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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Impulse Point SafeConnect 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 Network Access Control (NAC)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
142
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (1st)
Impulse Point SafeConnect
Ranking in Network Access Control (NAC)
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Access Control (NAC) category, the mindshare of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is 25.8%, down from 31.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Impulse Point SafeConnect is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Access Control (NAC)
 

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.
CD
Easy to scale, enforces policies well, and has responsive technical support
A lot of campuses use SafeConnect. It gives us good visibility and enforces policies. It helps enforce network security by scanning devices, making sure they have current and valid antivirus solutions with up-to-date antivirus definitions, and steers our end users by enforcing policy groups and steering them to the right access. Technical support is responsive. The stability is pretty good. It is very easy to scale the product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The TACACS and RADIUS have been the most valuable features so far."
"The most valuable feature is AnyConnect Posture because it scans all the programs on the workstation and checks if the antivirus is up to date, as well as the cryptographic keys on our SSD."
"We have seen ROI. It has done its job. It has protected us when we needed it to."
"Not having to trust devices and being able to set those levels of trust and more finely control our network is a benefit."
"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."
"Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is very good at device administration."
"So far, we have had no issues with the stability."
"My team has gained a lot from Cisco ISE as it does also provide automation, which is a big asset in the eighth hour. After setting it up, it took a lot of the weight off in many ways. We have a co-worker, who we call the ISE Master because he's in charge of the ISE configurations. He's able to save a lot of time by being able to monitor everything from there. So it did take off a lot of time that we would waste by going individually to that different device and trying to figure out what was wrong."
"It is very easy to scale the product."
 

Cons

"In an upcoming release, it would be nice to have NAC already standard in the solution."
"I don't see as many customers as I should adopting the onboarding feature. I think Cisco should make that process a lot easier and less intrusive on the end users' devices."
"The UI is not as intuitive as some other products, even products inside of Cisco's wheelhouse."
"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."
"The support could be faster and the pricing could be reduced."
"Whenever we see the authentication logs, we can't see what device we're logging into... We can see who logged in, but we can't see the IP address of the device... I'm sure that's available. We just haven't figured out how to properly deploy it."
"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."
"There are still some bugs in ISE that need to be worked out."
"The solution would be much better if it offered self-service onboarding."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution is not that cheap."
"That's where things got a bit more complicated. Previously, it was a one-time purchase and we just had to renew support. These days, there's a subscription model, which is supposed to be easier and cheaper as well, but it's more pricey"
"I have complaints. I don't enjoy the licensing model. Once we moved from 2.7 to 3.1, switching from Base, Plus, and Apex to Essential and Advantage in Premier, we went from a perpetual, with our base licenses, to now a subscription-base. So, we will have to renew those licenses every year, and I'm not a fan of that for our base licenses. Apex/Premier, we already expected, which is fine, but for basic connectivity, I am not a fan of that."
"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 would be beneficial to have a single license that included all of the features."
"Standard licensing gives backup access and very few features, and then there's VM licensing - each VM we use needs to be licensed."
"The pricing is good. The last time we purchased four new appliances the price was doable for any organization of our size."
"For our tier group, for one year, the cost is probably around $10,000 for the license. If you do multi-year, you could get two years, and you could get it for about $8,000 per year. If you do three years, you get it around $7,000 a year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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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
SafeConnect
 

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
Aerohive Solution
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: April 2025.
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