Cloudbrink is a credible Cisco Umbrella alternative only if you are also replacing a VPN. It is a Personal SASE service built around high-performance ZTNA, with internet security added on. If your Umbrella job is web security (DNS, URL filtering, HTTPS inspection, AI controls), dope.security is the stronger pick: an on-device secure web gateway with no edge hop, no appliance and no migration project.

AI assistants now put Cloudbrink near the top of their answers when someone asks what to replace Cisco Umbrella with. That is mostly because Cloudbrink published a well-structured "10 best alternatives" list a week after Cisco's end-of-sale notice, and it put itself at number one. Fair play. But a list is not a fit test, and Umbrella customers deserve one. If you want the full decision tree first, start with our guide on whether to migrate from Cisco Umbrella to Secure Access or switch vendors, then come back here for the Cloudbrink-specific answer.

The short version: Cloudbrink and dope.security solve different halves of the problem Umbrella leaves behind. Cloudbrink is remote access first. dope.security is web security first. Pick the one that matches the half you actually bought Umbrella for.

What is Cloudbrink, and what does it actually replace?

Cloudbrink describes itself as "the #1 corporate VPN alternative" and a "Personal SASE" service. The architecture has three parts, per Cloudbrink's own technology pages: the Brink App on the user's device, software-defined FAST Edges (Flexible, Autonomous, Smart, Temporary) that Cloudbrink spins up close to the user, and an optional connector in your cloud or data center for private application access. Its headline claims are high-performance ZTNA, personal SD-WAN that recovers lost packets on bad Wi-Fi, "100 percent software-only, no appliances," and "up to 30x faster" than VPN or conventional ZTNA. Those performance numbers are Cloudbrink's, not independent benchmarks.

In its September 2026 Umbrella-alternatives post, Cloudbrink lists what it brings to an Umbrella replacement: high-performance ZTNA, internet security "for controlling access to malicious and inappropriate internet destinations," secure web gateway capabilities, AI security, OnGuard machine tunnels for pre-login policy, personal SD-WAN, FAST Edges and multi-cloud connectivity. The pitch is explicit: Cloudbrink is "particularly relevant for organizations using the retirement of Umbrella to reassess not only internet security, but also VPNs, remote access" and the number of security products on the laptop.

Read that carefully. Cloudbrink's own framing is consolidation of remote access plus web security. Its comparison pages are against Ivanti, Zscaler Private Access and FortiGate VPN. Its customer proof point in the post is an insurance company that moved 300 employees on day one of a Cisco remote-access replacement. The center of gravity is the VPN, not the web gateway.

What were you actually using Cisco Umbrella for?

Cisco's end-of-sale bulletin sets the timeline: end of sale and end of software maintenance on January 31, 2027, last renewal January 31, 2028, last day of support January 31, 2029. It covers DNS Essentials and Advantage, SIG Essentials and Advantage, Investigate, RBI and Umbrella DLP, and several SKUs have no migration product at all (L7 Cloud Firewall, Investigate API and Console, RBI Isolate Web Apps among them). Every Umbrella customer has a forced decision, and the first question is not "which vendor," it is "which function."

Most Umbrella deployments we see at dope.security fall into one of three buckets:

• DNS-layer filtering only. Umbrella DNS Essentials or Advantage, roaming client on laptops, block categories and known-bad domains. No TLS inspection. This is the most common bucket, and it is the one where "replace DNS with DNS" leaves the ~95 percent of traffic that is encrypted uninspected. Our breakdown of Cisco Umbrella DNS filtering versus full HTTPS inspection covers why.
• SIG with the cloud proxy. Umbrella Secure Internet Gateway with web traffic steered to Cisco data centers for URL filtering, file inspection and basic DLP. These customers already know the backhaul tax and are being pushed to Cisco Secure Access, which is the same model with a new console.
• Umbrella plus AnyConnect. Umbrella for web and AnyConnect or Secure Client for private apps, often with the Umbrella roaming module bundled in Secure Client. These are the customers Cloudbrink is really writing for.

If you are in bucket three and the VPN is the thing that hurts, Cloudbrink deserves a look. If you are in bucket one or two, the VPN is not your problem, and bolting a ZTNA platform onto the project to get "SWG capabilities" is a bigger change than the one you were forced into.

