 months and consolidation of multiple point products make it very cost-effective in the long run.
System engineer at a retailer 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.
Zscaler Private Access offers secure, scalable app access with Zero Trust, enhancing security and flexibility, especially in cloud environments.
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
Zscaler pre-tests websites and authorizes safe access, giving us a layer of security that we rely on.
Solutions Architect at Direct Line Group
Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) is much more secure than VPN because users are only allowed to access specific applications rather than the whole network.
Technical management of Network Security - Network Hub at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
Zscaler has allowed an easy, secure way for us to access our internal resources from outside.
DevOps Team Member at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), ZTNA as a Service (8th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Cisco Umbrella
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
124
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Zscaler Private Access (ZPA)
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
9th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category, the mindshare of iboss is 4.0%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 7.3%, down from 14.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) is 2.2%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella7.3%
iboss4.0%
Zscaler Private Access (ZPA)2.2%
Other86.5%
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

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.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Zero trust access has secured hybrid work and now provides seamless app connectivity
Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) has significantly reduced our attack surface by making our internal apps invisible to the internet. It effectively eliminates lateral movement as users are only connected to the specific application they are authorized to use rather than the entire network segment. Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) is highly stable. The architecture uses a global mesh of service edges with built-in fault tolerance and redundancy, providing an always-on experience that is far more reliable than our old hardware-based VPN concentrator. Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) is elastically scalable because it is a software-defined perimeter and not an appliance-based solution. I can instantly scale to support thousands of additional users without needing to upgrade any physical hardware.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) solutions are best for your needs.
896,298 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Non Profit
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

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 Enterprise31
Large Enterprise51
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zscaler Private Access (ZPA)?
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Zscaler Private Access (ZPA), while it is not the cheapest solution...
What needs improvement with Zscaler Private Access (ZPA)?
After deploying Zscaler Private Access (ZPA), I notice a reduction in VPN-related support tickets, particularly durin...
What is your primary use case for Zscaler Private Access (ZPA)?
My primary use case for Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) is securing application-level access to internal applications wi...
 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,298 professionals have used our research since 2012.