No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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)
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 August 2026, in the Network Access Control (NAC) category, the mindshare of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is 18.4%, down from 24.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Impulse Point SafeConnect is 1.7%, up from 0.4% 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 SafeConnect1.7%
Other79.9%
Network Access Control (NAC)
 

Featured Reviews

NF
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.
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

"SGTs are valuable because they make it easy to enforce policies, instead of pushing them across all the other platforms."
"Without Cisco ISE, we couldn't authorize our users, contractors, and everyone else."
"Cisco ISE scales exceptionally well."
"RADIUS is the best feature because it supplies authentication to our entire campus."
"ISE helps us protect our industrial control systems and SCADA systems by segmenting them off from the rest of the network, eliminating trust, and making our government and law-enforcement-related audits go a lot faster and a lot smoother than they used to."
"It works as a good RADIUS server. It has lots of features. It works with all the proprietary Cisco AB pairs and features."
"Combines authentication, authorization, accounting (AAA), posture, and profiler into one appliance."
"With NAC, the profiling feature is valuable. We're able to see what we have out there in the network and dynamically assign policies to it. We can then use that to enforce TrustSec policy or anything else with NAC."
"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."
"It is very easy to scale the product."
 

Cons

"The product is expensive. It would also be a good add-on to have some machine learning."
"The ISE software needs to be improved in order to be easier to administer; completing processes can be complex when trying to implement some solutions and the troubleshooting is also complex."
"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."
"It's damn expensive and the licensing is terrible."
"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 learning curve is steep and the initial setup is complex."
"The initial setup, though, is extremely complex."
"Cisco ISE has almost all the features we are looking for now, but sometimes the configuration, such as the conditions, is a little difficult to understand and not so easy to navigate."
"The solution would be much better if it offered self-service onboarding."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of the licensing and the pricing structure of the Cisco Identity Services Engine, there's been a huge advantage to our clients recently with the advent of the enterprise agreement."
"It would be beneficial to have a single license that included all of the features."
"Cybersecurity resilience has been very important to our organization and has been a big factor. We've had issues in the past, but one of the things I like about ISE is its logging features. Security wise or information wise, it really has been a powerful tool."
"Cisco has actually transitioned to a lot of subscription models, fees, and licenses."
"The licensing is subscription-based and based on the user account."
"The Essentials licensing is reasonable, but I would like the Premier version to be perpetual instead of a subscription."
"I get very good pricing from Cisco, so I don't have a problem with that. I also don't have a problem with licensing because we get enterprise or global licensing."
"I believe I have paid around $1,000 in licensing fees. The license is annual."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Access Control (NAC) solutions are best for your needs.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Government
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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: July 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.