Managed Cisco Umbrella Service

Protect Users everywhere with DNS-layer security

The most effective way to mitigate against malware infecting your network and endpoints is to stop the source of the threat before it reaches you.

When a user clicks an email or browser link, how do you know the website they are about to access is safe?

Umbrella is a cloud security service built into the fabric of the internet that enforces security at the DNS and IP layers. It blocks requests to phishing, malware, ransomware, and botnets before a connection can be set up. This stops threats over any port or protocol before they reach your network or your endpoints.

DNS-layer security plays an important part in the new SASE approach to managing security. 

SAS designs and deploys your Umbrella DNS solution and then gives you the option to manage the day to day changes yourself or ask SAS to manage them on your behalf.

Any issues with the service, whether that’s advice, consultancy on functionality or faults, will be handled by SAS regardless of the service option chosen.

Cisco Umbrella forms part of a market-leading suite of security products, all integrated into Cisco’s new XDR (eXtended Detection & Response) Platform, SecureX.

Key Benefits

Unmatched threat intelligence

• Leverage threat intelligence from Cisco Talos. Talos has more than 300 researchers, making it one of the largest threat intelligence teams in the world.
• Talos also sends enormous quantities of global internet activity into machine learning and statistical models to identify new attacks being staged on the internet.
• Umbrella resolves over 350 billion DNS requests and blocks over 150 million DNS every day.

Improve visibility and control

• Monitoring DNS requests, when combined with Active Directory integration, is an easy way to provide detection of compromised systems, which improves security visibility and network protection.
• Umbrella provides visibility into permitted and prohibited cloud services that are in use across your enterprise. This helps you uncover new applications being used, see who is using them, identify any potential risk, and block specific access to those applications with ease.

Flexible and future-proofed

• Cloud model makes it easy to scale on demand for additional users and functionality
• High availability platform
• Feature updates at no extra cost

Easy to buy

• Avoid large up-front costs – monthly per-user subscription
• No term or volume commitment – pay for what you use on a month by month basis
• Upgrade flexibility – as your requirements change, upgrade to the licence that suits your needs.

Protect Users on and off the network more efficiently

Traditionally, content filtering and DNS protection involved an appliance situated within the security perimeter at the corporate HQ. Most applications and users resided within the perimeter, and therefore any traffic destined for the internet passed through the security perimeter. With Applications and Users more commonly outside the private network, funnelling all traffic to a perimeter in the HQ and back out to the internet is inefficient. Cloud-based security allows users and remote offices to connect to the internet and their applications directly with the reassurance that the DNS and content control security they require sits in between.

Protect against Risky Domains with a Selective Proxy

With some websites, it’s very difficult to determine whether all of their content is safe at any given moment. This is particularly true with websites that allow their users to upload their own content. Where Umbrella has labelled a website neither good nor bad but unknown, it directs the connection via the proxy service, which can decrypt the risky domains for deeper inspection of URLs and files.

DNS Security builds into a Secure Internet Gateway

Umbrella’s first two licences are aimed at visibility, control and protection at the DNS layer with the higher-level licence, DNS Advantage, including the selective proxy for inspection of risky domains.

Building on this functionality comes the Secure Internet Gateway product, which adds a full proxy for all traffic, a Layer 7 Firewall as a Service (FWaaS) and Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) service for granular application control.

Combined with Cisco DUO for Zero Trust Network Access and Meraki SD WAN, Umbrella plays a key role in Cisco’s SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) solution.

SAS Deployment Service

Our Technical Consultants will work with you to discuss your options and capture your requirements before agreeing on the technical design with you.

In our experience, customers usually start protecting all their users with cloud-based content filtering and DNS Security with the selective proxy before investigating the architectural implications of a centralised FWaaS with CASB solution within the Secure Internet Gateway product.

A simple, fair commercial model

Licences are charged on a per user basis. Simply choose the licence type and management service option, and we’ll apply this across your whole estate.

We invoice monthly, based on the number of live licences shown within the Customer Reporting Portal on the last day of the month. There is no volume or term commitment – just pay for the licences you need.