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 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 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 most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"It's very stable, reliable and does its job."
"Cisco Umbrella is such a solution and can be implemented very fast and easy. All that we must do is redirect the DNS registers in their routers, or the active directory service of the enterprise that are going to use in Umbrella services. If you buy the service now, in two hours you are protected by the service because it's very fast to put in service."
"The initial setup is very easy and takes only a few minutes."
"Reports provide insight into internet usage and information helpful in creating QoS rules."
"The feature that we find most valuable is to be able to filter out those web requests that you don't want."
"What we like most is security and how easy it is to integrate with other appliances."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the Web Filtering and the APT."
"If it didn't have a single pane of glass, we would not be using it. The single pane of glass gives you a one-stop shop. It's like going to Home Depot. You find all your stuff there. You can see all your threats and your endpoints. It's a very important feature and makes things very simple."
"The product is stable."
"This solution offers categorization for YouTube and other specific applications from Facebook to WhatsApp, which can be controlled whether it's on mobile or PC."
"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 most valuable feature of Cisco Web Security Appliance is the provided anti-malware functionality and URL categorization. I can block access to malicious websites. 99 percent of the cases are related to a malicious website. If I cannot browse those malicious websites, then we are 99 percent protected."
"The tool has good Umbrella DNS security."
"It also allows you to decrypt SSL traffic, and that's a really important feature as well, which is something I also configured."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance is user-friendly and easy to manage. It protects your environment while accessing the internet."
"The deployment process is very simple."
"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."
"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"
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"There are a couple of interface issues. I know that they say that there are feature enhancements that are noted. For example, we've got the Cisco Meraki security appliances, and there, we geofence our company to where we're allowed to send and receive traffic. So, in our case, by default, we only allow traffic to six different countries, which allows us to effectively prevent traffic for the majority of bad players in the world, but they don't give you an easy way to do that in Cisco Umbrella. With Cisco Meraki, I can specify or pick the countries. I can say that I want to only allow traffic from these six countries, and I'm done. With Cisco Umbrella, I have to rely on the fact that they're going to prevent traffic to other countries. They're going to decide if it's good or bad."
"I would like to see more integration between Cisco Umbrella and Cisco DNA Center."
"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."
"The reporting could be improved by way of the information that's displayed. For example, when you pull a report, it shows an internal employee going to many websites, but you can spin that right down by saying a lot of it is being cached."
"I would like to see DLP integration in the next release of this solution."
"This solution does not give us full, 360-degree protection."
"The main issue that we have is with the final steps or the full integration and getting rid of Zscaler. The company still has to fall back to Zscaler when something in Umbrella is not working as expected, such as when we enable SSL inspection. When something is not working 100%, the company is falling back to Zscaler."
"I am unsure if Cisco Umbrella offers a Windows option for running the server."
"Setting up Cisco Web Security Appliance is highly complex and it takes about a week. We have to connect it to the Active Directory and configure all the policies for end users. It takes a long time to configure rules for our company data like port forwarding and separating the public and local components."
"The solution is not very compatible with other products."
"The tool needs to provide logs. They need to improve firewall threat defense."
"Cisco lacks a GUI-based troubleshooting feature compared to products by other vendors."
"The licensing model needs to be more flexible."
"Sometimes reporting is a little bit short."
"They need a better graphical interface, and they need a better ISE mechanism."
"If a user wants to use it for other devices like mobile or smartphones, this product isn't so reliable."
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.
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