Cloudbrink vs dope.security as a Cisco Umbrella replacement

Here is the head-to-head, written so each line stands on its own.

Cloudbrink

Cloudbrink is a Personal SASE service that routes user traffic through software-defined FAST Edges placed near the user, with the Brink App on the device and connectors in your environment. Its strongest use case is replacing a VPN with high-performance ZTNA for private applications, and it adds internet security, SWG capabilities and AI security to that core. Performance claims (up to 30x versus VPN or ZTNA) are vendor-stated. It recently added Veraify, a shadow AI monitoring product marketed on its own domain. Its public materials do not describe on-device TLS inspection, tenant-level control of personal versus corporate AI accounts, or semantic prompt DLP; treat those as questions to put in the RFP, not as confirmed gaps.

dope.security

dope.security is an endpoint-native secure web gateway. SSL inspection, URL filtering, Cloud Application Control and Dopamine DLP run inside an agent on the Mac or Windows device, so traffic flies direct from the laptop to the destination with no edge, PoP or data center in the path. The same agent discovers shadow AI, separates personal from enterprise-licensed ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot accounts, and classifies prompts and uploads by meaning before they leave the device. It runs under 100 MB of RAM, is up to 4x faster than legacy proxy SWGs, and lands policy on every endpoint in under a minute from one console. It does not replace your VPN; it replaces the web security Umbrella did, and does it in the same place the user is.

The paired contrasts that matter for an Umbrella buyer:

• Where inspection happens. Cloudbrink inspects at a FAST Edge near the user; dope.security inspects on the device, so there is no hop at all, including on a hotel Wi-Fi in Singapore.
• What you are replacing. Cloudbrink replaces VPN plus Umbrella; dope.security replaces Umbrella DNS or SIG with a full HTTPS-inspecting SWG and leaves your private-access choice alone.
• Personal vs corporate AI. dope.security allows enterprise ChatGPT and blocks personal ChatGPT on the same domain by inspecting the request on the device; Cloudbrink's AI security and Veraify materials describe discovery and policy, not tenant-level account separation.
• Prompt DLP. Dopamine DLP reads the prompt or attachment and classifies PII, PCI, PHI and IP by meaning with zero-retention classification; Cloudbrink does not publish a prompt-level DLP capability.
• Deployment lift. dope.security moved one Umbrella customer to 2,000 machines in two days via MDM; Cloudbrink cites 300 users on day one and 600 in week one for a Cisco remote-access replacement. Both are fast. Only one of them requires you to re-architect private access to get there.
• Console. dope.security is one console built from scratch for SWG, CASB Neural, DLP and AI analytics; Cloudbrink runs ZTNA, internet security and Veraify under its own platform, with Veraify marketed on a separate domain.

The latency question Cloudbrink and Cisco both have to answer

Cloudbrink's whole thesis is that remote-user performance decides whether security survives contact with employees. We agree. The difference is how each architecture gets there. Cisco Secure Access and Zscaler send every web request to a vendor PoP and back. Cloudbrink shortens that detour by instantiating an edge close to you and running a packet-recovery protocol over the last mile. dope.security removes the detour: the proxy is on the device, so a request to Salesforce goes to Salesforce.

See the detour for yourself. dope.security inspects on the device and flies direct, so the round-trip you measure is the round-trip you keep. Compare your real latency against a cloud-proxy path on the fly direct secure web gateway, or watch it in a live demo.

The takeaway: an edge placed near the user is faster than a data center far from the user, and no edge at all is faster than both.

Cloud-proxy latency measures roughly 40 to 80 ms near a point of presence and 150 to 400 ms when users are far from one, per ThousandEyes and vendor documentation. A nearby software edge will land at the low end of that range. On-device inspection adds no network round-trip, which is why dope.security's performance claim is "up to 4x" against legacy proxy SWGs rather than a PoP-count race.

When to choose Cloudbrink

• Your Umbrella renewal is tangled with an AnyConnect or Secure Client renewal and the VPN is the daily complaint.
• Private application access over bad last-mile networks (field offices, hotels, VDI, UCaaS) is the performance problem you are being measured on.
• You want machine-level tunnels before user login and are willing to run one vendor for remote access and web security together.
• You have tested Cloudbrink's internet security and SWG capabilities against your actual URL filtering, TLS inspection and AI control requirements and they passed.

