DNS Security Solutions Resources

Hey G2 community, I'm putting together a comparison of Cisco Umbrella vs Cloudflare Gateway for a mid-size company that wants DNS-level security without the complexity of a full SASE deployment. Pulling from mid-market reviews in the DNS security solutions category, here's the gist:

• Cisco Umbrella: Mid-market admins like that it protects on and off the corporate network through its own Windows agent and mobile app, and that going live can be as simple as pointing DNS at it. The recurring caveats are cost as you scale seats and a learning curve on the advanced policy config, so it can pull you toward the fuller platform over time.
• Cloudflare (Gateway): Reviewers highlight fast anycast resolution and setup that's quick to stand up, with filtering, analytics, and policies in one dashboard. The common gripe is that advanced rules and proper logging get more complex and often sit behind higher tiers, so even the simple DNS use case can creep upward in cost.

If DNS-level filtering is genuinely all you need right now, a few people in these threads also floated DNSFilter as a lighter option that skips the SASE framing entirely.

For the mid-size folks who've run either Umbrella or Cloudflare at the DNS layer only, did you manage to stay at that layer, or did you get pulled into the broader secure web gateway and SASE features? And which was easier to live with day to day for policy changes?

Hey G2 community, I'm putting together a comparison of Cisco Umbrella vs Cloudflare Gateway for a mid-size company that wants DNS-level security without the complexity of a full SASE deployment. Pulling from mid-market reviews in the DNS security solutions category, here's the gist:

• Cisco Umbrella: Mid-market admins like that it protects on and off the corporate network through its own Windows agent and mobile app, and that going live can be as simple as pointing DNS at it. The recurring caveats are cost as you scale seats and a learning curve on the advanced policy config, so it can pull you toward the fuller platform over time.
• Cloudflare (Gateway): Reviewers highlight fast anycast resolution and setup that's quick to stand up, with filtering, analytics, and policies in one dashboard. The common gripe is that advanced rules and proper logging get more complex and often sit behind higher tiers, so even the simple DNS use case can creep upward in cost.

If DNS-level filtering is genuinely all you need right now, a few people in these threads also floated DNSFilter as a lighter option that skips the SASE framing entirely.

For the mid-size folks who've run either Umbrella or Cloudflare at the DNS layer only, did you manage to stay at that layer, or did you get pulled into the broader secure web gateway and SASE features? And which was easier to live with day to day for policy changes?

I've been mapping out which cloud-based DNS security providers actually hold up for a company with global offices that needs consistent policy enforcement without routing all traffic through one location. That last part is where a lot of setups fall apart, since backhauling every site to a central gateway adds latency and defeats the point of going cloud-native.

Going through the DNS security solutions category, the pattern in reviews from larger, distributed organizations is that anycast footprint and identical policy behavior on and off the network matter more than raw feature count. A few that came up repeatedly:

• Cloudflare: Reviewers point to the global anycast network resolving at the edge closest to each user, so offices in different regions get low latency without hairpinning back to one location, with policies and analytics living in a single dashboard.
• Cisco Umbrella: Enterprise reviewers describe pointing each site's DNS forwarder at Umbrella's anycast IPs and getting a uniform security posture for users and workloads regardless of location, roaming clients included, with Talos threat intel behind the blocking.
• DNSFilter: Its roaming agent enforces the same policy on endpoints wherever they connect, which teams running distributed and remote fleets call out as the main draw, alongside consistent anycast performance even from far regions.
• IBM NS1 Connect: Shows up more on the managed DNS and traffic steering side, with a global anycast network and smart routing that reviewers say keeps resolution fast and consistent across regions. Worth a look if steering and uptime sit next to filtering on your list.

For those running DNS security across multiple regions, how are you keeping policy consistent between offices and roaming laptops without centralizing the traffic? And has anycast resolution actually held latency down in your more remote sites?