Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Forescout Platform

Overall, management is not terrible if you have a stable network that is not overly complex. If you don't, this product will take considerable time to plan for an effective solution. I will say support is not very helpful, so if you need assistance after the initial sales rep assisted setup, good luck and be prepared to spend hours on the phone.

Incentivized

I strongly recommend using it in networks where many machines enter, it is essential to have a capture of all ids, mac etc to prevent and detect unauthorized machines.We are in the technological era and there is a lot of technological robotization looking for weak systems to enter.Invest in greater security and that does not happen to you.

Incentivized

• Manage high-privilege access to communications equipment. It allows to be granular in the permissions, to have it integrated with the LDAP users and, most importantly, to audit what tasks each user performed.
• Profile users and devices and assign privileges and access levels based on that combination. It greatly improves the user experience, since it does not depend on the network it is in, but on the access levels it has depending on the device. It also allows self-managed guest access with approval flow, which is essential for our business.
• It has also allowed us to automate actions based on findings from StealWatch, Umbrella, AMP, etc.

Incentivized

• Network Access Control does a great job of identifying unmanaged devices on the network and "quarantining" them.
• The inventory feature of CounterAct is a handy place to see what version of applications are running on which machines on our network.
• Policies can be very intricate.

Incentivized

• I guess the user experience itself, it's sometimes a little bit slow, but this is also dependent on the platform and the scale of the deployment of course. But actually functionality-wise it's really, really good. But yeah, it could sometimes be a little quicker to react on the good front.

Incentivized

• They should have more training for the versions of applications they update.
• It would be great if the GUI would be more aesthetic in appearance.
• Nothing else as the application is amazing.

Incentivized

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

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

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

ISE performance has never been an issue for us. The system doesn't tend to slow down at all.

Incentivized

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

They are prompt in their response with a complete resolution once they have identified the problem. Other OEM's generally give stop-gap arrangements and then later come with new upgrade versions. This gives downtime tasks to customers often, which isn't appreciated. Given the criticality of this software, their support is prompt.

Incentivized

I did participate in the implementation of Cisco ISE and while there were times when it was confusing and we had a lot of trial and error, overall the experience was fine.

Incentivized

So the security team selected Forescout because of its inventory functionality. We have had to utilize Cisco ISE though to actually push the SGT Policies as well as the SGACL mappings and the SXP Propagation across the switch infrastructure. There is a lot more configuration that has to happen in Forescout in order for it to manage the switches.

Incentivized

Better intergration with patch management tools. Forescount Platfform (CounterAct) is easily compatible with diverse network infrastructure to offer better service and efficiently ensure seamless operations. Its automation capabilities have also enabled us to depend less on the operations teams hence saving time as it's faster and also saving the operational cost of having people around in case of threats.

Incentivized

Yes, we have the ability to scale ISE to however many nodes and clusters we want, but of course this takes time and money for licenses.

Incentivized

• Cisco ISE is fairly expensive, but I feel that the time it saves our team is well worth it.
• We have been able to roll this our to all of our teams, and they can each manage their own device and it is really convenient to have each team mange their own devices
• Once it is deployed and configured, it seems like there isn't much upkeep, so we don't have to hire someone to manage it we do it by committee.

Incentivized

• We've managed to automate our cybersecurity to impressive extents, now the IT security team puts focus on more important things.
• We've attained successful assets risk mitigation for our clients.

Incentivized