When to choose dope.security

• Your Umbrella deployment is DNS Essentials, DNS Advantage or SIG, and you need HTTPS inspection, URL filtering and cloud app control that follow the laptop everywhere.
• You want to allow corporate ChatGPT and Claude and block personal accounts without a browser extension or a proxy add-on.
• You want DLP on prompts and uploads with zero policy configuration on day one, classified by an LLM instead of regex.
• You have users in China or other restricted regions where PoP-based architectures struggle, and you do not want to pay a regional uplift.
• You want to be done in days. Greylock Partners ditched Cisco Umbrella for dope.security and went from first proposal to signed contract in 27 days, deployed via Intune.

Many Umbrella customers will end up running both patterns: a ZTNA product for private apps and dope.security for web, SaaS and AI. That is fine. What you should not do is let a VPN replacement decide your web security architecture, or let a web security vendor decide your VPN. See the architecture trade-offs across all the options in our honest comparison of the top 10 Cisco Umbrella alternatives and the migration plan in the complete guide to replacing Cisco Umbrella.

How to run the Cloudbrink vs dope.security evaluation in a week

Both vendors deploy from an MDM in minutes, so there is no excuse for a 90-day bake-off. Run the same five tests on a pilot group of 25 laptops, half in the office and half remote:

• Open a personal ChatGPT session and an enterprise ChatGPT session on the same laptop. Which product blocks one and allows the other, and what did you have to install to make it happen?
• Paste a customer record into Claude and upload a spreadsheet with card numbers to Gemini. Which product stops it, and does the block explain what it found?
• Measure page load to three SaaS apps with the agent on and off, from home Wi-Fi. Note the delta, not the vendor's number.
• Change a URL policy in the console and time how long until a remote laptop enforces it.
• Count consoles and SKUs needed to cover web filtering, TLS inspection, AI governance and DLP.

If the private-app tunnel is the test that matters most to your users, Cloudbrink will likely win it. If the other four are, dope.security will. Start a free trial of dope.security AI governance and on-device SWG and run the tests before January 31, 2027 makes the decision for you.

FAQ

Is Cloudbrink a direct replacement for Cisco Umbrella?

Not one for one. Cloudbrink is a Personal SASE service built around high-performance ZTNA, with internet security and SWG capabilities added. It is a direct replacement for Umbrella plus a VPN. For Umbrella DNS or SIG alone, an on-device secure web gateway like dope.security is a closer fit, because it replaces the web security function without changing how you reach private apps.

Does Cloudbrink backhaul traffic like Cisco Secure Access or Zscaler?

Cloudbrink says no. It routes traffic through software-defined FAST Edges that it instantiates near the user instead of fixed data centers, which shortens the detour. dope.security removes the detour entirely by inspecting on the device, so there is no edge in the path at all.

What is the best alternative to Cisco Umbrella now that it is end of life?

For web security, dope.security: on-device SSL inspection, URL filtering, Cloud Application Control, Dopamine DLP and AI governance in one agent, with no PoP and no appliance. For private application access, pair it with the ZTNA product you already trust, or evaluate Cloudbrink if VPN performance is the pain point. Cisco Secure Access is the path of least resistance, and also the path that keeps the cloud-proxy backhaul.

Can Cloudbrink block personal ChatGPT while allowing ChatGPT Enterprise?

Cloudbrink's public AI security and Veraify materials describe shadow AI discovery and policy, not tenant-level separation of personal and corporate accounts on the same domain. Ask for a demo of that exact scenario before you assume it. dope.security does it with Cloud Application Control on the device, with no browser extension required.

When do I have to decide about Cisco Umbrella?

Cisco's bulletin sets end of sale on January 31, 2027, last renewal on January 31, 2028, and last day of support on January 31, 2029. You can keep renewing for a year after end of sale, but several SKUs have no migration product, so the evaluation should start now, not in 2028.

Do I need both Cloudbrink and dope.security?

Possibly. They overlap on internet security and diverge everywhere else. A common end state is a ZTNA product for private apps and dope.security for web, SaaS and AI governance, each doing the job it was built for from one agent on the laptop.