Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Guardicore is a segmentation company, now part of Akamai since the late 2021 acquisition, aiming to displace legacy firewalls. The Guardiocre software-only approach is decoupled from the physical network to provide a faster alternative to firewalls. It is built for the agile enterprise that offers greater security and visibility in the cloud, data-center and endpoint.N/A
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
The 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
Pricing
Akamai Guardicore SegmentationCisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Akamai Guardicore SegmentationCisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
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
Akamai Guardicore SegmentationCisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Akamai Guardicore SegmentationCisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
Small Businesses
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 out of 10
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Nmap
Nmap
Score 8.8 out of 10
Nmap
Nmap
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Nmap
Nmap
Score 8.8 out of 10
Nmap
Nmap
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Akamai Guardicore SegmentationCisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.7
(39 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(6 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Akamai Guardicore SegmentationCisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
Likelihood to Recommend
Akamai
This is the best possible solution for enterprise-level organizations where server counts will be in the thousands. To manage these and understand the communication can be very cumbersome without this tool. Ease of creation map zone and application-wise can be relaxing to OS teams and support teams as well. There is no limit to labeling schema of servers and it gives the freedom to do so.
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Cisco
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.
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Pros
Akamai
  • Network traffic flow within environment of organization.
  • Creating maps for visibility and drill down is a key feature.
  • Labelling of servers can be done via running script.
  • Alerts can be sensitized for the traffic not seen.
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Cisco
  • 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.
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Cons
Akamai
  • Limited support to legacy infrastructure.
  • Integration with third party is a bit tedious.
  • Awaiting support for Kubernetes in the next version.
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Cisco
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Akamai
No answers on this topic
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.
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Usability
Akamai
The solution is deployed throughout the organization. Teams are working and integrating it with the help desk tool wherever required. Helps in identifying the network traffic flows in lateral movement and east and west as well. Allows policies by default and later fine-tuning to be done to narrow it and enforce blocking action. Exporting reports from the tool is easy and can be observed for any issues.
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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.
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Reliability and Availability
Akamai
No answers on this topic
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.
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Performance
Akamai
No answers on this topic
Cisco
ISE performance has never been an issue for us. The system doesn't tend to slow down at all.
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Support Rating
Akamai
Support has been available 24*7. It also depends on criticality but support is available. Also, the right expertise from the team helps in identifying the issue quickly and this helps in less production downtime if required. The ticket is resolved with RCA.
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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.
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Implementation Rating
Akamai
No answers on this topic
Cisco
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Akamai
1) No limit to labeling schema. 2) Ease of creating maps with respect to zone, environment, subnets, etc. 3) Ease of creating policies and publishing the same. 4) Deception 5) Integration with monitoring tool (grafana) 6) Changes in the agent can be considered if there are legacy systems, time-consuming but can be achieved with the right information.
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Cisco
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.
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Scalability
Akamai
No answers on this topic
Cisco
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.
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Return on Investment
Akamai
  • Blocking unwarranted traffic can really boost security of organization.
  • Alerts can be triggered to SIEM servers and help in timely action.
  • Need to be very careful before configuring and publishing block policies in the production environment.
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Cisco
  • 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.
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