BMC Helix Cloud Security vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

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256 views|195 comparisons
80% willing to recommend
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19,965 views|13,585 comparisons
97% willing to recommend
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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between BMC Helix Cloud Security and Cisco Umbrella based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Wiz and others in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP).
To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities.""The best feature is time to value. With very minimal effort, you are able to have a cohesive view into your security posture on one or multiple cloud accounts, particularly if you are dealing with multicloud. If you have Azure and AWS deployments, you might have multiple subscriptions in Azure and usually multiple accounts in AWS. You may even be doing some GCP work (around Google Cloud Platform). It's very difficult to manage a common set of policies, even less reporting, across multiple subscriptions, accounts, and cloud environments. What BMC Helix Cloud Security does is provide a unified view or single pane of glass as to your baseline. Then, it also facilitates the ability for Level 1 or 2 operations support to take action and report on security vulnerabilities.""The features that I've found most valuable are its container security aspect. I also like its vulnerability management tools.""It's also multi-cloud. You can look at several cloud providers: AWS, Azure, or GCP.""Role-based security is a valuable feature.""The cool feature of Helix Cloud Security is that you can do all that — understand and remediate issues — in one dashboard, based on the different policies that are available for security, out-of-the-box."

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"Application performance has greatly improved and there are less operational issues. Productivity has been going up because we have less operational issues. Also, we have happy customers.""It has the ability to quickly block new threats.""When we have laptops that leave the building, they could connect to public WiFi before they establish a VPN connection back into the company. For that duration or that period of time when they're not docked in the network or on a VPN, they effectively don't have that full layer of security that I provide inside the building. This tool stands in during that period of time, and we extend the security settings through their basic firewall or their cloud-based firewall at that time. So, we do content filtering and control access, but they also are looking at new domains, IP addresses, and bad requests. They're blocking them on my behalf when a laptop is not sitting behind our security appliances.""I like the original functionality, which allows for providing secure DNS services.""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.""Stability-wise, it's good. I have never encountered any bugs.""The documentation is good, and we have been able to resolve any issues ourselves.""Its simplicity is most valuable. I can install it and get it up and running, and it can be pervasive across my business within a business day. It is pretty simple and straightforward to install and configure. Its remit is reasonably clearly defined. When you look at solutions like Darktrace and Carbon Black, the mission objective isn't as clearly defined. Cisco Umbrella, Sophos Central, or some of the other solutions have a more standardized approach to antivirus, which includes enhanced response from the machine learning or deep learning perspective."

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Cons
"Every organization out there doesn't rely on just one control body. They use FISMA control. They may use HIPAA, CIS, PCI, or SOX, then blend them. One of the things that is now in big demand for BMC Helix Cloud Security is content. That's the next journey in its lifespan, making it easier for the community to share and collaborate on content for security controls that can be measured and remediated.""BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features.""I want the role-based security feature to be improved.""We've had some with issues connectors. The connectors have seemed to have caused a little bit of trouble, perhaps with the APIs trying to scan the environment. The only time I've had to reach out to tech support was for that. It seems it may not have been scanning correctly or I wasn't seeing data within a specific time. But we've set up a couple of connectors in the past couple of weeks and they actually scanned the AWS environment and we had data within about 10 minutes. It's working a lot faster and I think they're making improvements as they go.""The UI could be more user-friendly."

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"They can maybe simplify the configuration. For example, sometimes, the proxy part is quite difficult, and that's why we didn't deploy that.""One of the issues with Umbrella is as you get into endpoint detection and response, such as EDR point solutions, some of them will not integrate well with Umbrella. Sometimes when you want to use technology, such as Always On VPN, it will not work. There are some looming issues as one type of technology starts to crossover with Umbrella. That is the challenge and Umbrella should find a way to be more compatible with some of the endpoint response solutions that are coming out on the market.""If you wish to inspect all the traffic and it's integrated with Cisco AnyConnect, all the traffic basically goes through Cisco AnyConnect, which is not a good idea. That means you need to have more internet capacity as a data sampler, so in the case of a split tunnel, we cannot inspect the traffic that is being migrated through the local internet. I'm not sure whether there is a possibility wherein Cisco Umbrella can also inspect the traffic that is outside the AnyConnect tunnel.""The pricing could be improved.""If the security issues are taken care of it would be better.""If the virtual appliances could also gather traffic bandwidth reports, that would be great.""There are cheaper solutions in the market""Its DNS service does not support IPv6 query."

