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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Microsoft Defender XDR

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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

    Microsoft Defender XDR

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft 365 Defender combines SIEM and XDR capabilities for Microsoft 365 environments, encompassing threat detection, post-breach detection, automated investigation, and response for endpoints. Additionally, it protects cloud apps, emails and documents, and employee identities.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Microsoft Defender XDR
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Microsoft Defender XDR
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    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)Microsoft Defender XDR
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    144 Answers
    99%
    Would buy again
    85 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    128 Answers
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    79 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    142 Answers
    99%
    Happy with the feature set
    85 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    99 Answers
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    58 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    84%
    Implementation went as expected
    115 Answers
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    66 Answers
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    User Ratings
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Microsoft Defender XDR
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (146 ratings)
    8.7
    (86 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.4
    (4 ratings)
    9.7
    (5 ratings)
    Usability
    7.9
    (6 ratings)
    7.6
    (7 ratings)
    Availability
    9.4
    (4 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.3
    (7 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.4
    (4 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 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)
    9.0
    (1 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)Microsoft Defender XDR
    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
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    Microsoft
    In our experience, Microsoft Defender XDR has been fantastic for phishing and account compromise scenarios, Endpoint Security, Automated threat detection and response and just generally giving a great overview through their dashboard, meaning the IT team doesn't need to switch between multiple tools to understand the full scope of an incident. In mostly remote organization like ours, it really helps to keep on top of any potential threats that we don't have the opportunity to spot in person. While it works great for us in a mostly Microsoft 365 environment, I can see how it would be less appropriate in an organization that is less integrated in the Microsoft ecosystem or uses a large number of third party tools.
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Microsoft
    • One of the greatest strength of Microsoft Defender XDR has the ability to convey alert and signal in the closing point, email, identity and cloud applications in an event. Instead of obtaining isolated alert from each tool, Microsoft Defender XDR consolidates them in a full attack story, which helps the security teams to understand the scope and impact of a danger very fast.
    • If a user clicks on the fishing link, Microsoft Defender XDR automatically can associate malicious emails with lateral movement efforts, suspected sine-in, and endpoint activity-to protect against hours of manual probes.
    • The defender uses AI-powered automation for investigating and treatment of Microsoft Defender XDR events. It can separate the infected closing points, can cancel the compromised tokens, or remove malicious email - without the need for human intervention.
    • When malware is detected on a device, the defender can separate the device, kill malicious processes, and automatically flag the same files throughout the environment, which can spread.
    • Because it is integrated deeply with Microsoft 365 defender, Entra ID (Azure Ad), Intune, and PurView, the defender provides native safety in the XDR Microsoft Stack. It simplifies deployment and maintenance, offering deep visibility in user activity and cloud data.
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    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
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    Microsoft
    • Enhanced False Positive Mitigation:
    • Improved algorithms to minimize false positives in threat detection, reducing the impact on security teams and preventing unnecessary investigations into non-threatening incidents.
    • Advanced User-Friendly Interface:
    • Streamlined and intuitive user interface for the centralized dashboard, making it more accessible for security professionals with varying levels of expertise.
    • Greater Third-Party Integration:
    • Increased compatibility and integration capabilities with a broader range of third-party security tools
    Incentivized
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    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
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    Microsoft
    We are pleased with the product and have no plans to look for alternatives. We are deeply invested in Microsoft ecosystem and Defender XDR provides seamless integration to other Microsoft products. For academic institution pricing is also quite affordable. In the contrary, we hope to extend the scope of the product for our entire environment.
    Incentivized
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    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.
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    Microsoft
    Once configured, it's very usable for any security team or IT Analyst. It'll give you everything you need to know in a single consolidated dashboard, and while you can certainly dive deeper with a very feature rich platform, generally it's very usable. I gave it an 8 as some of the advanced features do have a very strong learning curve, while routine tasks are quite straightforward, some of the features such as threat hunting, custom detections and automated response workflows do have a bit of a learning curve and will require some research and experience to get to grips with
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    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.
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    Microsoft
    In our experience there has been very little downtime for Microsot Defender XDR. For us there hasn’t been any single incident where we needed the product and it was not available.
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    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.
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    Microsoft
    Most of the time the product is as responsive as you might expect from cloud product. Occasionly the product is little slugish, this has been at most a slight irritation. Reports generate quickly ennough for our needs. We also not have found that Defender XDR slows down systems that it is integrated with
    Incentivized
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    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.
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    Microsoft
    Their support throughout our onboarding of the product was fabulous. They not only took the time to carefully explain to teams not as well equipped with the lingo but explained to the tech team how to teach the other teams to be successful. They never once seemed impatient or annoyed with basic questions and didn’t pretend to know something when they needed to research an answer
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    In-Person Training
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Good and hard to find someonme who can explain everything for you beside Microsoft they provide you everything you need.
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    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.
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    Microsoft
    Microsoft Provides a good training for the Microsoft 365 Defender and has a good learning paths to learn and take the exams and get your Certifications.
    Incentivized
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    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)
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    Microsoft
    seemless and almost transparent. can be deployed by script if needed so every endpoint on our system get's it. if you have intune it gets dumped on the the endpoint by policy so nothing escapes it
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    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.
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    Microsoft
    Our product in that area, for instance as a security platform and for us it is for the moment really bad point. We started to move in that direction that there is that disconnect from the client management. So if there is some action that needs to be executed detected by security team, there is not an easy way to make that available to the team that is responsible for managing the identities as users, as the devices
    Incentivized
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    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.
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    Microsoft
    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 .
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    Microsoft
    Azure cloud provides techical power to scale the product for whole organization. From organizational point of view scaling Defender XDR for various IT teams needs good collaboration and clear norms that all teams must agree to and follow.
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    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.
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    Microsoft
    • Security incident cannot be measured, once you down you down, hence the security applications like this is just a must have
    • The subscription model will be cheaper and can be a good point if you want to free resources within the IT Team
    • The SaaS model, if measured correctly can and will reduce long term cost in Infrastructure and Man Power
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    ScreenShots

    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

    Microsoft Defender XDR Screenshots

    Screenshot of AH Advanced ModeScreenshot of AH Guided modeScreenshot of CD exampleScreenshot of CD Supported actions