Hi everyone! 👋 I've been lurking here for a bit while we were going through our software review process. This community has been super helpful, so I wanted to share our recent experience.
Our company (about 150 people) was using Palo Alto Networks' DNS Security for a few years. It was bundled with something else, and honestly, we never really looked at it closely. During a broader security review, we decided to evaluate it properly and ended up switching to Cisco Umbrella. We've been live on it for about three months now.
Here's my take so far, from a non-expert perspective:
**The Good:**
The setup felt a lot simpler than I expected. The dashboard is way more intuitive than what we had before. I can actually understand the security reports now, and our IT team says the policy blocking (like for malware or phishing) is much more granular. The biggest win is that it seems to catch a lot more threats *before* they even reach our firewall, which our security guy is thrilled about. The roaming client for our remote employees also just works, which was a pain point previously.
**The Bad (or at least the adjustment):**
The pricing model was a bit of a surprise. With Palo Alto, it was just part of a bigger bundle. With Umbrella, we're paying per user, and it felt like a new, explicit cost, even if the value is better. Also, some of the more advanced features feel a bit over our heads—we're not using the intelligent proxy or cloud firewall stuff yet. The only real hiccup was we had to manually allow-list a few internal SaaS tools that got blocked because they used shared IPs, which took a day to sort out.
Overall, we're happy with the switch! It feels like we're getting more for our money, even if the line item is clearer now. For other small to mid-size companies, would you recommend diving into those advanced features, or is the core DNS security enough for most?