We compared Cisco Umbrella and Cisco Web Security Appliance across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Cisco Umbrella is highly regarded for its seamless integration with existing infrastructure, extensive range of security features, and ability to centrally manage security. Cisco Web Security Appliance receives acclaim for its user-friendly interface, ability to handle increasing demands, and flexible policy customization options.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Umbrella could enhance security by adding a transferring proxy feature and improving its Linux agent for Linux-based companies. Cisco Web Security Appliance needs improvement in stability, user-friendliness, and navigation. Users want more filters, automation, and a built-in firewall-like feature.
Ease of Deployment: Cisco Umbrella's setup is simple and can be completed in around 30 minutes. The initial setup for Cisco Web Security Appliance is generally considered easy and can be implemented within a few days or up to a week, depending on complexity. Most customers find the setup process efficient and satisfactory.
Service and Support: Customers have praised Cisco Umbrella's support, describing it as excellent and superior to the customer service of other vendors. While the customer service for Cisco Web Security Appliance is considered good, some customers say there is room for improvement.
Pricing: The cost of Cisco Umbrella differs based on the specific needs and approach of the customer, with flexible pricing and transparent charges. It is seen as both reasonable and competitive by some, but a few perceive it as costly.
ROI: Cisco Umbrella has proven to be a valuable investment by addressing maintenance concerns, reducing expenses associated with hardware updates, and effectively thwarting threats. It offers enhanced visibility and aids in remediation efforts. Users said it is challenging to determine the precise ROI for Cisco Web Security Appliance is challenging due to bundled expenses, but some noted that the potential losses resulting from attacks could be massive.
Comparison Results: Users appreciate Cisco Umbrella for its easy setup, extensive security features, and ability to centrally manage security, while Web Security Appliance is valued for its simplicity and scalability. Cisco Umbrella could improve its Linux agent. Web Security Appliance users say the solution could be more stable and user-friendly. Both products are considered to be reasonably priced, but some users find Cisco Umbrella to be costly. Both products earned high marks for customer service and support. Both products demonstrate a positive ROI and provide good customer support, but Web Security Appliance users mentioned occasional delays.
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"The solution is stable."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"The core business of Cisco Umbrella is non-malware. That's all it does: block the malware on the gateway."
"Helps block personal email accounts."
"The most valuable features for us include tenant lock, content filtering, and DLP solutions, looking for PII and information being exfiltrated."
"I haven't found any issues related to latency or any other issue."
"The initial setup is very easy and takes only a few minutes."
"We like Cisco Umbrella because of DNS security. It's one step ahead of whatever we are using for regular web filtering. In that way, it's more secure than other web filtering products."
"Provides dependable DNS monitoring of external devices."
"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."
"The best feature of Cisco Web Security Appliance is its policy framing. It also has a good UI and it can handle traffic well. Cisco Web Security Appliance is a good product."
"Cisco regularly upgrades features for the customer's security requirements."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the functions of proxy for the users who use the internet and the security it offers against the not-so-secure web pages."
"The product is stable."
"It also has high availability."
"The most valuable feature is security."
"Cisco is the best in giving technical support. There is no doubt about that."
"Since working with the tool, we have not found any threats in our organization."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"For us, as an MSP, the initial licensing changes were a roadblock, and they still could be a lot clearer. Specifically, it's an honor-based licensing system. We'd like it to be more specific to our traffic or our users so that we can make sure that the customer is paying for all their licensing."
"There is room for improvement in the dashboard. It could stand to be a bit more detailed. I would also like to be able to customize the dashboard to focus more on what is important for my company."
"In the future, they should combine some of the Cisco AMP features that they already have, for anti-malware purposes."
"Actually, we recently switched over to Zscaler because it has more features and it's more scalable than Cisco Umbrella."
"They need to improve analytics so they report on more of the specifics of user activity."
"I would like to see DLP integration in the next release of this solution."
"The solution is very expensive in Brazil."
"Its price could be better."
"The transparent proxy is quite difficult to enforce on smartphones and tablets."
"As Cisco Web Security Appliance is eight years old, though it's simple to access its UI, the UI needs a little bit of updating. If it could be more interactive similar to the latest gen solutions, that would improve the product. Adding a few more integrations would also make Cisco Web Security Appliance better."
"Sometimes reporting is a little bit short."
"The solution is not very compatible with other products."
"The solution needs to be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"WSA is lacking firewall features."
"The solution could improve the graphical user interface. It is not up to the regular standard of what we would expect from Cisco. Additionally, they need to improve the categorization when blocking in the settings. The CLI could have a better view than the graphical user interface but I did not investigate further."
"It should have a user-based quota, per-user quota, that can be defined on the appliance."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews while Cisco Web Security Appliance is ranked 9th in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 29 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Cisco Web Security Appliance is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Web Security Appliance writes "Ensures security for remote workers". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and Quad9, whereas Cisco Web Security Appliance is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Fortinet FortiProxy, Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway, Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway and Skyhigh Security. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Cisco Web Security Appliance report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors.
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