We performed a comparison between Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) and Cisco Secure Workload based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Cisco Security Portfolio solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."There are a lot of integrations available with multiple vendors. This has made the solution easier to work with."
"I like the automation of the collection of information."
"The most valuable features are the ability to retrieve information about Active Directory user names, viewing the log files to see which MAC address tried to connect with the created SSIDs, portal designing for your company, hotspot tools, and creating network rules for WiFi access."
"It is scalable because we use a network load balancer at the front of the PSN. It can be extended as we want to multiply. It's scalable to our environment. We have around 8,000 users and we are planning to expand it."
"For guests we give them limited access to the internet when they come in so that access has been useful. Previously, we just used to give them the APN key which they would leave with. Now, we give them credentials to use that are for a limited period of time."
"Having access and being able to add people or change authentication yourself is nice. In the past, we've used other group authentication services, and we always had to go to them and get permissions. Having that control is key."
"For us and our clients, the most valuable features of Identity Services Engine are really around the rich contact sharing that ISE gives you."
"The posture assessment is a valuable feature because of the ability to do assessments on the clients before they connect to the network."
"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."
"It would be helpful for us to know what needs to be deployed, configured, and what changes we need to make to our devices when we don't receive the specific login which is an indication of a lack of connection or incorrect configuration."
"Since we have started, we struggled a lot to implement this solution into our network, and we opened a case a couple of times. Up until this point, nothing else needs to be improved with this product."
"They should improve the documentation. There tends to be a lot of old text, or the new things aren't always up to what's been released on the code, and sometimes the documentation is inconsistent."
"If I was going to improve anything, it would be the ease of migration. It's really difficult at the moment if you're looking to upgrade ISE 2.1 and you want to go to ISE 3.1 or 3.2, that whole upgrade path and, particularly, the licensing is quite a minefield to sort out."
"The pricing and licensing structure are not ideal for customers."
"It is a good product, but in order to use all of the functions of the product, you must have a good understanding of the product. You must know how to use and manage it. It is a little bit complicated to configure and manage. It must be simplified to make it easy to manage for end users. In the initial stage, we found ISE complicated for end users. It was not easy to manage it or to write authentication and authorization protocol. They must improve its management and make it easy for end users. The monitoring and reporting capabilities can be improved because end users want to quickly see what is happening in their network. There were some restrictions in working with other vendors. It should also have a better and easy integration with other vendors."
"Cisco could improve the GUIs on their hardware."
"Cisco ISE's real-time data analytics for database logging could be improved."
"It has an uninviting interface."
"It is not so easy to use and configure. It needs a bunch of further resources to work, which is mainly the biggest downside of it. The deployment is huge."
"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."
"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it."
"The product must be integrated with the cloud."
"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."
"There was a controversy when Cisco reduced the amount of data they kept, and the solution became quite cost-intensive, which made its adoption challenging….Although they have modified it now, I preferred the previous version, and I wish all the functionality were back under the same product."
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Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is ranked 1st in Cisco Security Portfolio with 138 reviews while Cisco Secure Workload is ranked 12th in Cisco Security Portfolio with 13 reviews. Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is rated 8.2, while Cisco Secure Workload is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) writes "Gives us that extra ability to assist the end user and make sure that we are making them happy". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Secure Workload writes "A solution that provides good technical support but its high cost makes it challenging for users to adopt it". Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is most compared with Aruba ClearPass, Fortinet FortiNAC, Forescout Platform, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and Fortinet FortiAuthenticator, whereas Cisco Secure Workload is most compared with Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Illumio, VMware NSX, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Trend Micro Deep Security. See our Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) vs. Cisco Secure Workload report.
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