Umbrella DNS vs Google DNS for DHCP

[Mloraditch]

Does using the Umbrella DNS option provide any benefit over using Google? I had someone tell me it does. We use other products for filtering and I didn't think Umbrella gave away anything for free anymore, but I am struggling to find any documentation one way or the other as most things point to the enhanced integrations that are now available.

[RWelch]

Whitepaper: DNS Security with Meraki MR & Umbrella 

Manually Integrating Cisco Umbrella with Meraki Networks 

[RWelch]

https://community.meraki.com/t5/Wireless/Umbrella-and-Meraki-integration/m-p/80787

[Mloraditch]

So that's not what I'm looking for. I'm asking if literally the only thing I have is Meraki DHCP handing out Umbrella DNS vs Google DNS. Does that Umbrella DNS provide anything different than the Google DNS? The person I talked to was under the impression that Umbrella DNS blocks some really  bad things by default if we use it vs Google not doing that.

[DarrenOC · Accepted solution]

• Hi @Mloraditch , you are right in that Umbrella DNS does weed out the bad.  I would personally use Umbrella DNS over Google DNS. Both are free for the purpose you’ll be using them for but Umbrella DNS can stop such things as C&C etc

[BlakeRichardson]

Umbrella to get the most benefits requires licensing. You can create an account and have it monitor your DNS request but without licensing I don't believe it will provide filtering.

https://one.one.one.one/dns/ is a Cloudflare alternative. 

[pdeleuw]

A real alternative is https://quad9.net/. You can choose between filtered DNS and unfiltered DNS.

[Brash]

As said above, essentially "Use Umbrella" points to Umbrella/OpenDNS servers. My understanding is that this includes some very basic security type filtering (known Malware domains, C&C's etc.) Unlike the paid version of Umbrella, this does not include any content filtering, granularity of policies or reporting.

Google DNS is using Google's DNS servers with no filtering at all.

[Khancock]

Using Umbrella DNS should give you the built in security for the known bad or malicious sites - that constanly gets updated, but you would not be able to add your own without the Umbrella subscription,

[Mloraditch]

Thanks all I definitely understand how paid umbrella works and its capabilities just needed the clarification I got.