Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Reviews

We use it for identity services, profiling, and locking down devices.

We're an airport, so when anybody plugs in a device, it's obviously a really big security point for us.

We have a lot of different devices that get plugged in and we really don't have the manpower to address each one individually, as far as our network goes. Cisco ISE has really cut down a lot on the size of our ticket queues and the manpower. My boss is extremely happy about that.

The solution has also eliminated trust from our organization's network architecture and that has actually been positive because we have to meet PCI compliance. It is very important for us to be able to take cards. It has also helped to improve our pen-testing scores at the end of the year.

Resilience, in cyber security, is at the top of the list. It's one of the most valuable aspects and has been extremely important for us. Before, we had mid-range scores, but over the last couple of years, between implementing ISE and a few other technologies and SIEMs, we've gotten into the 90th percentile with our pen-testing scores. We were sitting at about 75 to 80, so this is a pretty huge jump for us.

Profiling is one of the most valuable features. We have a lot of different devices between cameras, access points, and laptops that get plugged in.

Establishing trust for every access request, no matter where it comes from, is extremely important for us, especially because we are an airport entity. We do have port security implemented throughout our airport, but on the more sensitive side of things, it's a little bit more hardcore regarding what we need to allow, per security zone.

There are always some things that I would request.

I first started using Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) in about 2015, but we recently just spun it up here at my current job.

The stability of the solution is a 10 out of 10.

The scalability is also a 10 out of 10.

For this particular solution, the technical support has been pretty good.

Positive

I've worked with ISE before, and it was actually my suggestion that we buy the license for it.

The initial deployment was pretty straightforward only because I had done it before. I worked on it with a colleague and taught him everything about it, just in case I was incapacitated.

From the start, including getting to an agreement, budgeting, and scheduling, the deployment took about three months.

In terms of an implementation strategy, once we got the licensing, we just stood the nodes up. Then we did the features one-by-one, with proper RFCs done, just to see, in a break-fix manner, if each thing we implemented would break something.

We used a consultant. The deployment required two people on our side. I was in charge of the initial rollout and implementation, and I'm in charge of managing it. However, if I'm not there, we have another network guy who does the day-to-day tasks and checks the logs to see if he needs to approve anything.

We have definitely seen return on investment. We have so many different security solutions in place, and ISE just works really seamlessly with them. I get to keep my job, so that's a pretty ROI from my point of view.

The pricing is fair for what it does. The only time I've really not been too crazy about the price is for Cisco Prime, which is a management solution for Cisco products.

We implemented a request for purchase and talked to a few different companies. One of the companies was Presidio. There was another company close by called Net Solutions. Three out of the five companies that we talked to were outsourcing the work to pretty much just bring in an ISE solution, so we just decided to do it in-house.

If you are on the fence about it, and you don't have someone on your team who has worked with the product before, definitely reach out to a company or a certified Cisco entity to help with the rollout. It's pretty painful if you don't know what you're doing.

Resilience is never a bad idea and it's never too late to start working towards it or to begin the journey to Zero Trust. It's very important in this day and age. 

I'm the only cyber security administrator that we have currently, so if we hadn't gotten this solution in place, I highly doubt that I would have been able to make it here to Cisco Live 2021, so it's excellent.

From 2015, when I first started using it, until now, there's not really a lot that I would ask be changed. They've been hard at it ever since I first started using it.

It's been incredible ever since we got it in place.

We use it for NAC and wireless, and for our TrustSec policy. These are the three primary use cases we have so far.

It's a network access control solution for us. Previous to Cisco ISE, we didn't have one, so, from a security standpoint, it increased our security visibly.

It has enhanced our security. We have a solution now that can protect us at the access layer, which we didn't have before.

It has helped to consolidate any tools or applications. We only have to use one product for RADIUS, TACACS, and authentication servers. NAC and other things are consolidated into one system, which is nice.

It has helped our organization improve its cybersecurity resilience. The security at the access layer through NAC has been nice, and then the ability to enforce policies dynamically using profiling and NAC and TrustSec is good.

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. 

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. Cisco DNA Center may do it, but it would be better if that was integrated into Cisco ISE.

In terms of securing our infrastructure from end to end so we can detect and remediate threats, it's a little bit difficult in terms of visibility, but, generally, we would just go through the logs and see if there's a problem or not.

