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Cisco Umbrella vs Forcepoint
March 19, 2025 | Author: Michael Stromann
20★
Cisco Umbrella offers flexible cloud-delivered security when and how you need it. It combines multiple security functions into one solution, so you can enrich your incident response data and easily extend protection to devices and locations anywhere.
19★
Complete security for all cloud applications. Use leading machine learning and UEBA capabilities to establish behavioral fingerprints for advanced risk calculation.
Cisco Umbrella and Forcepoint are both cloud security solutions that spend their days tirelessly blocking threats, filtering web traffic and generally making sure users don’t wander into the dark, seedy corners of the internet where bad things happen. They both excel at peering suspiciously at incoming data, integrating with other security tools and providing APIs so that tech-savvy administrators can make them do even more clever things. In essence, they exist to keep humans from making terrible cybersecurity decisions, which, as history has shown, humans are remarkably good at making.
Cisco Umbrella started life in 2006 as OpenDNS, a friendly little tool that evolved into a full-blown security service under the watchful eye of Cisco. It specializes in DNS-layer security, has lightning-fast global coverage and integrates seamlessly with other Cisco products, ensuring that customers remain within the safe, comfortable walls of the Cisco ecosystem. It’s particularly useful for organizations that need something quick to deploy, effective at filtering threats before they even reach the network and slightly less existentially terrifying than configuring a traditional firewall.
Forcepoint, on the other hand, has been lurking in the cybersecurity space since 1994, once known as Websense before it was absorbed into Raytheon’s high-tech embrace. While it does a fine job at keeping out malware and phishing attacks, its real passion lies in scrutinizing human behavior, sniffing out insider threats and ensuring that sensitive data doesn’t end up where it shouldn’t—like an employee’s personal email or, heaven forbid, a USB drive. It embraces a Zero Trust approach, which means it fundamentally assumes that everyone, at all times, is up to something vaguely suspicious. Perfect for enterprises with regulatory nightmares, compliance headaches or a deep-seated paranoia about their employees' intentions.
See also: Top 10 Cloud Security Software
Cisco Umbrella started life in 2006 as OpenDNS, a friendly little tool that evolved into a full-blown security service under the watchful eye of Cisco. It specializes in DNS-layer security, has lightning-fast global coverage and integrates seamlessly with other Cisco products, ensuring that customers remain within the safe, comfortable walls of the Cisco ecosystem. It’s particularly useful for organizations that need something quick to deploy, effective at filtering threats before they even reach the network and slightly less existentially terrifying than configuring a traditional firewall.
Forcepoint, on the other hand, has been lurking in the cybersecurity space since 1994, once known as Websense before it was absorbed into Raytheon’s high-tech embrace. While it does a fine job at keeping out malware and phishing attacks, its real passion lies in scrutinizing human behavior, sniffing out insider threats and ensuring that sensitive data doesn’t end up where it shouldn’t—like an employee’s personal email or, heaven forbid, a USB drive. It embraces a Zero Trust approach, which means it fundamentally assumes that everyone, at all times, is up to something vaguely suspicious. Perfect for enterprises with regulatory nightmares, compliance headaches or a deep-seated paranoia about their employees' intentions.
See also: Top 10 Cloud Security Software
