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 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."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"Reports provide insight into internet usage and information helpful in creating QoS rules."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the Web Filtering and the APT."
"It has certainly saved us time. If we go and look at what's rejected on the requests from the hospital itself, it has saved about 5% or 6% time."
"The reports and notifications are the most useful part of the platform. As soon as you deploy the security layers, the reporting is very comprehensive. It helps you to have, at a glance, a clear view of what's going on."
"The implementation is pretty easy."
"Provides dependable DNS monitoring of external 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 most valuable feature is that it secures our network against blacklisted or malicious websites."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance has very good security benefits for any company and is easy to integrate."
"It also has high availability."
"Great for assisting with connections to networks or apps."
"Cisco Web Security Appliance can integrate with Active Directory, enabling us to manage all the end-users within AD. It's helpful for setting rules based on individual users and groups. For example, you can configure policies for inbound and outbound traffic."
"It also allows you to decrypt SSL traffic, and that's a really important feature as well, which is something I also configured."
"The product is stable."
"Since working with the tool, we have not found any threats in our organization."
"The best feature of Cisco Web Security Appliance is its policy framing. It also has a good UI and it can handle traffic well. Cisco Web Security Appliance is a good product."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Something on our end that might make it better is alerting going to our ticketing system. It's not something that we have discussed, but that would be a proactive option for us to provide a learning experience for the staff."
"I am unsure if Cisco Umbrella offers a Windows option for running the server."
"If we're trying to deploy it to a Mac through Meraki, it's impossible. The method of deployment for a Mac, and the features available in Meraki, are not compatible at all."
"There are some situations where we would like to block things for specific user groups. I know that Umbrella does that, but it's not that easy.... when you want a specific task for specific rules and policies for user groups, you have to go three levels down in the menu, and it's hard to find where you do that task."
"If the virtual appliances could also gather traffic bandwidth reports, that would be great."
"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."
"It should have a user-based quota, per-user quota, that can be defined on the appliance."
"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 could improve the graphical user interface. It is not up to the regular standard of what we would expect from Cisco. Additionally, they need to improve the categorization when blocking in the settings. The CLI could have a better view than the graphical user interface but I did not investigate further."
"The support for this solution could be improved. We have experienced issues with their SMARTnet support system."
"If a user wants to use it for other devices like mobile or smartphones, this product isn't so reliable."
"The transparent proxy is quite difficult to enforce on smartphones and tablets."
"The reporting needs improvement."
"Sometimes reporting is a little bit short."
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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