I've been working in this organization for three to four years, and they have been using it prior to my joining. 

It's very stable for us.

It isn't something we have had to deal with.

They're pretty good. Compared to others, Cisco is probably above average. With Cisco TAC, usually, if the first level doesn't resolve it, you can get up to a higher level within a day or two, which is better than a lot of other vendors we've been working with lately, such as Palo Alto. Cisco tech support is doing pretty well. I'd rate them a seven out of ten. Being able to access higher-level engineers and escalate things more quickly is always going to improve any case.

Neutral

Before Cisco ISE, we didn't have a similar solution.

It was implemented before I joined, but it was probably phased. It was first for wireless and then became more of a NAC thing. It was a long process. It was somewhat difficult just because of how much was required of it. I don't think it was particularly painful.

We get a return on investment from it. It's a solution that's often required for IT insurance, etc. It's definitely needed but do we need to have one from Cisco? I don't know, but there's definitely an ROI there.

To someone researching this solution who wants to improve cybersecurity in their organization, I'd say that make sure you know what you're getting into. Understand and have a good plan going into it and have operational support for not just networking, but also help desk and other IT teams before deploying this solution.

I don't know if Cisco ISE has saved us any time because it's an enhancement to our security that we didn't have before. It probably takes a little more time than not having it. Having no security is super easy because you don't have to worry about anything, but if you have any security product, you have to do work to support that.

Overall, I'd rate Cisco ISE an eight out of ten.

The primary use cases include customer environments, BYOD, posture assessment, and dot1x for wireless and wired networks.

I'm customer-focused, and for my customers, Cisco ISE has enabled them to deploy secure wireless and secure wired networks and gave them a lot of flexibility to do security enforcement.

The posture assessment is a valuable feature because of the ability to do assessments on the clients before they connect to the network.

The guests' BYOD portal and onboarding are feature-rich and fairly straightforward and easy to set up.

From a zero-trust standpoint, it is critical that Cisco ISE considers all resources to be external because, in essence, we don't want to allow anybody on the network that hasn't been verified. Even when they're on the network, we want to make sure that they have the least amount of privileges to do their job.

Cisco ISE hasn't eliminated trust, but it's definitely helped us to migrate more toward zero-trust network environments. It helped us to have a much better security posture overall to help eliminate threats and also give visibility into the response.

ISE is generally deployed as a distributed environment, and it makes it easier to have local resources across the distributed environment so that you're not dependent on always-on access to a data center. In case you lose your internet connection or lose an MPLS connection, you can still have a certain amount of security control at the distributed location.

As far as securing access to applications go, with the posture assessment you get a lot more visibility into the applications on the client when you deploy it and a lot more control over enforcing connectivity in the network, especially with secure group access.

When I work with customers to do my knowledge transfer, they're really overwhelmed with the navigation of the product and the number of things you can do with it. From a user interface standpoint, Cisco could focus on making certain tasks a bit more guided and easier for customers to walk through. That is, a user-friendly interface and streamlined workflows would be great.

I've been using Cisco ISE for about eight years.

I've had very few issues with stability and haven't run into any bugs.

It scales quite well. Essentially, you can scale up to about 500,000 users, and most of my customers are south of that.

I am familiar with ClearPass. I prefer ISE because most of the environments I'm dealing with are Cisco networks. Having the device administration based on TACACS+ is a plus, with it being a proprietary protocol. ISE definitely implements it better than other solutions. From a conceptual standpoint, ISE makes more sense.

ISE may be a bit difficult for my customers because they're not used to it, but the reality is that the workflows make a lot more sense to me than they did with other solutions like ClearPass.

The first deployment I did was complex because I ran into the same thing my customers did. It's overwhelming at first to figure out because there are so many options and so many different use cases. It was tough to narrow it down to what was important and what could be added later.

However, after having done 30 or 40 deployments, it's now straightforward.

I've deployed the solution in a bunch of different environments. I have manufacturing customers with centralized management and monitoring, so the PAN and the MTS are in data centers that are separate but with PSMs deployed all across the network for the distributed model. There also are some, where everything's pretty much in a data center or is split across two data centers.

Licensing has gotten 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.

I evaluated ClearPass.

To leaders who want to build more resilience within their organization, I would say that it's definitely worth moving toward a zero-trust environment. It's really a rebranding of an old concept of least privileged access, but the tools we have to implement it, such as Cisco ISE and firewalls, at the core and the ability to broker it out to the cloud as well, give us a lot more visibility and a lot more control over the traffic and our data, which is our biggest asset.

