We performed a comparison between Cisco Umbrella and Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks based on Peerspot users’ reviews in five parameters. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco Umbrella is commended for its advanced DNS security, user-friendly interface, and extensive licensing options, while Prisma Access is valued for its accessibility, top-quality security features, and adaptable policy application. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement in certain areas for both products, such as pricing and integrability for Cisco Umbrella and support and licensing for Prisma Access. Ultimately, the decision between the two will be influenced by the specific needs and priorities of the organization.
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"The user interface is great. It's very easy to tailor to our client's environment and needs."
"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."
"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."
"I also think that the dashboard view is really helpful. Whenever sites get blocked, we get the details and the users who are connecting to them."
"The single-pane-of-glass management is very important. We have a very small team. We can't spend a lot of time going from product to product to product to either investigate or set up policy. We need to have one place that we can go to and set everything up."
"The single-pane-of-glass management is really important. In today's era, administration costs and operational expenses will cost you a lot, and it reduces that as well. You don't need extra resources to manage all your parameter firewalls, looking at every single device to allow resources internal access. By just introducing the single-pane-of-glass management, it has lifted the burden off of management, especially the network management."
"The security and access control features."
"The protection for web-based applications was helpful for my colleagues who didn't want a particular application on their devices. And the non-web access protection was more for our developers because they were writing and building code on their computers. Prisma Access was able to protect them."
"Prisma Access protects all app traffic, so that users can gain access to all apps and that's very important because we need to be able to access everything. It also allows us to access non-web apps; anything internal that we need access to, we can access."
"I like it because it's very easy to use. You install the client and you have to know your gateway, but that's something we give to our users. Beyond that, it takes about three seconds to train them on how to use it. And it just works well. That's great for us because it means less administrative time."
"It's great that we can make sure a machine meets the minimum requirements before users are allowed to log in."
"It protects all app traffic so that users can gain access to all apps. Unlike other solutions that only work from ports 80 and 443, which are predominantly for web traffic, Prisma Access covers all protocols and works on all traffic patterns... The most sophisticated attacks can arise from sources that are not behind 80/443."
"The Autonomous Digital Experience Management (ADEM) offered by Palo Alto is a good reporting tool. It gives insights into how things are going within the network. It takes all the data from the users' endpoints and does an analysis, and it suggests changes as well."
"Prisma integrates well with Cortex XDR and Cortex Data Lake. My company has been also using Prisma Access in-house for nearly a year, and it integrates seamlessly."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to change the gateway. For example, if there's a problem with a specific region or vendor, we can make modifications. The solution is scalable, and there are different gateways that can be created depending on the demand."
"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"
"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."
"It has happened in the past that Cisco Umbrella has denied us access to secure websites."
"The firewall capabilities could be better. Cisco is starting to introduce some layer 7 capabilities now, but there's still some room to grow. They should continue with the development of Umbrella so that it is a full-blown cloud-managed firewall solution."
"Their support should be improved. It is necessary that the support is efficient. It is not really easy to get a resolution for an issue from Cisco support. They should be faster and more efficient."
"It would be better if there was a little bit of flexibility for organizations that don't have SD One in their environment. Because of the complexity of the environment, it's not easy to actually turn on the feature of the secure internet gateway for our users. We have not been able to explore that option yet."
"Network connectivity was a bit of a challenge at the beginning, but we were able to get the right help from Cisco."
"Cisco Umbrella should introduce an on-premises device."
"With any Cisco product, it's the licensing side of things that needs improvement."
"There is room for improvement in the dashboard. It could stand to be a bit more detailed. I would also like to be able to customize the dashboard to focus more on what is important for my company."
"There is some particular traffic that the security team wants to filter out and apply their own policies and they cannot."
"I would like to see better pricing and an easier logging process. Also, if there was a way to log a global log, everything could go onto the system. It would be better if there was a third log, otherwise one would have to do everything manually."
"I would like the solution to support a different type of authentication. We can't configure a secondary method for our portal."
"The price can be reduced to make it more competitive."
"The documentation is generally good, but they could provide a more detailed description of all the configuration steps. I have to search for information or call support. Palo Alto could add more knowledge base articles about configuration with screenshots and walkthroughs. That would be helpful. When configuring a product, you want to see examples of how it is done."
"We've run into some challenges, having hit a lot of bugs over the past year in the deployment of GlobalProtect. We've had our fair share of issues that I haven't been happy with. We're working with the support organization to remediate them and waiting for updated releases. The response on getting the bugs fixed has not been what I would consider adequate for a product like this."
"Prisma's integration between operational technology and IT should be more seamless. Right now, it requires additional setup and maintenance."
"Dependencies of applications sometimes is a bit confusing."
More Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Umbrella is ranked 1st in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 108 reviews while Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 3rd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 57 reviews. Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8, while Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks 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 Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks writes "Integration with Palo Alto platforms such as Cortex Data Lake and Autofocus gives us visibility into our attack surface". Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security, Fortinet FortiGate SWG and Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection, whereas Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, Netskope , Zscaler Internet Access, Prisma SD-WAN and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. See our Cisco Umbrella vs. Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks report.
See our list of best Secure Web Gateways (SWG) vendors, best Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) vendors, and best Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) vendors.
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