Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Reviews

It's mostly for authentication to our network for our end-users.

It's allowed us to create groups for different vendors and for employees in various groups in our company, without giving everyone access.

It has also given us a lot of extra security as the backbone of authentication for our VPN and wireless network.

The policy sets give us more granular groups for end-user access.

I've been using Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) for five years.

The stability is really great. We haven't had any issues with it. We've had it for a long time. We ran an old version for three or four years without any issues.

From what I have read, the scalability seems good. We haven't had to deal much with that. We have two nodes and about 2,000 sessions going at once.

Technical support is very good. They've always been there to answer any questions, and if they don't know the answer they make sure to find someone who can give me the answer.

Positive

Cyber security resilience has been at the top of our list since 2020 because we had so many people working from home and that increased as time went on. That opened our eyes.

I was involved when we upgraded at the beginning of this year. It was pretty straightforward, although we reached out for outsourced help.

We used a CDW consultant.

For us, the return on investment is that it gives us easy ways to divide up our end-users for authentication, especially for our VPN.

The pricing seems fair. The licensing can be confusing, but it is still pretty good.

I was asked a couple of years ago, when we were having issues with ISE, if there were alternatives, and I said I didn't want to switch because we're so embedded in this solution already.

Talk to someone outside of Cisco too, if you're thinking about ISE. That way, you can get all the information.

We wanted to outsource some of our work because I only have two years of admin experience and another of our network engineers has about a year. This way, if the system goes down, we have a quick way to get it back up.

I would tell leaders who want to add cyber security resiliency to make sure they include team members who are involved and not just make decisions on their own.

We use it for SDA infrastructure. We have a challenge in recognizing different kinds of devices and that's what we are using ISE for in the SDA fabric.

We can better recognize our endpoints and we know whether they are allowed to access our network. That's really important for us.

It has also eliminated some rogue devices from accessing our network.

The integration with Active Directory is the most valuable feature for us.

The admin interface is really slow. It's horrible.

I have been using Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) for five years.

It's really stable.

It's scalable, but we need to upgrade some of our hardware to support more users.

Our SDA fabric has about 1,500 users that we are authenticating. We have plans to use it throughout the City of Helsinki, which has about 38,000 personnel whom we will need to authenticate in the future.

I haven't used the tech support.

We also currently have Microsoft RADIUS, but we are planning to move away from it and use ISE as our only authentication solution.

Other than the slow admin interface, it's an excellent product.

My main uses are device administration, wireless access authentication, and ethernet access.

The most valuable feature is network access control for the users coming into the network, which allows us to know who is in the network at any given time.

The intuitiveness of the user interface could be improved. They could also make the deployment process more user-friendly.

I have two years of experience with this solution.

ISE is very stable - since it was installed, I've had no issues with it.

I've had no issues with scalability. I started using it on two campuses, and now I'm using it across the country and scaling it across subsidiaries in other countries.

I've worked closely with Cisco for many years and have no complaints about their support. Sometimes it takes less than a couple of minutes to get through to their support team.

I previously used Portnox, but it only gave us network access control, so we switched to ISE, which has more features like device administration.

Deployment is usually tough the first time, though once you get it working, it works well.

We used in-house engineers and an integrator.

We have a three-year license. Standard licensing gives backup access and very few features, and then there's VM licensing - each VM we use needs to be licensed. VM licensing comes in different sizes: small, medium, and extra-large. There are also licenses for features, posturing licenses, and profiling licenses.

Before deploying, it's a good idea to read up on the product first and then get some training so that when deployed, someone in the organization understands the solution. I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.

We use this solution for network security.

The most valuable features are the ability to retrieve information about Active Directory user names, viewing the log files to see which MAC address tried to connect with the created SSIDs, portal designing for your company, hotspot tools, and creating network rules for WiFi access.

The interface could be more user-friendly and the ability to apply rules to MAC addresses, for example, if I wanted to allow a certain MAC address access at a particular time I cannot make this adjustment.

In an upcoming release, they could improve by providing rule-based bandwidth consumption, bring your own device (BYOD) need to be more mature, and the reports could be more user-friendly.

I have been using this solution for approximately four years.

The solution is stable.

The controller has to manage a certain number of access points and we did not see any problems with the scalability. It is able to handle more access points than we need it for.

We do not have experience with The technical support from Cisco directly because the technical support we receive is from our partners which they have been excellent.

We have used 3Com wireless controllers previously.

We used Cisco partners to do the implementation of the solution.

Recently, I have evaluated Aruba solutions and I found them to be better than Cisco. There is room for improvement, Cisco can do better.

When deciding to implement this solution it is a good idea to assess and define the requirements to determine whether there is a need for this solution. It is important to know what you can use from it. You can have a WiFi environment without the need for a Cisco ISE. This solution has advanced security that might not be needed for your use case. Be sure about your needs.

I rate Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) a seven out of ten.

We use this solution to provide wireless for our residence halls and guest networks. We're also a college that works primarily off of iPads, so we have to be able to keep resident hall activity off of the network so that students can do their homework and class activities. We use the Services Engine to authorize all of them.

The biggest value of ISE is that it can get so granular with gaming systems, versus IoT and BYOD.

I'd like to see an easier way to upgrade to larger versions, as well as more best practices that are easier to locate on their support page.

I have had a very good impression of its stability.