If you're evaluating the solution, pick two to three use cases, stick with those, and familiarize yourself with the solution. Try not to get overwhelmed with the interface, and don't try to see everything it can do and let it spin out of control; it's easy to do that. Just start with something you really need to implement and then worry about adding more features later on.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cisco ISE at nine.

We use it for network device administration and for user access.

It has really helped us when it comes to security. It has eliminated trust from our network architecture because, with the solution in place, you tell us who you are and, based on who you are, we give you access. The solution provides us with a platform to define our policies. Users get into our system based on those policies. That eliminates threats. If you are not who you say you are, it will block you completely from our network.

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.

With the recent release of the solution, we had a bunch of bugs and we had to delay our deployment. Other than that, the solution is good.

I have been using Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) for 10 years.

Cisco ISE has come a long way when it comes to stability. It's getting better.

It's very scalable. We have it deployed in two data centers, and we're managing about 10,000 endpoints.

TAC is very responsive whenever we call them.

Positive

Currently we have two solutions that do the same kinds of things. For our wireless infrastructure, we use Aruba, but for our wired access, we use ISE.

The ROI we have seen is because Cisco gives us what they promised us. They deliver. Our requirements are being met and that results in getting value for what we pay.

Since we have a complete Cisco portfolio, including an Enterprise Agreement, it's not simple for me to compare what we're paying with the prices of other platforms.

We evaluated other companies and what they each do differently and looked at what was the better fit for our requirements.

Cisco TAC is really good. Whenever we have issues, we know they are there and that they will help us out with troubleshooting. The support of the other companies we looked at is not that great.

When I compare it with Aruba ClearPass and other solutions out there, I prefer Cisco. Cisco is number-one for user access, managing devices, and for network devices.

We don't leverage Cisco ISE for application access. We have another solution for that.

Get some hands-on familiarity with it first. Do a PoC and get people who really know the solution to help you out during phase one before you deploy it.

We use the solution for RADIUS authentication, device authentication, and TACACS. We also use it for Wi-Fi and guest portals.

I like the logging feature. I like that I can look at the logs for authentication issues.

I don't like the fact that we can see the logs only for 24 hours. Maybe that happens because of the way we set it up.

I have been using the solution for six years.

The stability solution is really good. Once we get it up and running, it's great. We have to do a major upgrade, and I'm not as thrilled with the upgrades as I am with just a day-to-day job integration. Upgrades aren't my favorite thing.

The product’s scalability is great. We do not have any issues. We could scale it up without any problems.

Sometimes support is better than others. It depends on who you get. Some guys are really sharp, and for some guys, it takes a little bit longer to get the thing escalated.

Neutral

We used Secure ACS, which was a Cisco tool. Cisco discontinued support for it, so we switched to Cisco Identity Services Engine.

The product runs. It does what it needs to do, and we don't have to touch it most of the time. From that standpoint, we have an ROI.

The product didn't really have a whole lot of competitors at the time. Aruba ClearPass was probably the only other competitor. We were getting rid of Aruba from our wireless. Identity Services Engine was just farther ahead than ClearPass at that time.

We have a lot of things we use for detecting threats. We use the product more for authentication issues and stuff like that. We don't use it to identify threats per se. We have other tools.

The solution helps free up our IT staff. There are only a couple of us who are Cisco Identity Services Engine administrators. In that way, other people can do other things. Once we set up the solution, there's really not a whole lot of maintenance to it. I don't know how many hours it saves. It just works, and we don't have to touch it most of the time. It does its job.

We were using Cisco ACS before using the product. We changed tools and upgraded. The tool helps us improve cybersecurity resilience. We use it for RADIUS and to validate users. There are a lot of tools that we use. Cisco Identity Services Engine is a good tool. It does 802.1X and RADIUS very well. Cisco shop is the way to go.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use ISE for security group tagging in terms of guests and visitors who access the network to make sure that they actually go through this to control their privilege access to ensure they don't actually access the internal network, etc. 

Our clients use ISE as a form of security policy management so that users and devices between the wired, wireless, and VPN connections to the corporate network, can be managed accordingly.

