In this article

Account admins use this article to migrate your Cisco Umbrella account to DNSFilter. Follow linked guides throughout this article to complete the switch. 

We recommend MSPs and Resellers begin by setting up a multi-tenant account so any trial configurations are already part of the Partner account. When multi-tenancy is setup, there is an available sub-org that matches the name of the Partner account for internal use and/or testing. 

We'll go into more of the benefits of Partner accounts below.

🚨 Important: It is not possible to transfer test Filtering Policies, Sites, Roaming Clients, etc. created in a standard account to a Partner account. 

Basic DNSFilter setup

Follow these steps to get started. For a more detailed look at the onboarding experience, check out our Get Started with DNSFilter guide.

Step one: Prepare your environment to deploy DNSFilter

Prepare your environment to deploy DNSFilter, especially clearing stale DNS resolvers from devices. If Cisco Umbrella is still present on the device it can produce conflicts. 

Step two: Migrate your Filtering Policies

Content/Threat filtering categories from Cisco Umbrella differ from DNSFilter, but our team mapped each Cisco Umbrella category to a corresponding DNSFilter equivalent so your policies can match (link in steps below). 

1. Add a new Filtering Policy
   1. Select Categories and Threats to match your Cisco Umbrella categories
2. Bulk import Allow and Block Lists from Cisco Umbrella as a CSV file

DNSFilter policies also feature Application Blocking (AppAware) and SafeSearch (per search engine).

Reference our introduction to Filtering Policies article to learn more about other filtering features like Block Pages, scheduled filtering, and applying policies to different environment attributes.

Step three: Create Network Sites

DNSFilter Sites are the blanket-layer of protection for any network. Both Roaming Clients and DNS Relays must be associated with a Site for deployment.

Add Network Sites from the DNSFilter dashboard. 

Step four: Replace Cisco Umbrella with DNSFilter Roaming Clients

The DNSFilter Roaming Client provides off-site protection just like Cisco Umbrella's Roaming Client. 

Cisco Umbrella agents must be uninstalled from devices before installing our Roaming Client: do not install or run these products side by side.

Install the DNSFilter agent for any of these Operating Systems:

• Windows
• macOS
• Android
• iPhone/iPad
• ChromeOS

DNSFilter supports (and encourages) the use of Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) and Mobile Device Management (MDM) tools to manage and automate Roaming Client deployment. Our Community includes posts that guide installation via tools like Intune, Connectwise, and Mosyle Manager to help with this process. 

This configuration will get your account close to the same experience as Cisco Umbrella, but take a look at other DNSFilter offerings like DNS Relay and Data Export to make the most out of your account.   

Sync user management 

Organizations with on-perm or cloud-based Active Directory (Azure AD) can sync users with our Active Directory Sync Tool. 

Install the DNSFilter sync tool on a domain join machine for on-prem and on any machine for Azure environments. For full use of Active Directory syncing, the Windows Roaming Client must be installed on endpoints.

Additional Partner account benefits 

There are many benefits to becoming an MSP partner with DNSFilter and setting up a multi-tenant account:

• Enablement resources to help sell DNSFilter to your clients
• Courses for your staff to learn the ins and outs of the product
• Whitelabeling to present a transparent client dashboard experience
• PSA integrations that provide streamlined billing and management capabilities 
• Global policies to apply across any sub-orgs, saving your team time on deployments

Use our MSP & Reseller resources to configure these additional settings, and happy filtering!