Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) Reviews

The solution is used for controlled access in the network, like if you want to restrict access.

The solution is deployed on-prem. I am an integrator of this solution.

The best features are the scalability and the license structure. The license structure is like a tier. If a customer doesn't actually want the highest features, then they can just start with the basic license package and upgrade it if their network is growing. For the smaller customers, they can start with the smaller plans and so on. If you have a financial customer or banking customer, they can go for the full features, and if it's not that critical, the customer can get the basic license package and implement that.

The licensing documentation needs to be better. We found some old documents describing the license names, like the Base license and Apex license. Cisco used both names. We have found that they changed the Advantage license and Premier License. If someone misunderstands that, they might end up with a hassle. I don't know if it's possible or not for Cisco to remove the older documents from the official website.

We have been working with this solution for more than two years.

We were using two solutions on Cisco's network, so we had a few ISE plans in that network.

The solution is stable. We have maybe 4,000 users for the Next solution.

We haven't used technical support very much, but in general, Cisco's support is always responsive.

Initial setup was straightforward from our point of view because we have engineers who did that, so of course it was not an issue with us.

The accesses took maybe three or four months to complete, but the Next part took about three weeks.

For deployment and maintenance, the team was average sized. You need to follow the correct documents for deployment. There can be misunderstandings if you use old documentation.

The licensing is subscription-based and based on the user account.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. 

I would recommend this solution.

If someone is looking for a concrete solution to control the access, then ISE is a better solution.

It's mostly for authentication to our network for our end-users.

It's allowed us to create groups for different vendors and for employees in various groups in our company, without giving everyone access.

It has also given us a lot of extra security as the backbone of authentication for our VPN and wireless network.

The policy sets give us more granular groups for end-user access.

I've been using Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) for five years.

The stability is really great. We haven't had any issues with it. We've had it for a long time. We ran an old version for three or four years without any issues.

From what I have read, the scalability seems good. We haven't had to deal much with that. We have two nodes and about 2,000 sessions going at once.

Technical support is very good. They've always been there to answer any questions, and if they don't know the answer they make sure to find someone who can give me the answer.

Positive

Cyber security resilience has been at the top of our list since 2020 because we had so many people working from home and that increased as time went on. That opened our eyes.

I was involved when we upgraded at the beginning of this year. It was pretty straightforward, although we reached out for outsourced help.

We used a CDW consultant.

For us, the return on investment is that it gives us easy ways to divide up our end-users for authentication, especially for our VPN.

The pricing seems fair. The licensing can be confusing, but it is still pretty good.

I was asked a couple of years ago, when we were having issues with ISE, if there were alternatives, and I said I didn't want to switch because we're so embedded in this solution already.

Talk to someone outside of Cisco too, if you're thinking about ISE. That way, you can get all the information.

We wanted to outsource some of our work because I only have two years of admin experience and another of our network engineers has about a year. This way, if the system goes down, we have a quick way to get it back up.

I would tell leaders who want to add cyber security resiliency to make sure they include team members who are involved and not just make decisions on their own.

I'm using Cisco ISE for integration. We are currently using it for 82.X, but we are planning on using it for a different use case in the next couple of quarters.

The core point is that Cisco ISE is the same globally compared to FortiAuthenticator. Whether I deploy in China, the US, South Africa, or wherever, I'm can get all the capabilities. It allows me to directly integrate with 365, and from a communications point of view, that is a good capability. 

Cisco ISE could be simplified somewhat. I would also prefer certificate-based authentication over confirmation-based authentication for all the processes. It's possible for us to do a workaround, but the process needs to be simplified. 

I've been using Cisco ISE for more than a year.

Cisco ISE is stable.

I haven't really tried to scale ISE, but I don't think we'd face any challenges with hard gentle scaling.

We have a good relationship with Cisco support. However, when they do a new release, they take their time. I don't have much of an issue with Cisco support itself, but working with their customer success team and those types of things can be a challenge. It's not just the response time. It's the total resolution time. They'll respond quickly, but when they get the particular fix, it's a challenge. 

In the previous versions, the setup was okay. But as they add more capabilities, it gets more complicated to deploy and maintain the solution. We expect these complexities as part of the roadmap and evolution. We have to set the policy definitions manually because there is no discovery process to define what needs to be authenticated. When a new device is added, we might have to configure something so that it's integrated or set up some data flows of the service we need to do it. These are some of the maintenance activities that we must do to keep it live. We have a good IT team that numbers around 25 people and serves a decent number of customers.

Customers respond to a low price. From the point of view of integration, Cisco ISE hikes up the cost of security, but otherwise, I think it should be okay.

I rate Cisco ISE nine out of 10.

Our use case is managing access to network devices for IT as well as end-users. Making that seamless is the challenge we were looking to handle.

ISE made implementation and connecting things easy.

It does a good job of establishing trust for each access request, no matter the source. It's also very effective at helping with the distributed network and at securing access.

The UI and UX could be more seamless and easier to use.

I've been using Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) for six years.

The stability of the solution is pretty good. I've only had a couple of issues.

I've never tried to scale it up.

We have it deployed in multiple locations with users across the US and Canada.

I have never used the technical support.

It's done the job that we put it in place to do.

I use it for licensing and profiling. It's like a "traffic cop." It's an endpoint user migration tool. It's also a TACACS server. It depends on what I'm using it for at the moment.

For the applications it's authentication and then authorization into the network. It's the networks you're on and what AD gives you. Your profile is based in AD or an LDAP server. ISE talks to those two servers and says, "What groups do you belong to, and should you have access to those roles?" With ISE, if AD says you can have it, then go for it.