More Cisco Umbrella Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It is a subscription model with term licensing that is usually yearly. This includes, not only the product, but support and maintenance. It is based on cloud assets. Therefore, if you have 100 cloud assets, those cloud assets are measured based on evaluation or transactions. For example, if I'm evaluating that cloud asset for CIS compliance, PCI compliance, and AWS best practices, that asset gets evaluated three times, as those are three transactions. However, the license model is based on peak asset usage. So, over a year, if you deploy 100, 1000, 500, and then 2000 assets, you will be charged for the 2000 peak of assets managed by Helix Cloud Security."
  • "The pricing is based on an annual subscription, upfront, and it's based on cloud assets. Whether your assets are in Azure and AWS combined, the tool tells you how many assets are being scanned and that's the number used for pricing."
  • More BMC Helix Cloud Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "​The pricing is fair."
  • "You can request an evaluation license​."
  • "It needs a better price point."
  • "The product is pricey compared to Cisco Firepower."
  • "The price could be lower."
  • "There is a one-time cost of approximately $800 USD per user, and then a yearly support fee of about $50 per user."
  • "Our costs were negotiated, and they are okay."
  • "Our licensing fees are on a yearly basis."
  • More Cisco Umbrella Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities.
    Top Answer:I would rate the price of BMC Helix Cloud Security as a seven in terms of costliness. It is not the cheapest option available, as it tends to be more expensive than some competitors, but it offers… more »
    Top Answer:BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features. It currently consists of separate point solutions that don't flow together as seamlessly as they could… more »
    Top Answer: Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security… more »
    Top Answer:Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat… more »
    Top Answer:Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
    Ranking
    Views
    256
    Comparisons
    195
    Reviews
    2
    Average Words per Review
    453
    Rating
    7.5
    Views
    19,965
    Comparisons
    13,585
    Reviews
    49
    Average Words per Review
    907
    Rating
    8.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    TrueSight Cloud Security, SecOps Policy Service
    OpenDNS
    Learn More
    Overview

    BMC Helix Cloud Security is a SaaS tool designed to help organizations reduce compliance and security lapses resulting from next-gen container and cloud technologies. The solution offers a fully transparent, user-friendly view of all compliance data gathered throughout container resources, cloud, and data centers. BMC Helix Cloud Security can be used to insert compliance inquiries precisely in DevOps workflows for immediate assessment in relation to critical “go, no-go” conclusions throughout  the entire workflow. 

    BMC Helix Cloud Security offers enterprise organizations a unique compliance solution with robust functionalities to concentrate on numerous use processes that may interfere with digital transfigurations, such as:

    • Discovering resources, accounts, and configurations that are non-compliant with standard regulations or the organization's own policies and protocols.

    • Multi-source cloud compliance for PaaS service infrastructures, networks, storage, and containers.

    • DevOps workflows with melded security and compliance for WebApp application blueprints and weaknesses, and all application libraries.

    • Out-of-box capabilities for immediate compliance integration for DevOps workflows.

    BMC Helix Cloud Security is SaaS, which makes it a very flexible solution. It is able to integrate seamlessly with many of today’s enterprises’ demands. BMC Helix Cloud Security can easily perform as a policy-as-code (YAML) based protocol language, open RESTful APIs, or by seamlessly compiling extensible data connectors.

    Many of today's enterprise organizations must comply with numerous policies and regulations to maintain effective operations. BMC Helix Cloud Security ensures an enterprise organization is able to satisfy regulatory standards such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act, Defense Information System Agency (DISA), or any other stringent government or internal organizational compliance standards. The solution has a comprehensive compliance policy that utilizes mode-two capabilities and will ensure that an enterprise organization will greatly minimize or even negate the threat of ransomware and data breaches throughout its network. 

    BMC Helix Cloud Security will also see that container and container hosts are configured correctly and will then regularly audit to ensure compliance at the three important levels of compliance - images, daemon configuration, and host configuration.

