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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
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
144
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 November 2025, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is 23.0%, up from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) is 1.9%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cisco Security Portfolio Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)23.0%
Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM)1.9%
Other75.1%
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

"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."
"I like that Cisco ISE is easy to use."
"The valuable feature of the solution lies in its integration capabilities with other applications."
"Member Access Control and the ability to integrate all Cisco wireless, Cisco networking, switches, routers, and firewalls."
"The ability to integrate our Cisco AnyConnect connections to the active directory has been great."
"SGTs are valuable because they make it easy to enforce policies, instead of pushing them across all the other platforms."
"One of the most important features is the authentication security for the individual connection to the network through their computer or laptop."
"Cisco ISE now competes with any other product in the space because of its centralized and unified highly secure access control with ISE."
"The risk context of any vulnerability is a valuable feature."
 

Cons

"There should be a single button that can be pressed to dismiss all of the alarms at once."
"The intuitiveness of the user interface could be improved."
"In the next release, I would want to see this kind of solution in the cloud as opposed to on prem because when enhancements are made to the software, if it's in the cloud, it's overnight. I mean you're not going to have to respin the servers that the license sits on, it's all microservices kinds of things in the cloud. That would be my recommendation. If I'm a customer, that's what I'm looking at - for cloud based software subscriptions."
"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."
"It is too complex. It should be easy to use. We are not such a big team. We only have three engineers to work with this, and we don't use all of the functionality of the product. Its range of functionality is too wide for us, and this is the reason why we are thinking of switching to a more simple product. We have shortlisted a Microsoft solution. We have a big footprint for Microsoft products, especially in security. As a global strategy, we try to leverage to the maximum what is possible around Microsoft."
"The interface is not very user-friendly and it is not simple to use."
"Cisco ISE requires a lot of time-consuming administration."
"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."
"An improvement would be some sort of an integration with any GRC suite."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Being fully honest, the Cisco licensing model right now is really confusing. We don't know what licenses we have where. We have Smart licensing, but the different levels are way confusing."
"The price of Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is expensive and we are thinking about changing to FortiGate."
"I think licensing costs roughly $2,000 a year. ISE is more expensive than Network Access Control."
"The licensing is subscription-based and based on the user account."
"I am not aware of the current price for Cisco ISE, but considering it is a Cisco product, it is likely to be quite high."
"Licensing has got much simpler since Cisco moved to the DNA model because we just have the three tiers, but it could always stand to be improved upon."
"If you're not going through an agreement, it's very expensive."
"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."
"I think the pricing is based on the number of endpoints, so it's more subscription-based."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
18%
Retailer
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise91
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...
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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
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