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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

    pfSense

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ApfSense is a firewall and load management product available through the open source pfSense Community Edition, as well as a the licensed edition, pfSense Plus (formerly known as pfSense Enterprise). The solution provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality, and can be deployed through the cloud (AWS or Azure), or on-premises with a Netgate appliance. It as scalable capacities, with functionality for SMBs. As a firewall, pfSense offers Stateful packet inspection, concurrent…

    $179

    per appliance

    Pricing
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)pfSense
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    SG-1100
    $179
    per appliance
    SG-2100
    $229
    per appliance
    SG-3100
    $399
    per appliance
    SG-5100
    $699
    per appliance
    XG-7100-DT
    $899
    per appliance
    XG-7100-1U
    $999
    per appliance
    XG-1537
    $1,949
    per appliance
    XG-1541
    $2,649
    per appliance
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)pfSense
    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)pfSense
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    144 Answers
    94%
    Would buy again
    16 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    128 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    17 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    142 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    16 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    99 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    84%
    Implementation went as expected
    115 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    16 Answers
    Features
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)pfSense
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and pfSense
    Feature
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
    -
    Ratings
    pfSense
    8.9
    17 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Identification Technologies00 Ratings8.714 Ratings
    Visualization Tools00 Ratings8.714 Ratings
    Content Inspection00 Ratings9.216 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls00 Ratings8.717 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings7.913 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console00 Ratings9.516 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.417 Ratings
    VPN00 Ratings9.117 Ratings
    High Availability00 Ratings9.416 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection00 Ratings10.015 Ratings
    Proxy Server00 Ratings8.415 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)pfSense
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    FireMon
    Score7.9 out of 10
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco IOS Security
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)pfSense
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (146 ratings)
    9.3
    (30 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.4
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    7.9
    (6 ratings)
    9.7
    (8 ratings)
    Availability
    9.4
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.3
    (7 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 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)pfSense
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    • Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
    • Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    • I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
    • When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
    • I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
    • I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
    • I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    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
    Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
    • pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
    • The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)