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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Cisco Secure Access

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

    Score9 out of 10
    N/AThe Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) offers a network-based approach for adaptable, trusted access everywhere, based on context. It gives the user intelligent, integrated protection through intent-based policy and compliance solutions.N/A

    Cisco Secure Access

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AA cloud-delivered security service edge (SSE) solution, grounded in zero trust, designed to give users an exceptional user experience and protected access from any device to anywhere.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Cisco Secure Access
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Cisco Secure Access
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Cisco Secure Access
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
    Works and integrates really well with the secure firewall for RAVPN user authentication
    Incentivized
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    144 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    128 Answers
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    29 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    142 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    34 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    99 Answers
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    30 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    84%
    Implementation went as expected
    115 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    29 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Cisco Secure Access
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    FireMon
    Score7.9 out of 10
    Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco IOS Security
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access
    Score8.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Cisco Secure Access
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (146 ratings)
    9.0
    (33 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.4
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    7.9
    (6 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    9.4
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.3
    (7 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.4
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    8.4
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.2
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Cisco Secure Access
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    Well suited... I've used it for both wired and wireless access, and it's perfect for that. In addition to enforcing security on the port, you can also lock down east-west traffic. When you get to the point where you're configuring secure group tags and things like that, you can keep people from getting to places they shouldn't. Basically, you could turn your entire network into a firewall if you wanted to. You can secure access based on the identity of any given user through role-based authentication. For example, if you have salespeople and you don't want them accessing your financial or PCI environment, they authenticate as a salesperson and you can completely stop them from getting to any of that. That's really important, especially for us. Our payment card infrastructure servers are heavily locked down. Granted, in our situation, we firewall all that off anyway, but you still don't want some random individual to be able to even attempt that sort of thing. That's what it's really good for. I'm trying to think of a weakness. I don't know. We don't really struggle with it. There's nothing that I use it for where I wish it were better, at least not that I can think of offhand. I'm sure there are things, I just can't think of anything off the top of my head.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Cisco as a whole solution, Cisco Secure Access as a solution is very well suited. If you want to simplify the operations and the way that you provide access to certain things, rollout and deployment are fairly straightforward and fairly fast if you know how to configure it properly. Regarding private access, there's still some things that need to be addressed to mitigate certain connections that aren't working correctly through the VPN, or maybe create some kind of exception. The most famous ones are things with Microsoft or other vendors, where, when you send that information through the VPN, split tunnels aren't necessarily the only configurations you have to consider. Things like IPS, decryption, you also have to look at those things as well. It might be good to try to enhance those types of configurations and maybe also document those things so that the users are aware.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • manageable scaled administrative access to network devices as needed
    • Great use as a radius server which allows proper authentication and authorization into the network
    • Multiple conditions that can be utilized to grant users access based on their role in the organization
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • In my experience, zta (zero trust access) is done well in Cisco Secure Access
    • In my opinion, segmentation is done well in Cisco Secure Access
    • I think traffic security is done well in Cisco Secure Access
    • In my experience, enterprise security is done well in Cisco Secure Access
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • Trustsec needs more documentation and configuration best practice examples
    • The licensing model can be difficult to explain and understand for customers
    • Difficult to get an accurate benchmark to know exactly how many Cisco Identity Services Engine nodes and the size of the deployment should be
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • The integration into the Meraki dashboard is not yet complete, you have to use several interfaces to complete the configuration, the services should be fully integrated to provide better handling
    • Integration of firewall rules onprem and cloud should be standardized
    • Better user management / import
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    We are so very reliant on Cisco Identity Services Engine at this point that finding another solution would be a big hassle for us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Cisco
    For us the solution is very easily useable on its own. Perhaps that has to do because we started using ISE in the 1.2 days and have seen it grow during the years. Policy creation, etc. is all very visible and thus easy to use. Deployment of multiple nodes is also incredibly easy and flexible. You can easily add or remove nodes as you wish.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    It's simpler to identify or find things within the platform. Obviously, there are always things to improve, maybe in the GUI or in certain things coming over from Umbrella, because this platform is actually adopting a lot of the Umbrella solutions. And it's just a matter of trying to navigate through it. I really like the way it's simplified in how you categorize your internal policies and your private access policies. It's just a different mindset and a different way of creating policies in this case, compared to how Umbrella did in the past with rule sets and those kinds of things. But the actual solution itself works pretty well when you understand it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    We do have to occasionally reboot the servers when they get low on memory, but we're also a few versions behind. Availability has generally been pretty good though with no major outages in the time that we've had it implemented.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Cisco
    yes it does. depending on where you coming from. Logs are pretty busy same as report. it also depending on devices count and design.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    Cisco support is second to none, both in terms of how you access support but also the knowledge of the individual support teams. If you focus on one technology and provide "manufacturer support" then you can rest assured that you are accessing Cisco's top individuals. I feel like this is a USP for Cisco support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Cisco
    Training can only cover certain areas, there are a lot of areas training just can't cover. You have to learn by doing it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    I think our system integrators lacks some competencies and this has led to an implementation that is still perfectible. (i.e. dedicating an interface for intra-cluster communication)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    I think all give some visibility of device monitoring and management, but Cisco Identity Services Engine gives a good way to manage more details about the device in a centralized way that gives a wider range of monitoring and control than the other softwares individually. I don't think Cisco Identity Services Engine eliminates the need for these other software as of now, but there is potential for Cisco Identity Services Engine to be able to take over more of these roles.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    We selected Cisco Secure Access due to the intuitive GUI and ease of use. The agent deployment was simple and easy to maintain. Any additional updates or changes were quickly deployed, and users found the customized block messages useful. From analytics and management, the Secure Access Product has been simple to manage and provides a robust level of security and flexibility that we haven't found in any other product yet.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Cisco
    Cisco ISE was competitively priced and Cisco was able to leverage some of our existing contracts to help ease the purchase.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Cisco
    It's fully customised and comprehensive. only thing is you need to know what you want. Proper research and planning would save lots of time and effort .
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • I don't know about negatives because we haven't seen it right now, but positive impact is one is the roadmap we have. And now since we are going ahead with doing the deployment of Cisco ISE, we see that we are getting closure to, so at the end of the day, we have to make sure that operationally we stay excellent. So that's where operational excellence comes in. Cisco ISE is basically addressing that for us. Right now we are in a situation if there is a WIFI issue or if there is an authentication issue, it gets really difficult to isolate the problem. But with Cisco ISE , this functionality is going to come in. So we believe that it would be a good ROI.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • The impact Cisco Secure Access has on our organization's overall business objectives is that we Replaced Bomgar
    • Another impact Cisco Secure Access has on our organization's overall business objectives is that it Eliminated giving vendors AD accounts
    • A third impact Cisco Secure Access has on our organization's overall business objectives is that Cisco Secure Access is Quick to deploy
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)