We performed a comparison between Cisco Umbrella and Symantec Secure Web Gateway based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."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 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."
"I haven't found any issues related to latency or any other issue."
"Threats never come close to your network with security at the DNS level."
"DNS protection, domain blocking, SIP component, and the Cisco Umbrella roaming client are the valuable features of Cisco Umbrella."
"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."
"The initial setup is very easy and takes only a few minutes."
"The agent that gets installed on the endpoints or on people's laptops and devices is a Cisco AnyConnect Umbrella module. It's one of the most impressive things because you are able to protect your users anywhere they are."
"Reports provide insight into internet usage and information helpful in creating QoS rules."
"By using Cisco Umbrella, you are sure of inspecting all the traffic. Whenever the user machine is connected to your network, it is inspected. That's the best thing. It means you are sure that nothing is being exported or imported without your choice. That is the best feature."
"In terms of most valuable features, I like the ICAP capability and URL filtering the most."
"It is quite scalable. If a user needs to do more deployments, they can just add them."
"It offers an easy initial setup."
"It has a faster implementation process compared to other products."
"It's nice to have it in the cloud where we can pull the reporting together for it so we can see what's happening in machines at different locations."
"It is easy to manage. The graphical user interface is quite easy to navigate, and we don't have any difficulty in using it. It is a good solution."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable features are the website blocking capability and SSL interception."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It should have more integrations with multiple end user OEMs."
"Client delivery and client updates should be improved. Client delivery was not as easy as expected. Another area for improvement is the integration of escalation procedures for security issues."
"I would like for their support to be faster."
"It needs better integration with external threat feeds to improve scoring."
"We faced an issue regarding virtual appliances (VAs) during deployment. They could improve the quality and management of the virtual appliances offered right now. You can't see much because it is a Linux machine, and they have customized it. You don't have any route access to the machine, only seeing limited things in it. When we opened a ticket, they didn't know much about VAs themselves. So, that is where it is lacking right now. I know this will improve in the long run."
"There are a couple of different pieces that have different portals. I know they're working on getting them all into one portal, but that's probably the biggest thing that needs improvement right now. It's not a single pane of glass yet."
"Although Cisco Umbrella has an excellent global network footprint, there is still room for improvement and growth in this area. Additionally, there are bandwidth limitations associated with the connectors that need to be addressed. To be a viable solution for larger offices, Cisco Umbrella must continue to expand and improve its capabilities in these areas."
"There's a need for increased firewall functionality and capabilities. I'm not seeing a competitive Symantec cloud product. Specifically, functionalities with security as filtering from the cloud. I am aware that there is a product, a proxy in the cloud but I have compared it with other vendors and I don't find it that powerful. I think the worst thing that we're experiencing is very poor and inadequate technical support. It seems to me that tech support engineers aren't qualified to fulfill their job duties."
"The reports could be better."
"Depending on the severity of the issue, I think they can be a bit slow - a few days for the low severity cases, but for the severe cases normally they contact you back in a couple of hours."
"Difficult and time-consuming to deploy and update."
"It's not user-friendly, and we end up making too many phone calls to get things fixed."
"The platform’s data center is not capable of managing most of the traffic."
"It needs to be easier to set up rules for what sites it should allow or not allow us in certain areas of our computer for programs. It would also be nice really nice to have it give you better information about what it's finding. A lot of the alerts we get are very difficult to understand what it's actually telling you. It's too generic."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews while Symantec Secure Web Gateway is ranked 33rd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 10 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Symantec Secure Web Gateway is rated 6.6. 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 Symantec Secure Web Gateway writes "Easy to set up with good features and helpful support". 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, whereas Symantec Secure Web Gateway is most compared with Symantec Proxy, Zscaler Internet Access, Skyhigh Security and Fortinet FortiGate SWG. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Symantec Secure Web Gateway report.
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