Cisco Umbrella vs Cloudflare: Which DNS Security Solution Suits Your Needs?

What is Cloud Security?

Cloud security refers to the set of policies, technologies, and controls employed to protect data and services held in the cloud. It ensures that everything in the cloud is confidential, accessible, and secure.

Who Needs Cloud Security?

…everyone! Well, every business that uses cloud services, so…everyone!

Securing data, applications and infrastructure in the cloud is critical to protect against cyber threats, data breaches, misconfigurations and unauthorised access. From individuals to multinational corporations, the risk of cyber threats affects all levels of society. Even the most prominent organisations are susceptible to severe cyber-attacks. Cybersecurity is crucial to protect sensitive data, prevent downtime, and maintain customer trust. As the cloud expands, we all must work harder to protect it.

Elements of Cloud Security

Cloud security spans several core areas.

• Data protection
  • Strategy, technology and controls used to safeguard data stored, processed or transmitted in the cloud.
  • Ensure confidentiality and availability of data.
  • Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to monitor data movement and block unauthorised access.
  • Ensure business continuity through effective data backup to protect against loss of data.
• Identity and access control
  • Verify who the user or system is using biometrics, passwords, MFA, SSO.
  • Determine what an authenticated user is allowed to do using established policies.
  • Assign user roles and permissions.
  • Auditing and monitoring.
• Threat detection
  • Continuously analyse and monitor traffic, behaviours and activity.
  • Malware protection.
  • Intrusion Prevention and Detection Systems (IPS/IDS)
  • Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
  • Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR/XDR)
  • Email and phishing protection.
  • Zero Trust access.
• Compliance
  • Understand the Shared Responsibility Model.
  • Ensure data is encrypted, backed up, recoverable, stored, with controlled access.
  • Demonstrate least privilege access, MFA and regular permission reviews.
  • Monitor and log user activities, continuous tracking, incidence response and audit reporting.
• Disaster recovery
  • Automatic, regular backups, versioning and point-in-time recovery.
  • Real-time data replication.
  • Disaster Recovery as a Service (Raas) to replicate your cloud environment.

Why It Matters

As time goes on, our business lives move further into the cloud, meaning security becomes more critical…and more difficult. Without robust protection, our data is vulnerable to theft, loss, manipulation and unauthorised access. As holders of confidential data, we must adhere to the relevant compliance and global legislation designed to keep it safe. Good security protects from costly operational disruptions and loss of business trust and credibility.

Compare Capabilities – Cisco Umbrella vs Cloudflare

Two powerful cloud security systems, built with a different focus. Cisco Umbrella is designed to secure user activity on the internet, while Cloudflare is built to secure and accelerate websites, APIs and apps. Let’s take a look in more detail.

Cisco Umbrella

Cisco Umbrella is a cloud-security platform designed with simplicity and scalability in mind. It provides security via DNS-layer protection, a secure web gateway (SWG), cloud-delivered firewall and cloud access security broker (CASB) features. It is good for protecting employees and devices, especially in hybrid and remote work environments and is particularly attractive for those already heavily integrated into the Cisco ecosystem.

• DNS Layer Security to block malicious destinations before a connection is even made by inspecting DNS requests.
• Secure Web Gateway (SWG) to inspect and filter web traffic, enforcing content policies and blocking suspicious sites.
• Cloud Delivered Firewall with Layer ¾ traffic filtering and visibility across all ports and protocols.
• Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) giving you control over cloud app usage to block unauthorised app use and enforce policies on cloud services.
• Threat Intelligence backed by Cisco Talos is constantly updating its detection algorithm.

Who Uses Cisco Umbrella?

Umbrella’s features make it an ideal fit for enterprises with a hybrid or remote workforce and small to medium-sized businesses looking for a simple, scalable cloud security option.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare offers powerful cloud-based security that helps protect websites, applications, and networks from online threats, while also making them faster and more reliable. Acting as a secure gateway between users and servers, Cloudflare uses DDoS protection, Web Application Firewall (WAF) and bot mitigation to block threats. It offers global Content Delivery Management (CDM), load balancing and content optimisation to improve app performance and focuses on Zero Trust through secure user and app access, without a VPN.

• Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection at the edge, protecting apps and infrastructure.
• Web Application Firewall (WAF) blocks threats and vulnerabilities before they reach your servers.
• Content Delivery Network (CDN) caches static content worldwide to reduce load times and server strain.
• Zero Trust Security to secure internal apps and remote users without a VPN using identity-based access and real-time threat detection.
• DNS and Domain Services. Cloudflare operates one of the fastest DNS resolvers out there.
• Bot Management through machine learning to filter good bots and malicious bots, providing safer traffic.

Who Uses Cloudflare?

Cloudflare creates a secure, fast, resilient internet experience that benefits businesses of all sizes. For those operating in eCommerce, media and content services, Cloudflare’s excellent global performance in terms of quality and speed is particularly attractive.

Consider which of these cloud-based security and performance tools is best for you by answering these questions…

CISCO Umbrella 

• Do you want enterprise-grade DNS filtering, threat protection and cloud firewall?
• Is having a secure gateway for remote workers and branch offices a priority?
• Are your systems heavily integrated with Cisco products?
• Is your focus on user and data protection?

CLOUDFLARE

• Do you want to speed up your website or API’s?
• Is a powerful WAF, CDN and DDoS mitigation a priority?
• Do you want a strong global performance for web services or apps?
• Is Zero Trust, developer edge computing or SaaS security important?

Many organisations use both platforms together, maximising the features and benefits. Cisco Umbrella to secure web usage and cloud access, and Cloudflare to secure and accelerate websites and APIs. Each adds significant value to security infrastructure.