Umbrella Cloud Financial Management

Our main use case for Umbrella is DNS security.

With Umbrella as a product, we inspect all the DNS query traffic coming in. Anything that's going to the internet is inspected with Umbrella DNS security. The policies applied over and the SASE tool help us to inspect and either allow or block or do a private endpoint, which is trusted domain management. The architecture extends quite well with cloud, Azure cloud, on-prem, as well as the agent-based policies.

We are in a POC situation with Umbrella for enabling the SWG, which is an upcoming aspect.

The best features Umbrella offers include having an agent, simple installation, and a quick VA installation mode that provides a virtual tunneling sensor for any network. That is quite the best, and compared to real-time detections, it does good work in inspecting and protecting internet domains.

The agents residing as roaming clients in user machines are always on, either in the office or in home networks, doing major work for the protection of user laptops open to the internet. VA sensors are NAT-based connectors directly tunneling to the SaaS, playing a key role in resolving private domains in Azure and AWS.

Umbrella has positively impacted my organization because it has turned a different situation around; we see at least billions of traffic being protected and classified regarding what sort of traffic is going in and out. We also have a good SLT review chat exported as a report every month and week.

The reports help my team by showing both huge reductions in threats at the DNS query level and improved threat protection. The report states how much traffic flow is in the count of millions and billions and how much is blocked with our policies in place.

I see a couple of areas for improvement in Umbrella; currently, I do not have a direct option to disable or block the agent at the end-user machine level. That is one issue, and another lack is in the policies where I cannot bypass a set of categories. We have submitted a feature request for these two cases and will have to wait for an update.

I notice a lack of agent availability on Linux platforms; it would be better if we had agent-based protection for Linux machines as well.

Regarding Umbrella's AI capabilities, I think the backend work is not shown well to customers, as I see a lag in providing accurate categorization. The threat intel integrated in the backend does not achieve 100% accuracy since about 10% of domains vary between Cisco representation and other threat intel categorization, which I see as one gap.

The accuracy of Umbrella's output is slightly missing, around 10 to 15%, and it does not provide accurate categorization compared to available market threat intels.

I have been using Umbrella for close to eight years.

Umbrella is stable; although we experienced some deployment hiccups with agent specific to IPv4 and IPv6, these issues were resolved, resulting in a very stable solution.

Umbrella's scalability is easy to manage, requiring no major configuration changes and facilitated by alignment with the account team for deployment.

Customer support is excellent; we connect weekly with our Professional Services team as needed and extend our meetings based on ongoing projects.

I previously used Infoblox Threat Defense, specifically BloxOne Threat Defense, which lacked features compared to Umbrella. The transition occurred six to seven years ago due to major drawbacks in protection accuracy and management features.

Integrating Umbrella with our existing systems was easy; it involved integrating directly with NAT exits and external-facing IPs on Cisco SaaS without difficulty. We were in monitoring mode for a while before switching to protection mode, but redesigning the architecture would not be as straightforward.

We handle user training and onboarding for Umbrella primarily through Cisco Professional Services, who support us in every step, especially during situations such as recent MacBook agent deployments. Until we onboard online, they ensure our policies are updated and effective.

I have not seen a significant return on investment as the management perspective requires minimal administrators; once devices are deployed, they function largely on their own, protecting against threats at the DNS level.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is neutral; it is not too good or bad, but reasonable for the market. Licensing is based on headcount in our organization, but now we need to consider the impact of adding SWG to our DNS security.

We evaluated Netscope and Akamai before choosing Umbrella based on price, features, and Gartner recommendations, which led us to that decision.

I rate Umbrella an eight overall, considering the feature requests submitted; I think it is doing well.

I rate it an eight because the score specifically relates to DNS security; I would not give a higher rating due to the two feature requests mentioned. Otherwise, the overall experience with Umbrella is good.

I advise others considering Umbrella to thoroughly test during their POC, especially if agent controls at the management plane and scalability on macOS are critical factors. While Umbrella excels in protection and ROI, these considerations warrant reevaluation.

I found this interview experience good and refreshing, allowing me to reflect on my journey with the product over the years; thank you for the opportunity to share feedback. My review rating for Umbrella is eight out of ten.

My main use case for Umbrella  is for our DNS security and proxy. This is what we are required to use to block any unwanted communications, domains, or certain categories which are available on the web internet that we want to restrict for our organization users so that they can avoid going into malicious sites and domains.

I can give a quick specific example of how I have used Umbrella  to block or restrict access in my organization through content filtering, by manually adding the domains, AI blocking, blocking of on-size, blocking of unwanted restricted sites, blocking of newly registered domains, blocking of social media platforms and various others.

Umbrella offers excellent features including usability; it is simple, easily accessible, and usable. The content filtering, reporting, and researching capabilities are very good and make it user-friendly for everyone.

Those reporting and researching capabilities have been really helpful in our day-to-day operations and have provided insights to understand what is happening so we can strategically plan based on our organization needs.

Umbrella has positively impacted my organization because previously, we were not having any visibility on what was coming in and what was going out. Currently, with the help of Umbrella, we are able to restrict what can go out and what can come inside, which is really helpful for each and every organization, not only for us. Umbrella is doing a great job in this area.

We have seen a couple of reductions in the sites and domains which users were visiting unwantedly or without having information, which drastically reduced, resulting in a positive impact. This is how it is increasing our security posture as well. This was the main objective for acquiring Umbrella within the organization, and the business is pretty much helpful with that.

I found Umbrella to be good, and it would be helpful if we could enhance some features related to the AIs and also provide some inputs on a weekly basis regarding what is going on in the market and your best recommendations; probably I am not getting it. We have not subscribed, but if you can guide me on where we can get that information, that would be really helpful.

Umbrella can be improved by providing something on a day-to-day basis so that users can be aware. The improvement of AI facilities or AI recommendations needs to be added, and they should provide the best recommendations based on the traffic they are seeing on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, such as what needs to be blocked and what can be looked after so that the business or the person who is looking into that can find it helpful. That is the main enhancement I can think of right now.

I think I have covered pretty much all the needed improvements for Umbrella that I have not mentioned yet.

I have been working in my current field for more than ten plus years. I have been using Umbrella for more than four years.

Umbrella is stable.

Umbrella customer support is good.

We were not using any solution previously; this is the first one we have purchased.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been good.

I have not found any challenges regarding pricing, setup cost, or licensing; everything is good.

I cannot calculate it based on specific metrics, but from a security perspective, it is the best investment and a good investment, probably what we need for our organization.

We have not evaluated other options before choosing Umbrella.

I would advise others looking into using Umbrella to definitely look for it and opt for it, as it is a good product based on the organization's needs; I would highly recommend it. I believe this review merits a rating of eight out of ten.