We're actually upgrading right now from a small version to a medium-sized one. It's not as simple as I'd like it to be for scalability, but it's still working well.

We were very late adopters in the education arena of wireless. We didn't adopt until about five years ago. We had a great relationship with our partner and got to see this demo several times. It was really good.

The initial setup was complex.

The name of the company at the time was MSN but they've been recently purchased. The engineers did a really good job. I would have liked a greater share of knowledge at the time, but they did a great job in implementing a complex situation.

Cisco was the only one that we evaluated. There was also Aruba, but Cisco was really the top choice.

My advice to someone considering this solution would be to seek the most comprehensive solution for residence halls.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. I would like the flow of authentication and authorization metrics to be easier to see.

We primarily use the solution for network admission control.

Previously, what used to happen is that we use to have anyone - any user, a staff member or a non-staff member, consultant contractors, etc. able to connect to our line without authentication, which I think posed a security risk. We felt that whoever connected to our network should be authenticated. We should know the person. We should have visibility to see who was connecting to our network so that we can detect anomalies. Now, we have different profiles, of different users and staff and for contractors or others. So, depending on the profile, there's control on the access that you can get.

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. Also, I've not explored MDM but if it should be integrated. 

In terms of scalability, I think it's scalable. Quite scalable and very intricate. Easy to use and provides good support. 

We've had many issues with technical support but from the local vendor, we do get a lot of support which is good. The fact that we also did some training helped. We normally don't have so much trouble when we rescale. We see that we can fix it and then if there are issues, with the vendors and their help, we can rescale it.

Initially, the setup is a bit complex but that depends on the vendor. Maybe because of the complexities around it. Sometimes I think it's about how the best project team really does it.

The person who was put in place to implement it couldn't. So we got another vendor who was good and was a lot more experienced. It's a very new feature so we're hopeful here in Uganda. My country only has about maybe 2 or 3 clients. Those are the ones I know about, our team being one of them.

The deployment strategy was faster than the pilot. We had to see how it works and then we had to, in a transparent manner, see how it works. Deployment took about six months. But the rollout is on-going because we keep opening branches all the time, so we just keep adding them into the solution. For deployment, we used the front liner support but for documentation, we had professional staff. For deployment and maintenance, we have a small team of maybe about five to ten. 

I would give the solution 5.5 out of 10.

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.

It is too complex. It should be easy to use. We are not such a big team. We only have three engineers to work with this, and we don't use all of the functionality of the product. Its range of functionality is too wide for us, and this is the reason why we are thinking of switching to a more simple product. We have shortlisted a Microsoft solution. We have a big footprint for Microsoft products, especially in security. As a global strategy, we try to leverage to the maximum what is possible around Microsoft.

This product was installed before I joined this company. It would be six years or something like that. We are probably two versions behind the latest one.

It is stable.

Their technical support is good. Cisco support is good.

I was not there, but I think the company had a services company that helped them in implementing it. It was easy because we only had to give them the requirements and their engineers did it for us. After they finished their mission, we started to deal with this solution, but it is too complex for a company of our size.

Its price is probably good if you use all of its features and functionalities to protect your environment. If you use only a part of the functionality, its price is too high. It is just a question of value and the functionality you use.

I would advise others to make sure that you have the knowledge of this solution to get the full benefits of all the features, and you are able to use it on a daily basis.

I would rate Cisco ISE a six out of ten. Its functionality is too wide for our company. 

To be clear, I'm not an expert in networking, so I'm pretty much like a user.

I really like the guest WiFi. Those kinds of features are pretty convenient. When I have a guest in the form of a third party, I can grant access to the guest for a certain period of time and have a dynamic password generated. It's great.

The user experience of the solution is great. It's a very transparent system.

As I treat the system basically as a user would, and am not overly technical, I can't say what features, if any, the solution is missing.

I'm working from China currently and the only real issue is that, within the country, there's some concern around Cisco and its ability to offer the solution for the long term. As the United States has banned the Huawei version in their country, we feel there may be retaliation in ours and Cisco will get banned as a countermeasure from the government. The future of Cisco in China is in question. Our local partners are worried about the situation.

To be perfectly frank, I'm unsure of the exact amount of time we've used the solution. It's been a number of years. I've basically lost count.

The stability, from a users' perspective, is very good. I haven't encountered any issues before, and we've used it for quite a long time. It doesn't freeze. It doesn't crash. There aren't bugs or glitches. It's pretty reliable overall.

I'm not sure how many users are on the solution ultimately. Our reach is pretty global. I'm not with the network team, so I can't speak to the ability for the solution to scale.

As I'm not a member of the network team, I've never had to reach out to technical support. I don't know if they do or how often or how Cisco's technical support ultimately is. I've never dealt with them directly. I can't speak to the quality of their service.

I'm not a member of the network team, so I didn't participate in the implementation process. I can't speak to how straightforward or complex it was.

We're just a customer. We're in the manufacturing industry, not IT. We don't have a business relationship with IBM.

We try to keep up with the latest upgrades, therefore, I believe we are using the latest version of the solution.

From a non-technical user-based standpoint, I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

I'd recommend it, however, there is this ongoing concern in China at this time that Cisco could get banned in the ongoing trade war with the United States. That should be a concern for companies here. That may not be so much of a concern abroad.