Take a house for example. Sometimes you need to access a room via a certain keyhole, so you use a key that is unique to that door. With ISE, you can segment this process in terms of policy management based on the security tag. You actually grant the user access based on the tagging.

That's the IT trend — saving a lot on operating costs to manage the different users and access methods.

Within our company, we have roughly 200 employees using this solution.

My clients are always talking about the segregation capabilities. Segmentation refers to how you can actually segregate employee and non-employee client access. 

They have recently made a lot of improvements. My clients don't have much to complain about — it's a one-stop-shop.

It should be virtualized because many people have begun migrating to the cloud. They should offer a hybrid version. 

It's stable but there's a limitation of up to 200,000 users. If you have a big number of users, then you have to customize the installation process. 

It's only scalable up to 20,000 users. 

I would say Cisco's support has been getting worse. I think they outsource a lot of skillsets.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. They actually provide a lot of help to IT administrators which makes setting it up rather easy.

The whole setup takes about three days because you need to basically configure the network, test the configuration, and then you need to cut over to production. 

Our customers definitely see a return on their investment with this solution.

I think licensing costs roughly $2,000 a year. ISE is more expensive than Network Access Control.

If you wish to use ISE, you must have a deep understanding of IT. If you don't, setting it up properly will be very complex.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.

Mainly the use case of the solution is for ensuring that the corporate staff gets access to their authorized systems. 

Another use case is for contractors to get access to the authorized systems. Those are the ones that hope to assist in the maintenance or for authorized admissions to the network.

We do also use it for remote access, for example, VPN's and also for wired and wireless access to the network.

The posturing is the solution's most important aspect. When a user connects his or her machine to the network, the first is for ISE to check whether that machine is authorized, check that that machine is compliant with respect to antiviruses, whether it complies with respect to Windows updates, et cetera. If not, a feature is on auto-remediation, so that the proper antivirus and Windows updates can be pushed to the machine.

At the moment, ISE seems to integrate very well with a number of other technologies. It integrates well with Microsoft and integrates well with other wireless systems.

In terms of the improvements I need, they've already, according to my research, done those improvements with their new versions. The features have already improved on their newer version, and that's why we need to update to that new version.

What is required is that Cisco needs to be doing health checks and following up with the customer to ensure that their Cisco partners have done the deployment right. That's something that has really helped us.

Whenever a partner comes and does any deployment, we would, later on, engage Cisco for a health check, so that Cisco could assist with their products. They would check whether it has been deployed following the best practices - or they would just alert us on which features that we have paid for and we are not taking advantage of that. 

Cisco needs to continue with that health check. That engagement with their customers to reconfirm everything is like a quality assurance that the Cisco partners have given the right stuff to their customers.

This product doesn't work in isolation. For example, when we talk of posturing the Microsoft updates, the system that does automatic updates for Microsoft needs to work in an ideal fashion. The antivirus needs to work. OF course, the antivirus is not Cisco. Those products need to work as they should so that integration of the ISE product will work as well. When all factors are held constant, Cisco works well. 

We have been using the solution for six years now.

We have been using it, especially during alternative working arrangements (due to the COVID-19). Using it, it's been stable. We have not had any issues. The only reason we are looking to upgrade is we didn't know the benefits that the newer version offered. When we checked with Cisco, they advised us that we were missing a few items that actually gaps caused by the partner's setup which we realized we missed during the health check.

We haven't had bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's good.

Everyone in our company is using Cisco. In terms of users, we have about 1,500, however, in terms of endpoints we have, that would be closer to about 3,000 to 4,000 endpoints, including wireless gadgets, switches, laptops, phones, and all that. We use it on a daily basis.

Scalability probably might be an issue. Before we bought ISE, we did sizing for each. We looked at the number of users in the organization, 1,500,  and then we used a factor to look at the uppermost band. We decided we would have to go for 4,000 licenses or 4,500 licenses. We multiplied by three. Based on that, we went for a certain hardware model.

This time, the hardware model we are going for supports up to or has the capability to support up to 10,000 users or endpoints. When we go for that, we will have used even less than 50% of what their hardware is capable of. Above 10,000, there's another hardware model that we're generally expected to go for. 

Basically, when you get the right model, when you do the right scaling, it will be very scalable. However, from the onset, you need to write hardware for USI.

The solution is more meant for enterprise-level organizations. It's not really for small companies, however, that has more to do with the pricing.

