Cisco Umbrella

Score8.7 out of 10

267 Reviews and Ratings

What is Cisco Umbrella?

Cisco now offers OpenDNS Umbrella Web Filtering. Cisco acquired OpenDNS in August 2015, and rebranded the product as Cisco Umbrella.

Categories & Use Cases

Videos

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

21.0%

280 installations of 1,332

#2 most frequent

Manufacturing

13.4%

179 installations of 1,332

#3 most frequent

Finance and Insurance

10.7%

143 installations of 1,332

Pros

Effective blocking of malicious web content and phishing attempts
Straightforward setup and seamless policy management
Strong DNS security and malware protection capabilities

Cons

Limited granularity for policy management and specific rule creation
Complexity in understanding policy order and advanced configurations
Inconsistent domain categorization leading to false positives or negatives

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Cisco Umbrella helps act as a proxy to filter malicious domains and URLs, all the while providing DDoS protection and an extra layer of security, so that Cisco Umbrella is making the internet queries on behalf of our company. Umbrella also provides forensics so we can trace any malicious attacks.

Pros

Protects against malicious urls and domains
protects against ddos
Acts a s proxy and provides and extra layer of security

Cons

Cisco umbrella could provide reverse proxy capabilities for return traffic
cisco umbrella could have more integration with our different security systems
cisco umbrella could have an agentless solution

Return on Investment

Cisco Umbrella helped protect any ddos on our dynamic nats
Cisco Umbrella helped secure our company from malicious domains and urls
Cisco Umbrella helped encrypt our https traffic

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers, Cisco Umbrella and Cisco Firepower 2100 Series

Other Software Used

Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms, Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000), Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I installed the Cisco Umbrella solution in a healthcare environment to protect their endpoint from both DNS attacks and web attacks. The cloud dashboard provided a comprehensive view of all policies and endpoint visibility, enabling us to understand the various ways an attacker could compromise the company.

Pros

DNS Protection.
Quick and easy deployment.
Treat intelligence and visibility.

Cons

Dashboard management.
IT Management.
Granular features.

Return on Investment

Cost reduction.
Time gain to troubleshotting.
Cost reduction due to a security breach.

Other Software Used

Webex Meetings, Cisco Duo, Cisco Firepower 2100 Series

Robert Rogers View profile

Senior IT Systems Analyst in Information Technology at Kalamazoo County Government (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using it to protect our entire organization. We use it to deny access to mal-domains CNC fishing, etc. Filter non business related sites, I especially like that fact we can block newly registered domains that although it might catch a legit site, most new domains are high risk for malware, or CNC. I have used this in its free form at home as OpenDNS. With proper MS Active directory you can track requests by user. We have the option to integrate into our AnyConnect VPN client as well still working on that.

Pros

It is easy to setup and they have very helpful onboarding staff.
It took only a few hours to get it up and running.
It is updated in Realtime by Cisco Talos Intelligence who are awesome.

Cons

It takes a while to get the order of policies figured out.
There is a slight delay in changes as it filters down to your client.

Return on Investment

Saves time we can have the benefit of almost real time blocking of threats.
Helps confirm a PC is compromised, we can now see where it is connecting, out too.
Helps to prevent with new domain blocking.

Alternatives Considered

TitanHQ DNS Filtering

Other Software Used

Cisco Catalyst Center, Cisco Secure Endpoint

Osman Gani

Project Coordinator in Information Technology at Hamida Traders Ltd (htl-bd.com) (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Cisco Umbrella for several purposes, one of them is to secure our internet users within our office network. Cisco Umbrella works as a shield for us against cyber threats by blocking access to malicious websites, preventing phishing attacks, and implementing security policies for all the users within our office. It also saves time for us by automatically blocking known cyber threats which help us to focus more on other critical incidents.

Pros

Managing the overall security policies is quite seamless in Cisco Umbrella. it is quite easy to set up and implement web filtering rules and other necessary configurations without any hassle.
The reporting features like 'activity search' provides greater visibility of our user's internet activity within our organization. We can identify security related risks quickly and take decisions to mitigate them.
The deployment and integration of Cisco Umbrella with other vendors product is quite appreciable. We other non cisco security devices which Cisco Umbrella was integrated with without any major issues.
We can easily track down any user that goes to the internet through the activity search feature.

Cons

The smart search feature in Cisco Umbrella is great addition for sure which helps us to identify malicious domain just by searching the URL and there is scoring system of Cisco Umbrella which mark the URL in low, medium and high risk. Sometimes Cisco Umbrella mark well known and good domain as malicious whether sometimes they mark malicious sites/domain as low risk. So, it's something that they should focus on, I think.
The live activity search is great for checking internet activities, but the filtering options could be improved. It would be helpful if we could filter by multiple parameters at once like combining username, destination IP and time range.

Return on Investment

It's a costly product and we have to admit that, but security breaches are costlier, and they can take more than we can afford so we always had positive mindset over our security purchase and Cisco Umbrella had overall positive impact.

Alternatives Considered

Cisco AnyConnect

Other Software Used

Cisco Catalyst Switches, Cisco AnyConnect

Adnan Tanveer View profile

Network Engineer in Engineering at Telstra (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Cisco Umbrella to integrate with SD-WAN Edge devices to provide cloud based security. This helps us to layoff the security analysis and logs storage responsibilities from the SD-WAN Edge routers. One use-case of Cisco Umbrella usage is to integrate using manual IPSEC Tunnels and the other use-case is to implement auto IPSEC tunnels using APIs. The third use-case of using Cisco Umbrella is for a DNS Security where the internet bound traffic is routed towards Cisco Umbrella first for the security assessments. Once the device is integrated using any of these use-cases, we can implement the policies from the Umbrella portal for carrying out the desired level of security hardening. In my opinion, Cisco Umbrella is a pretty cool cloud based security service that can help enterprises to meet their cyber readiness and security compliance.

Pros

DNS Security
Auto SIG Tunnels
Web Filtering
Operation Logs

Cons

Use of new APIs for auto SIG Tunnels is not working
The Cisco Umbrella logs on vManage are not displaying the detailed information
Would be better if the umbrella portal is integrated within the SD-WAN Manager.

Return on Investment

Security compliance
Use of less expansive routers even with low disk space

Alternatives Considered

Zscaler Internet Access and Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud

Other Software Used

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, Cisco IOS, Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms

Akamai CDN

Zscaler Internet Access

Cloudflare

Infoblox DDI (BloxOne)

Netskope Intelligent Security Service Edge

Cisco Umbrella

What is Cisco Umbrella?

Categories & Use Cases

Videos

Most Frequent Users

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Manufacturing

Finance and Insurance

Cisco Umbrella Reviews

Pros

Cons

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Cisco Umbrella Alternatives