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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Impulse Point SafeConnect comparison

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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)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
144
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (4th)
Impulse Point SafeConnect
Ranking in Network Access Control (NAC)
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Access Control (NAC) category, the mindshare of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is 18.4%, down from 24.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Impulse Point SafeConnect is 1.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Access Control (NAC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)18.4%
Impulse Point SafeConnect1.8%
Other79.8%
Network Access Control (NAC)
 

Featured Reviews

NF
IT Network Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
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.
CD
Director of Computer Information Services at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
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

"Cisco ISE works very well for establishing trust for every access request when it is deployed and running correctly."
"They provide you multiple ways to achieve security, not only on-prem, but also when you have remote and guest workers. Especially post-pandemic, a lot of our customers have remote workers. So, it has been really helpful."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility element, the ability for customers to be able to see what devices are actually on their network. Without a solution like ISE, they would have no idea what devices are connected to their network. It offers them the ability to authenticate devices via mobile."
"We have multiple metal devices from different places that use management, so we need to know who would be accessing all those devices and what changes are being done to those metal devices. With Cisco ISE we have visibility of all the changes happening on those devices."
"Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) has simplified guest access management for us without compromising security for our organization."
"The product has many useful features, enhances compliance and security posture, and provides client provisions and profiling as well as guest access, features not available in other solutions."
"This solution helps to support an organization across a distributed network."
"The posture assessment is a valuable feature because of the ability to do assessments on the clients before they connect to the network."
"It is very easy to scale the product."
"It gives us good visibility and enforces policies, 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."
 

Cons

"I would like to see them simplify the dashboard. It's very configurable, but, at the same time, it's not easy to maneuver through it. They should "Merakify" it."
"There is much room for improvement, especially after having perused the documentation on the solution's website. The solution lacks properly knowledgeable support, especially internationally, and this is why I am exploring other applications."
"The solution isn't as dynamic as it could be; there are some limitations, specifically around switches."
"We do tend to run into a lot of issues with ISE when it comes to bugs."
"Automation and integrations are the areas it could be improved, as we get more and more away from a lot of human involvement and into machine learning and just trusting that these systems could automatically help us."
"There should be an easier way to do the upgrades."
"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."
"Cisco ISE is very complex and not very easy to deploy."
"The solution would be much better if it offered self-service onboarding."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Cisco has actually transitioned to a lot of subscription models, fees, and licenses."
"Cisco ISE's licensing can get pricey."
"This solution requires an annual license and it is a bit expensive than competitors."
"It is difficult to measure security breaches, but since we have not been attacked so far, it has paid for itself over the years."
"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."
"If you're not going through an agreement, it's very expensive."
"The licensing is subscription-based and based on the user account."
"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
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise32
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
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 Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco, ThreatLocker and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.