We're dealt with technical support in the past. Their support is excellent, except for Umbrella. There is a technology called Cisco Umbrella, and they're a bit slow, however, the technical support in general, depending on the severity of the issue, is very prompt. I would say we are quite satisfied with their level of service.

I've only ever used Cisco. I used to use NAC, however, they changed to ISE. I've never used any other product.

We had a partner set up the solution, and we're not sure if they set it up correctly. The partners come straight to us, and do the deployment. Cisco only is there to be the third eye to come and check that the deployment has been done okay.

You have to make sure that other items connected to ISE are correctly implemented and updated as well (such as the antivirus), otherwise, it won't work as you need it to. There's a lot of configuration that needs to be done at the outset.

I'm not sure how long the deployment takes, as I wasn't at the company when it was set up. However, it's my understanding that it shouldn't take too long so long as everything surrounding it is correctly aligned.

Any maintenance that needs to be done is handled by a third party. That includes patching, et cetera. We have an SLA with a Cisco recognized partner.

We worked with a partner that assisted with the setup.

Afterward, Cisco will also come in to do a "health check" to make sure the setup is correct and they can direct users to features they should use or are not using.

Cisco does not sell directly. They have authorized partners you need to buy through.

I don't deal directly with the licensing and therefore do not have any idea what the pricing of the product is. It's not part of my responsibilities.

It is my understanding, however, that it would be expensive for smaller organizations. Startups may not be able to afford these products.

We don't really worry about pricing, as cheap might be expensive in the long run if you don't get a product that is right for your organization, or is more likely to break down over time.

We are in the process of doing a refresh and I have compared other technologies to see how they stack up. I've looked at Fortinet, for example.

I wouldn't say we are switching from Cisco. What we are doing is we were exploring other technologies that offer similar functions. Sometimes it's good to look outside as you might think you have the best and yet you don't. We are just looking for other solutions to get to know what they offer. If we feel that there is something unique that is on offer somewhere else, then we would want to check that in Cisco and see, where is this offered in Cisco's product? 

We haven't concluded that we are switching. In any case, from what I have seen so far, it is likely we won't switch. 

We're just a customer. We buy their products for our security and our connectivity.

We're not using the latest version. We're actually using a few versions. We have ISE, which is version 2.3. We're supposed to up to version 2.7, and that requires a refresh of the hardware.

That's why we are saying, "Should we try to look for a different solution?" That's why I have been looking for comparisons. We haven't dedicated a lot of time to that yet. From my assessments so far, however, ISE still wins the show and it's likely that the partner that was doing the deployment originally on behalf of Cisco probably missed out on a number of things. It's really about the engineers who are doing the deployment. You need to make sure you have some good ones.

I would recommend this solution to others, especially mature organizations as the smaller organizations may not be able to afford this. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the product at an eight

The .1x authentication schema is the most valuable aspect of the solution. It makes it possible to have multiple policies and it can still adapt to us. We can authenticate and calculate our trajectory and so on. The policy is very easy to put in place. It's got to be easy due to the fact that we have more than 200,000 devices.

The implementation is very simple.

The web interface needs improvement. The new web interface that they have is not as easy to manage and we find it to be very slow.

The solution might require two authentications. They should make a new authentication to authenticate both the device and the users. Right now, we are authenticating the PC, the workstation, but not as a user. A good addition would be to authenticate the user separately to get more information.

I've been using the solution for five years.

The solution is stable. I haven't witnessed bugs or glitches. It doesn't freeze or crash. It's reliable.

The solution is quite scalable.

We started with two clients and we've since scaled up to 20 clients.

Cisco ISE was the first full solution we've used.

The initial setup wasn't complex for us. We found the process of implementing the solution very straightforward.

For our organization, in terms of deployment, the first implementation took one month, and for the global implementation took six months.

For maintenance, a company needs one or two people to handle it, one of which should be full-time.

The pricing is okay. It's reasonable for functionality, however, if you're going to implement it as a full-stack with Cisco Connect, and a work station, and so on, it's very high.

I'd advise other companies to really take care in regards to the network devices that they want to authenticate. 

For most of the cases, the biggest rooms are the easiest to manage, however, the smallest ones require specific implementation in all devices. It is very tricky due to the fact that you are obliged to put in place the rules that are not so secure and that's why it's very important to know what devices are connected on the network.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.