Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Cisco Secure Workload are both solutions in the Cisco Security Portfolio category. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.6, while Cisco Secure Workload is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.5. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) holds a 21.4% mindshare in CSS, compared to Cisco Secure Workload’s 6.2% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cisco Secure Workload users who would recommend it.

Cisco Identity Services Eng...

Read 144 Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) reviews

15,070 Views
1,206 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Cisco Secure Workload

Read 15 Cisco Secure Workload reviews

4,674 Views
374 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco Identity Services Eng...

Cisco Secure Workload

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) 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.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Cisco Secure Workload Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Cisco Secure Workload

February 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 884,933 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Identity Services Eng...

Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

144

Ranking in other categories

Network Access Control (NAC) (2nd)

Cisco Secure Workload

Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio

8th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud and Data Center Security (8th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (15th), Microsegmentation Software (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is 21.4%, down from 23.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 6.2%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cisco Security Portfolio Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)	21.4%
Cisco Secure Workload	6.2%
Other	72.4%

Cisco Security Portfolio

Featured Reviews

NicolasFigaro

Network and Technology Information Manager at Akkodis

Has improved authentication management and simplified visitor network access

The log capacity in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could be enhanced because today natively on the ISE can only have a look at the logs from the day before. You cannot search into the oldest logs; you have to use another tool for that. This can be blocking if you don't have any log consolidation solution. To do a search for an issue or something that happened two days ago, you cannot search directly in there. The capacity of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could be enhanced. Something between one week and one month for the log capacity would be nice.

Read full review

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It has tremendously improved our organization through BYOD and guest wireless access."

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

"The feature that I most like is that it can notify me whenever someone plugs in their device, which is not allowed, and I get notifications for new laptop devices."

"The most valuable thing in ISE is the adoption of EAP deep that came in [version] 2.7, so we can do authentication based on user and machine certificates in one authentication."

"Use ISE if you want to build more resilience within your organization."

"We have become more reliable because we do not have any vulnerabilities coming into our network, which is important since a lot of employees are using their own endpoints to connect to our infrastructure."

"We have seen ROI. It has done its job. It has protected us when we needed it to."

"They have recently made a lot of improvements. My clients don't have much to complain about."

More Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) pros

"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."

"The most valuable feature right now is to do with having visibility on the network — especially on our servers — and to be able to enforce some type of security measures."

"This product does everything that you need it to do and more and does a lot to provide visibility in a network environment, save time and money, and make the organization IT operate in a much more streamlined fashion."

"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage; the telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent, it's complete, and you see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."

"It's stable."

"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."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

Cons

"One of the issues that we used to have was with profiling because we're working with a service provider that uses a lot of bring your own devices."

"There should be more visibility into TrustSec policy actions. When TrustSec blocks something or makes any kind of changes to the network, we don't always see that. We have to log into the switch itself, or we have to get some type of Syslog parsing to do that."

"An area that could be improved is the agent. The challenge now is that agent and most of the computers have changed. They could think about agent-less deployment."

"The compliance and posture don't always work. They should make it more stable."

"Profiling is a really good feature. However, it sometimes is a challenge for customers when there are issues with the remediation part."

"I'm working from China currently and the only real issue is that, within the country, there's some concern around Cisco and its ability to offer the solution for the long term. As the United States has banned the Huawei version in their country, we feel there may be retaliation in ours and Cisco will get banned as a countermeasure from the government. The future of Cisco in China is in question. Our local partners are worried about the situation."

"The pricing is fair."

"Migration could be better. Right now, we back up with the new version, and it requires a lot of licensing and other things. Whenever we choose a product, it's very difficult because we have to meet the requirements of each feature. There is no standard feature, so the best system that we bought may not fit the solution. We have to look at every feature that the customer uses. If you compare it with other products like Aruba, it's not the same. With Cisco, I have to read all about the features on this version and the licensing required for the product. In Aruba, that thing is covered when you get one license because it covers almost everything. It could also be more scalable."

More Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) cons

"A feature that I was looking for was emailed alerts and notifications so we'd get them right away."

"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."

"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem."

"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."

"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and I need to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."

"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."

"The product should be easy to use, but it is not. Comparing it to other products, it was very complex."

"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Previously, Cisco ISE had a perpetual licensing model, but now they have shifted to a subscription-based licensing system."

"Over the years, licensing has been confusing and complicated because there are so many different licenses for each different product and each different iteration of the product."

"In general, licensing can be quite complex with Cisco products. It would be nice if it was a bit more intuitive and had fewer "gotchas" in there."

