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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs RSA Identity Governance and Lifecycle 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 (1st)
RSA Identity Governance and...
Average Rating
6.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (24th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and RSA Identity Governance and Lifecycle 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 25.1%, down 30.7% compared to last year.
RSA Identity Governance and Lifecycle, on the other hand, focuses on Identity Management (IM), holds 1.4% mindshare, down 1.4% since last year.
Network Access Control (NAC)
Identity Management (IM)
 

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.
Harshul Nayak - PeerSpot reviewer
Lacking customization, poor support, but useful auditing
RSA Identity Governance and Lifecycle can be deployed on the cloud or on-premise. We have our own proprietary cloud solution created along with RSA Identity Governance and Lifecycle and it's deployed on the AWS platform. We use RSA Identity Governance and Lifecycle for a broad level use case for…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature of the Cisco ISE platform is that it is compatible with Microsoft products."
"It's easy to change and add policies."
"Stable network administration solution that can be installed easily, and comes with fast technical support."
"The way we can trust this solution is the most valuable. We have no issue with this product. It is a competitive product. You need to have a very good and deep knowledge of the product to take the full benefits of all the features, but it is a good product."
"The endpoint profiling feature is among the most valuable because it keeps me from having to manually maintain a MAC address bypass list to track endpoints. I can have ISE profile them for me and then put them in the right bucket."
"The authorization and accounts inside of ISE are very useful for us."
"The solution enables us to do everything from one interface."
"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."
"Roles, connectors for provisioning and re-accreditation or reviews help greatly to govern user access."
"The data collection is excellent and easy to do. It does not require a lot of configuration nor does it require rules to be written like other competitors do."
"With the tool in place, you need to hire fewer people to provide access, and you have control over your processes."
"RSA Identity Governance and lifecycles are good for the access certification and auditing sections."
"The most valuable feature is the security, in particular, the One Time Password support."
 

Cons

"Cisco ISE's performance could be better, faster, and more robust."
"In a future release, I would like to see network access control. That is something that customers seem to be looking for."
"There are issues with respect to the posture assessment function. It's been observed that customers are not receiving total access to the network because the assessment agent is glitchy and malfunctions from time-to-time. I would like to see refining of the compliance assessment and adding more detailed compliance of endpoints on the user end."
"Segmentation can be improved."
"Automation [is an area for improvement]. It seems like everywhere I look, automation is super important. Automation and integrations. That's the area it could be improved..."
"The intuitiveness of the user interface could be improved."
"The tracking mechanism in Cisco ISE is relatively costly, especially its vendor-specific protocol."
"This product doesn't work in isolation."
"RSA Identity Governance and Lifecycle could improve out-of-the-box customization."
"The user interface and workflow need improvement, and more connectors would help."
"If you use the appliance version then it won't handle a huge database volume."
"This product is missing a lot of features which other competitors are providing. One of the key features that are missing right now is risk scoring. Additionally, there is not much scope for customization - everything is hard-coded and predefined, so it does not allow the developers to make many modifications."
"There are scalability issues. This product does not scale very well. It is not a good product for load balancing / active–active architecture."
"Every connector that you have in the product needs to be custom-built, so there are not a lot of standard connectors available in the product, because of which there are a lot of hidden consultancy costs."
"Technical support in Pakistan can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are three levels of pricing: basic, plus, and apex. Basic satisfied our needs."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"The licensing can be confusing, but it is still pretty good."
"The pricing is fair for what it does."
"Cisco ISE is not inexpensive, but the solution is well-built and worth the expense."
"The price for Cisco ISE is 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."
"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"
"Pricing varies based on user count/number of modules you need."
"We are using the cloud platform, but we don't find it compatible to be served as a multi-tenant platform. This is a large drawback. It becomes expensive because it is then an all-dedicated solution. You have to have a separate tenant for each client, which increases the cost. The overall unit pricing can be less expensive than how it is right now."
"I rate the product's price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 RSA Identity Governance and Lifecycle?
With the tool in place, you need to hire fewer people to provide access, and you have control over your processes.
What needs improvement with RSA Identity Governance and Lifecycle?
Every connector that you have in the product needs to be custom-built, so there are not a lot of standard connectors available in the product, because of which there are a lot of hidden consultancy...
What advice do you have for others considering RSA Identity Governance and Lifecycle?
Two of the members of our company's in-house team and a consultant for support were required to take care of the maintenance phase of the product. I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten.
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
SecurID
 

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
NTT Com Asia, Virgin Blue, Bank of Uganda, EMEA Telecommunications Company, LAit (Lazio Innovazione Tecnologica), NyNet, OTP Bank, Red Bull Racing, Rupert House School, Signify, UK Local Authority, Bancolombia, Banco Popular de Puerto Rico (BPPR), TIVIT, Array Services, International Computerware, KPMG LLP, Moffitt Cancer Center
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: June 2025.
862,499 professionals have used our research since 2012.