“Is Cisco Umbrella working?” usually means one of two things: is the Umbrella service itself up, or is my device or network actually protected by it? Both are quick to check.
1. Check the service status
Cisco publishes real-time service health for Umbrella on its official status page, which you can reach from the Umbrella dashboard and support site. It lists the status of DNS resolution, the secure web gateway, the dashboard, reporting and APIs for each region, along with current incidents and planned maintenance. Umbrella’s DNS resolvers run on anycast across many data centres, so full outages are rare. Problems are more often regional or limited to a single feature, such as reporting delays.
2. Check that your device is protected
| Test | How | What a working setup shows |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome page | Browse to welcome.umbrella.com | “Welcome to Umbrella!” in green |
| Debug lookup | Run nslookup -type=txt debug.opendns.com |
Text records showing the Umbrella server and your organisation ID |
| Security test domain | Browse to internetbadguys.com | The Umbrella block page (phishing test) |
| Resolver check | Run ipconfig /all or check network settings |
DNS points to Umbrella, a virtual appliance or the local Secure Client resolver |
| Secure Client status | Open Cisco Secure Client | The Umbrella module shows as protected |
3. Check the dashboard
- Deployments: networks, virtual appliances and roaming computers should show as Active. A network shows as Inactive if Umbrella has received no DNS queries from it in the past 24 hours.
- Activity Search: recent requests from your identity confirm that traffic and policies are being applied.
If the tests fail
- Confirm your router, DHCP scope or DNS forwarders point to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.
- Make sure your network’s current public IP matches the one registered in the dashboard.
- Check that a VPN, browser DNS over HTTPS or another security agent is not overriding DNS.
- Run the Umbrella diagnostic tool and share the results with Cisco support.
The product’s status
Umbrella is fully operational and supported, but Cisco has announced end of sale on 31 January 2027 and end of support on 31 January 2029, with Cisco Secure Access as its successor.