We compared Cisco Umbrella Zscaler Internet Access based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Umbrella offers more comprehensive features, including granular customization of DNS blocking, tenant lock content filtering, and support for hybrid work. It also has better integration with other products and more reliable technical support. Zscaler Internet Access has a competitive pricing model and a cloud-native proxy architecture, it lacks certain features such as VPN and client-to-client communication. Overall, Cisco Umbrella provides a more complete and user-friendly solution for organizations.
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"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 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."
"The core business of Cisco Umbrella is non-malware. That's all it does: block the malware on the gateway."
"The documentation is good, and we have been able to resolve any issues ourselves."
"DNS protection, domain blocking, SIP component, and the Cisco Umbrella roaming client are the valuable features of Cisco Umbrella."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Cisco's support is better nowadays."
"You can manage and create policies based on a group of users. It can permit some URLs and block others."
"Improves security through DNS visibility, which can block malware, phishing, C&C, etc."
"The implementation is pretty easy."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to block users from reaching places that they should not even try to reach has been a boon."
"Zscaler Internet Access has helped us reduce the time that we spend managing security policies by about four hours a week. We can use this time to focus on other things, especially the IT team."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to drop packets."
"The security is excellent."
"The solution is scalable and stable."
"The solution offers a distributed organization to master and to control all of the endpoints."
"Tech support is good."
"The users are at different locations, and Zscaler helps us to put the organization's central security controls on these roaming users."
"SSL inspection is a valuable feature."
"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."
"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."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"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"
"Its on-prem rollout is quite challenging. It needs better coordination with the Internet Service Provider. It is a cloud-based solution, and any endpoint that connects to it has to go through all the gateway ISPs, but some of the ISPs block HTTPS-based DNS. That's where the challenge occurs with Umbrella."
"Security, overall, can always be improved."
"I would like to have more applications being recorded."
"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."
"The solution is very expensive in Brazil."
"Looking at the full umbrella suite in the light of SASE, Secure Access Service Edge, they are clearly lacking in the inline CASB."
"The product can be pretty expensive."
"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."
"The tool should improve the predefined dictionaries."
"Another thing that I would like to see is if Zscaler could have a separate product for direct access. I looked at a private access solution, but I understand there's a separate product that isn't integrated with this."
"In terms of user experience, it could be better."
"The OS capabilities and WSL support could be improved."
"Zscaler Internet Access can improve by adding traffic filtering based on the DNS."
"They should enhance the audit reporting feature."
"The reporting functionality could be a bit easier to use. There is a reporting function, but it's quite hard to do any good reporting, from a user-management perspective. For example, if a department manager wants to know how his department is using the web, there is a way to get the data, but it's quite cumbersome to get it and show it well. And that's true for comparing between departments."
"The solution is expensive. They recently revised the pricing and packaging. Some of our existing customers have been asking for alternate solutions for a lower price."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. 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 Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security, Fortinet FortiGate SWG and Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection, whereas Zscaler Internet Access is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, FortiSASE and Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Zscaler Internet Access report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors and best Internet Security vendors.
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