We compared Netskope and Cisco Umbrella based on our users' reviews across four parameters. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Cisco Umbrella is praised for its customer service, positive ROI, and ease of use, yet it needs to enhance its user interface, reporting and analytics capabilities, integration with third-party platforms, and customer support. Netskope offers comprehensive data protection and advanced threat protection but could improve its interface, customer support, performance during high traffic, and reporting capabilities. Pricing is competitive for both options.
Features: Netskope stands out with comprehensive data protection and advanced analytics, while Cisco Umbrella excels in robust security measures, seamless integration, user-friendly interface, and reliable performance.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost of Netskope is straightforward, with competitive pricing options, ensuring a smooth experience for customers. Cisco Umbrella also offers reasonable and competitive pricing, with a hassle-free setup cost and a simple and flexible licensing process for easy management. Netskope has shown a positive ROI with improved security, data protection, visibility, threat detection, and cost savings. Cisco Umbrella also provides improved security, productivity, ease of use, and integration with existing systems.
Room for Improvement: Netskope could benefit from improvement in its interface, customer support, performance during high traffic, and reporting capabilities. Cisco Umbrella needs to enhance its interface, the solution's reporting and analytics capabilities, third-party integration, and customer support.
Deployment and customer support: Some Netskope users found the initial setup to be simple and quick, as it only involves rolling out an agent and can be deployed on the cloud. Others mentioned that the implementation phase can be complex and time-consuming, requiring coordination and effort. The deployment process was generally considered easy, especially for those with a networking background. Cisco Umbrella users find the initial setup to be straightforward, with deployment taking as little as a day or two. Others report that deployment can take a couple of days to a few weeks, depending on the complexity of the deployment model and any customization needed. Netskope's customer service is responsive, helpful, and attentive, delivering prompt resolution and knowledgeable assistance. Cisco Umbrella also provides highly regarded customer service, with prompt and efficient assistance and a knowledgeable support team.
The summary above is based on 68 interviews we conducted with Netskope and Cisco Umbrella users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"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 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."
"It is a good cloud-based solution for DNS security."
"I like the DNS layer security."
"The solution is very easy to manage. We found the initial setup, for example, to be quite simple."
"Threats never come close to your network with security at the DNS level."
"I think recently with many people working from home, Cisco Umbrella has been very useful. For example, we can manage the device and the network when the employee is not working on the local host. Cisco Umbrella is very valuable for this kind of infrastructure."
"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."
"What we like most is security and how easy it is to integrate with other appliances."
"I was able to implement it myself. It was really easy to install. You could install it on a server locally if you want to. If you have the biggest site, you would do that, but for my site, it was just directing all the traffic out through the Cisco Umbrella DNS. It was really handy. When the owners of the company went overseas, I knew that they would be secure because even if they were not on the company network, they would still go through the Cisco Umbrella servers. It was a complete solution for protecting the company with outgoing data."
"The most valuable features were related to discovery, data protection, and ensuring compliance with regulations."
"I have found the most useful features to be the Web Secure Gateway, CASB, infrastructural service scanning, and Zero Trust."
"The initial setup of Netskope CASB is easy, it is not complex."
"The interface is good."
"The automation offered by the product is pretty solid."
"The most valuable feature of Netskope is protection."
"The most useful feature of this solution is Cloud Control, which allows me to schedule cloud uploads."
"Its deployment is very easy and quick. Their technical support is also very good."
"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"
"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."
"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."
"Network connectivity was a bit of a challenge at the beginning, but we were able to get the right help from Cisco."
"In the next release, I would like to see the integration of VDI NSX with Cisco Umbrella."
"iOS devices and mobiles are huge in my environment right now, and I cannot run them on Cisco Umbrella 24/7."
"Cisco Umbrella should add some more documentation on proxies."
"The rule-making process for blocking sites or for blocking characteristics can use some simplification."
"The integration with other solutions is a little complex. If you want to integrate with something like ArcSight or LogRhythm or Splunk, you need to do a lot of configuration. There are no easy ways to implement it."
"Some countries don't have a DNS server leading to a domain resolution IP, not at a local level."
"The only thing I can think of is that I'd like to see a little more flexibility in policy creation. The way that policy is currently structured is like a "first hit succeeds" kind of policy. It would be nice if it were more hierarchical."
"Compatibility with other proxy polars would be helpful."
"There should be some granular custom roles that are not available. However, this is on the road map. There are many devices that do not have the Zero Trust feature and other enhancements available which they should have."
"I deduced two points: one for their feature modification and one for the feature maturity of the solution."
"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"They could improve their mobile agents as they have some limitations."
"The initial setup is complex and should be simplified."
"Setting up policies is something that we having been doing, and if the vendor were to provide example use cases that included different implementation options then it would be very useful for us."
"The dashboard performance could be much better and faster, but because it is a complicated product, it takes time for the dashboard to process."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 108 reviews while Netskope is ranked 4th in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 35 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Netskope is rated 8.4. 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 Netskope writes "Network proxy that provides visibility during deployment and allows you to control PII". 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 Netskope is most compared with Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Skyhigh Security and Cato SASE Cloud Platform. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Netskope report.
See our list of best Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) vendors and best Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) vendors.
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