Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
143
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st)
Cisco Vulnerability Managem...
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is 22.1%, up from 19.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) is 1.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cisco Security Portfolio
 

Featured Reviews

SunilkumarNaganuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced device administration hindered by complex deployment and security limitations
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) needs to improve the profiling preauthentication. They are very poor in asset classification and should focus on improving the preauthentication profiling, especially for NAC use cases. This will give them a roadmap for software-defined access (SDA) use cases and network segmentation. Threat detection capabilities are very weak. Additionally, the product is vulnerable and has many bugs.
AshishPaliwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers contextual prioritization and risk-based remediation of vulnerability
An improvement would be some sort of an integration with any GRC suite. There are a lot of GRC suites available, like Archer, MetricStream, Rsam, Protiviti, for example. So how would a solution like this work if my company has already invested thousands or maybe millions in a GRC solution? Do I still need it and how does it fit into an existing SAP environment? There could be interoperability, having more data sources, integrating Splunk, Qualys, FireEye, Rapid7, Carbon Black. I'm sure all that can be done to an extent, with a little more insight and a little more accuracy on the industry numbers and trends. I'd like the solution to offer any sort of assistance in any way with the remediation part, not just identification of vulnerability risk, and that is second.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco ISE scales exceptionally well."
"At the moment, ISE seems to integrate very well with a number of other technologies."
"Cisco ISE's integration with other external identity servers like Duende is very simple and easy."
"The endpoint profiling feature is among the most valuable because it keeps me from having to manually maintain a MAC address bypass list to track endpoints. I can have ISE profile them for me and then put them in the right bucket."
"I like the guest access feature, which has been important for us."
"The valuable feature of the solution lies in its integration capabilities with other applications."
"The most valuable features are the NAC and the bundles that are available with Cisco ISE, such as Cisco ACS being integrated."
"The WiFi portal in Cisco ISE is very useful for WiFi customers."
"The risk context of any vulnerability is a valuable feature."
 

Cons

"The knocks I have against the product are the number of bugs that we encounter, constantly, and the amount of upgrading that we have to do."
"The web interface needs improvement. The new web interface that they have is not as easy to manage and we find it to be very slow."
"The interface is not very user-friendly and it is not simple to use."
"Support and integration for the active devices needs to be worked on. Their features mainly work well with Mac devices. If we use an HP the Mac functionalities may no longer be able to deliver."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in its ability to allow end users to self-enroll their devices. Instead, you should be able to assign that permission by AD group, which is currently not available."
"Sometimes, there are instances when Cisco ISE simply fails to function without any apparent reason, and regardless of the investigation we undertake, the logs indicate that everything is functioning properly, making it somewhat inexplicable."
"The pricing and licensing structure are not ideal for customers."
"An improvement would be some sort of an integration with any GRC suite."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not that pricey."
"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."
"I think licensing costs roughly $2,000 a year. ISE is more expensive than Network Access Control."
"Cisco ISE is not inexpensive, but the solution is well-built and worth the expense."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, one being cheap and ten being expensive."
"The licensing can be confusing, but it is still pretty good."
"Pricing is not a problem for Cisco because it has a lot of features and not much competition, although it's more expensive than other products. But if I do a cost-benefit analysis, Cisco provides high quality."
"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."
"I think the pricing is based on the number of endpoints, so it's more subscription-based."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cisco Security Portfolio solutions are best for your needs.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Retailer
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 ...
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, ...
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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
Kenna.VM, Kenna Security, Kenna, Kenna Security Platform
 

Overview

 

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
TransUnion
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco and others in Cisco Security Portfolio. Updated: July 2025.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.