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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Symantec Privileged Access Manager 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...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
143
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Symantec Privileged Access ...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Symantec Privileged Access Manager aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is designed for Network Access Control (NAC) and holds a mindshare of 24.5%, down 30.0% compared to last year.
Symantec Privileged Access Manager, on the other hand, focuses on Privileged Access Management (PAM), holds 1.5% mindshare, down 1.6% since last year.
Network Access Control (NAC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)24.5%
Aruba ClearPass23.9%
Fortinet FortiNAC18.0%
Other33.599999999999994%
Network Access Control (NAC)
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Symantec Privileged Access Manager1.5%
CyberArk Privileged Access Manager16.3%
Delinea Secret Server7.5%
Other74.7%
Privileged Access Management (PAM)
 

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.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Secure management of sensitive servers and seamless applications with direct linking
The credential injection feature is highly valued, particularly for RDP sessions. A majority of customers use it for RDP, and a couple for Linux servers. The broader capabilities, including access to multiple systems, web-based applications, and clustering, have never posed an issue. The threat analytics aspect is also a robust feature that analyzes all pertinent information.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the automation of the collection of information."
"Cisco ISE is a comprehensive solution that allows you to control access to network resources granularly based on policies."
"The best features are the scalability and the license structure."
"SGTs are valuable because they make it easy to enforce policies, instead of pushing them across all the other platforms."
"It integrates with the rest of our platform, like our firewall, and helps us a lot. It also does a good job establishing trust for every access request."
"We found that the most valuable features associated with this tool are posture assessment, policy management, VLAN assignments, guest assignment, and BYOD services. In addition to these services, the Cisco IOS software switch configuration feature is another very valuable aspect of the policy and compliance solution."
"Cisco ISE provides authentication for various applications. It can integrate with other applications to manage access, including Privileged Access Management for those applications. For a comprehensive environment, Cisco ISE should be able to integrate and provide asset management for an IT organization or any organization."
"Cisco ISE integrates with everything else."
"Stability is solid as a rock."
"The two factor authentication, and the single most important capability was it supported PIV and CAC as one of the two factors. That was pretty huge for us."
"One of the key things for us about the product is around its simplicity. Being able to put in the technology that allows the business to remove complexity and also allow the security improvements."
"You can do A2A integration. You can have your own script, which can then run outside of PA to retrieve the password and perform other tasks."
"The product is very scalable in terms of concurrent sessions that it can handle at a time, number of device it can support, accounts that it can manage, or number of nodes that you can deploy in a cluster."
"It will provide us with more security."
"We can check the activities in the server for fragile files and documents in case of any issues."
"The key benefits are we improve our governance. We ensure we can build more trust in the way we run and operate our environment, and most of all is the accountability."
 

Cons

"The Guest Network verification needs to add a QR code option."
"It could be more intuitive in terms of how to configure the policies."
"If you have someone taking care of it, it can be quite easy to manage the solution. Otherwise, if you don't look after it and take care of it day-to-day, then it will become more complex to run."
"The primary issue is the slowness of the application and the web interface. We have multiple admin nodes and app nodes. So when I need to get some information about a particular user, the GUI would take ten to fifteen seconds in loading when we need to know right away."
"The licensing scheme is complex and could use enhancement to provide more options."
"The one main thing that it can improve on is the GUI. As the newest addition to the team, I struggle a little bit to get around it just because it has so many features."
"There should be more visibility into TrustSec policy actions. When TrustSec blocks something or makes any kind of changes to the network, we don't always see that. We have to log into the switch itself, or we have to get some type of Syslog parsing to do that."
"The web UI should be made similar to the one in DNAC."
"Broadcom has neglected product development since acquiring Symantec, and nothing major has been added to PAM."
"The setup is complex."
"I would like this solution to be simpler. It should have a one-click access that works together with AWS."
"They need to do a little bit more on the mainframe side.​"
"What I hope happens with the new product CA PAM is to keep all the useful features that exist in PA, but what I’ve noticed with many new products is the UI gets polished but systems lags stability and performance or it adds additional complexity instead of simplifying the user experience."
"They need to have zero tier and active-active setup ​with zero minimum downtime, which they are working on it. ​"
"We have to do a lot of manual work to automate features."
"An improvement for this solution is that it should not be constantly based on user name and password. There should be a condition to edit and update your username."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s pricing is okay."
"Previously, Cisco ISE had a perpetual licensing model, but now they have shifted to a subscription-based licensing system."
"The licensing is subscription-based and based on the user account."
"The solution is not that cheap."
"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."
"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."
"ISE has always been expensive compared to other products in terms of what it does on a user level."
"The prices are not low, but one can ask for a discount. It’s not the cheapest PAM solution."
"It is more expensive than other solutions on the market."
"Cost-wise, CA was better compared to others in the market. ​"
"Pricing is fair compared to other top vendors."
"I would prefer better licensing options for the 20-100 users we have at a given time."
"The version we are using is affordable compared to BeyondTrust, which is maybe three to four times as expensive, but it depends on the features."
"Don’t go with an agent model. Don’t go with a model that has you buying a thousand different parts. Go with PAM that gives you everything, or you’ll just be paying costs of implementing another tool that PAM would have just given you up front."
"It is reasonably priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise90
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

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...
What do you like most about Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
We can check the activities in the server for fragile files and documents in case of any issues.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Due to the nature of the solution, it is hard to gauge, but compared to competitors, the pricing is very good. I would rate it as an eight and a half out of ten.
What needs improvement with Symantec Privileged Access Manager?
Recent releases need improvement in webpage management. For instance, navigating through a webpage that acts like a wizard, where I proceed to the next page and enter more information, is not handl...
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
CA PAM, Xceedium Xsuite, CA Privileged Access Manager
 

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
NEOVERA, Telesis, eSoft
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: August 2025.
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