    BMC Helix Cloud Security is designed to identify vulnerabilities by dissecting and thoroughly investigating compliance data for container and cloud resources and delivering the outcomes through a friendly, easy-to-understand dashboard. The solution can also provide support for unique or custom sources, provided that data is in a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format.

    BMC Helix Cloud security is also able to help discover and minimize vulnerabilities created by new services, objects, and resources instituted by containers and public clouds. These can sometimes be forgotten, creating a tremendous risk to an organization. BMC Helix Cloud Security will ensure these new services will be carefully and continually monitored to ensure industry and government standards and regulations are not being compromised. The solution is continually dissecting data and then will deliver outcomes in a dynamic, easy-to-understand dashboard.

    BMC Helix Cloud Security offers a user-friendly, robust, complete compliance strategy to ensure organizations maintain the highest levels of productivity and profitability while negating the risk of any type of compliance vulnerabilities.

    Cisco Umbrella offers flexible, cloud-delivered security according to users’ requirements Cisco Umbrella includes secure web gateway, firewall, and cloud access security broker (CASB) functionality all delivered from a single cloud security service. Cisco Umbrella’s protection is extended to devices, remote users, and distributed locations anywhere. As company employees work from many locations and devices, Cisco Umbrella is the easiest way to effectively protect users everywhere in minutes.

    Cisco Umbrella uses machine learning to search for, identify, and even predict malicious domains. By learning from internet activity patterns, this DNS-layer security solution can automatically identify attacker infrastructure being staged for the next threat. These domains are then proactively blocked, protecting networks from potential compromise. Cisco Umbrella analyzes terabytes of data in real time across all markets, geographies, and protocols.

    Cisco Umbrella works with leading IT companies to integrate its security enforcement and intelligence. Built with a bidirectional API, Cisco Umbrella makes it easy to extend protection from on-premises security appliances to cloud controlled devices and sites.

    Cisco Umbrella is suitable for small businesses without dedicated security professionals, as well as for multinational enterprises with complex environments.

    Why use Cisco Umbrella?

    • Simplify security management: Cisco Umbrella is the fastest and easiest way to protect all users within minutes and reduces the number of infections and alerts sent from other security products by stopping threats at the earliest point. With no hardware to install and no software to manually update, ongoing management is simple

    • Reliable reporting: Cisco Umbrella reports show activity for each device or network in the system. Users gain a more complete picture of the security risks facing their organization and can take action to remedy them.

    • Manage and control cloud apps: Umbrella provides visibility into sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services in use across the enterprise. Users can uncover new services being used, see who is using them, identify potential risk, and block specific applications easily.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Cisco Umbrella stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of the major ones are its DNS-based protection, ability to protect users no matter where they are located, stability, and high performance.

    Daniel B., a network specialist at Syswind Kft, writes, “We primarily use the solution as cloud security for our branches. It protects us from direct internet outbreaks. It makes for good flexibility. The solution is very easy to manage. We found the initial setup, for example, to be quite simple. Efficient protection on the DNS level and even higher. The sandboxing feature analyses and handles the complicated security risks.”

    Victor M., SOC & Security Services Director at BEST, notes, “It provides security for the remote workers and it helps to improve enterprise security in a very easy way. We mainly enjoy web software protection capabilities. It prevents the end-users from getting into bad sites or sites that potentially could have malware or could be phishing. It helps end-users avoid the wrong sites. The solution works very smoothly. The user interface is good.”

    OpenDNS is a part of Cisco providing a suite of consumer products aimed at making the internet faster, safer, and more reliable.

    Sample Customers
    NHS, Vodafone, Kansas City Life, SKY Italia, Cybera
    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
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Energy/Utilities Company7%
    Real Estate/Law Firm6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Educational Organization6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Educational Organization16%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise7%
    Large Enterprise73%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise39%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise55%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Wiz and others in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP). Updated: March 2024.
    768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    BMC Helix Cloud Security is ranked 24th in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 5 reviews while Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews. BMC Helix Cloud Security is rated 8.0, while Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of BMC Helix Cloud Security writes "A highly scalable and straightforward solution with a knowledgeable support team". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". BMC Helix Cloud Security is most compared with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes, VMware Aria Operations, CloudBolt, VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth and Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, whereas 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 Fortinet FortiGate SWG.

    We monitor all Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.