"It is fairly expensive and that's part of why we have implemented it in the type of 'hack' that we did, to service multiple clients."

"The solution’s pricing is okay."

"Hardware appliances are expensive...Now moving to DNA-styled licensing, we have subscription-based licensing for everything. I hope it will continue to be fair, but we will have to wait and see."

"Our customers pay for the license of Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine). They have an annual subscription, rather than a monthly subscription."

"Cisco is moving towards a subscription service, which would mean additional costs."

More Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) pricing and cost advice

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cisco Security Portfolio solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	45
Midsize Enterprise	32
Large Enterprise	91

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Aruba Clearpass or Cisco ISE?

Aruba ClearPass is a Network Access Control tool that gives secure network access to multiple device types. You can adapt the policies to VPN access, wired, or wireless access. You can securely ...

See all answers

What are the main differences between Cisco ISE and Forescout Platform?

OK, so Cisco ISE uses 802.1X to secure switchports against unauthorized access. The drawback of this is that ISE cannot secure the port if a device does not support 802.1x. Cameras, badge readers, ...

See all answers

How does Cisco ISE compare with Fortinet FortiNAC?

Cisco ISE uses AI endpoint analytics to identify new devices based on their behavior. It will also notify you if someone plugs in with a device that is not allowed and will block it. The user exper...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?

CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Workload?

When we onboarded Cisco Secure Workload, the usual use case was to discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map for Cisco ACI. As the network team, we chose to implement A...

See all answers

Comparisons

Aruba ClearPass vs Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

Compared 25% of the time

Fortinet FortiNAC vs Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

Compared 17% of the time

Forescout Platform vs Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

Compared 7% of the time

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

Compared 3% of the time

Genian NAC vs Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

Compared 1% of the time

More Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Competitors

Illumio vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 17% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 15% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 11% of the time

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 9% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

March 2026

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) report

Download Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

March 2026

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Also Known As

Cisco ISE

Cisco Tetration

Overview

Cisco Identity Services Engine offers robust authentication, posture profiling, guest and secure access, and dynamic policy management. Known for its seamless integration with Cisco tools and network access control features, it ensures secure device and user authentication across networks.

Cisco Identity Services Engine is renowned for its capabilities in managing authentication, guest access, and policy management through segmentation. Its TrustSec functionality, alongside RADIUS and TACACS+ support, provides enhanced security, further augmented by its ability to operate in diverse environments. Its scalability and integration with Cisco solutions aid in maintaining network visibility and access control. Challenges include the complexity of initial deployments, somewhat cumbersome documentation, and limited integration in multi-vendor environments. While encountering issues in stability and updates, the demand for better analytics and straightforward troubleshooting alongside cost-effective licensing is notable.

What are the key features of Cisco Identity Services Engine?

Authentication: Secures user and device access to networks using robust authentication protocols.
Posture Profiling: Provides in-depth analysis of device compliance with security policies.
Guest Access Management: Allows controlled network access for guest users through streamlined processes.
Dynamic Policy Management: Enables automatic adjustment of security policies based on real-time data.
Segmentation via TrustSec: Enhances security levels by segmenting network traffic based on identity.

What benefits or ROI should users expect from Cisco Identity Services Engine?

Comprehensive Security: Ensures enforceable security policies across network access points.
Enhanced Integration: Facilitates seamless collaboration with existing Cisco infrastructures.
Improved Compliance: Helps meet industry security standards for network access and user rights.
Increased Visibility: Provides detailed insights into network traffic and user activities.
Device Management Efficiency: Streamlines the process of managing diverse devices within a single framework.

Industries implement Cisco Identity Services Engine primarily for network access control, ensuring secure authentication and segmentation in both wired and wireless environments. Supporting policies like bring-your-own-device and compliance standards, ISE manages identity-based access control, especially beneficial for entities that require detailed user rights management and integration within enterprise networks.

Cisco

Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

Reviews from Real Users

“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. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

Cisco

Sample Customers

Aegean Motorway, BC Hydro, Beachbody, Bucks County Intermediate Unit , Cisco IT, Derby City Council, Global Banking Customer, Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha, Houston Methodist, Linz AG, London Hydro, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Molina Healthcare, MST Systems, New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Reykjavik University, Wildau University

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Cisco Secure Workload

February 2026

Free Report: Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Cisco Secure Workload

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Cisco Secure Workload and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Cisco Secure Workload report.

See our list of best Cisco Security Portfolio vendors.

We monitor all Cisco Security Portfolio reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.