I use it in big campus environments, anywhere that needs authentication and authorization to work with AD. It's a great tool for that, if you want to profile your network and you want to secure your network inside. We're not talking about firewalls but about what the tool can do for you, what it's designed for.

It has improved internal security, in-to-out, out-to-in. Without ISE, you can't posture or profile your network. Authorizations, authentications. ISE is not the only product that can do it, but it's a great tool.

Among the most valuable features is TACACS. Also, the rules and logging, but TAC is just as easy. Cisco TAC is great.

The area where things could be improved is education. It's complicated to deploy initially because you have to know what you're getting into. That's true with any customer. I don't know them so I have to learn about them. I have to figure it out, but there are very limited windows to do that. If a customer's going to hire you, you are the professional. You should know this already. You should come in with a base knowledge of what you need to do and, after that, grow with the customer. More education is how it can be improved.

I have been using Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) since 2016. I usually come into an environment after everything is there already. Customers bring me in to fix things that are broken.

The stability of the solution depends on how you scale it. If you have set it up properly, it will be great. If you put all your eggs in one basket, in one part of the network, and that goes down, then you have lost everything.

It's scalable. It can grow with your network. You can create new nodes or move everything from local to the cloud. It's easy to spin up a VM, so you can put it on a VM real quick and be done within a couple of days. But you have to know what you're doing. You can't just do it with the assumption that you can copy and just redeploy it. ISE doesn't work like that. It has to be done properly.

Cisco's TAC is excellent. Cisco always has great support.

Positive

I previously used the older versions of the hardware that were the original predecessors to ISE.

The deployment model for ISE depends on the customer: where their data centers are, what they can afford, and what type of maintenance agreements they have with Cisco's support. Are they on a VM or a physical device? Deployment depends on what we are trying to do and the environment.

In terms of establishing trust for every access request, trust is only as good as the rules and definitions you build. Without that, you need not only to trust the device, you need the trust of the customer too. That's important.

Trust is only eliminated when a customer wants the rules loosened. When the customer says, "This is too difficult, you're making it too hard," that is when exposure happens, things start collapsing, and there are breaches. You can't give the customer everything they want, because they don't know the consequences. You have to educate them. They need to know that the inconvenience of hitting "enter" to log in, and having it take three seconds or five seconds is because you'd rather have the machine and the network think before they let you on the network. A lot of times a customer will say, "If I'm hitting enter and it's not bringing me to where I need to be, then this is not a good solution." You have to educate them.

The solution is like an iPad that someone set up for you. If they didn't do a good job setting it up, you're going to rate the tool as bad. A lot of times, I come in and it's already done and I have to fix the problems. There are times that I do create it from scratch and it works really well. 

We use it for Community WiFi and TACACS authentication. It is service provider authentication, both for the core infrastructure and Community WiFi.

We were looking to solve captive portal and centralized authentication with Cisco ISE.

It has allowed us to pull in multiple authentication databases, then centralize them into a captive portal system.

It is important for our organization that the solution considers all resources to be external. It treats them with minimum trust.

Integration is a big factor. That has really been the driving force behind it.

Documentation is probably the worst part of the software.

I have been using it for about five years.

It is very stable. I would rate the stability as 10 out of 10.

We don't use its scalability. I would rate it as five out of 10.

The technical support is good. I would rate them as six out of 10.

Neutral

We previously used an open-source solution. We switched for vendor support and scalability.

We don't monetize this solution.

It is fair.

We did not evaluate other options.

It is worth checking out the integration that it provides. It is a strong platform.

Cybersecurity resilience has not been that important for our organization.

I would rate ISE as eight out of 10. It does exactly what it is supposed to do without much issue.

We use it for SDA infrastructure. We have a challenge in recognizing different kinds of devices and that's what we are using ISE for in the SDA fabric.

We can better recognize our endpoints and we know whether they are allowed to access our network. That's really important for us.

It has also eliminated some rogue devices from accessing our network.

The integration with Active Directory is the most valuable feature for us.

The admin interface is really slow. It's horrible.

I have been using Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) for five years.

It's really stable.

It's scalable, but we need to upgrade some of our hardware to support more users.

Our SDA fabric has about 1,500 users that we are authenticating. We have plans to use it throughout the City of Helsinki, which has about 38,000 personnel whom we will need to authenticate in the future.

I haven't used the tech support.

We also currently have Microsoft RADIUS, but we are planning to move away from it and use ISE as our only authentication solution.

Other than the slow admin interface, it's an excellent product.

We are a partner with Cisco and am a part of an information security team that uses Cisco to provide security policy management via network, device and wireless access. 

Cisco offers automation, visibility, and control as well as third party integration capabilities.

I would like for the next release to be easier to implement and to limit its dependencies around ISE, Windows, the network as a whole, etc.

I have been using Cisco ISE for over six years.

This is a very stable solution with many integrations.

Cisco's scalability depends on the design - small deployments are not scalable.

Cisco support is good.

This solution is a bit more complex to set up than in comparison to other options - it can take anywhere from two to five months depending on the use case.

The price for Cisco ISE itself is very low, however, Cisco professional services are quite expensive. Subscription amount is dependent on number of users.

We looked at Forescout which is more user-friendly but they have a very vulnerable network.

This is a good solution for security teams. If you do not have a security team, I would not recommend this product. 

Overall, I would rate Cisco a seven out of ten.