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Cisco Duo vs Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 23, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Customer Service

No sentiment score available
Sentiment score
5.3
Cisco ISE support is praised for expertise but criticized for slow responses and inconsistent quality, especially with complex issues.
I rate the technical support as one out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

No sentiment score available
Sentiment score
4.5
Cisco ISE requires improved integration, usability, and performance, with enhanced features and efficiency for better user adoption and experience.
They are very poor in asset classification and should focus on improving the preauthentication profiling, especially for NAC use cases.
 

Scalability Issues

No sentiment score available
Sentiment score
7.0
Cisco ISE is scalable for enterprises but requires proper design, planning, and hardware considerations for efficient deployment.
Factors like architecture, business nature, and legal limitations such as GDPR affect it.
 

Setup Cost

No sentiment score available
No sentiment score available
Cisco Identity Services Engine pricing is competitive but complex, with tiered licensing and additional costs potentially impacting smaller businesses.
Making large organizational costs significant.
 

Stability Issues

No sentiment score available
Sentiment score
7.7
Cisco Identity Services Engine is stable and reliable, with occasional update and scaling challenges, and generally effective support resolution.
The stability of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is poor for certain use cases, like authentication.
 

Valuable Features

No sentiment score available
Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco ISE provides robust network control, seamless Cisco integration, and enhances security with policy management, zero-trust, and BYOD support.
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is very good at device administration.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Duo
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (3rd), Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
Cisco Identity Services Eng...
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
140
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 4.5%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is 22.0%, up from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cisco Security Portfolio
 

Featured Reviews

RyanDeppe - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps reduce the risk of a breach and is easy to deploy and onboard
For our customers, Duo Security is a significant advantage because it provides them with a straightforward method to implement MFA across their entire environment. Moreover, once we delve into the more advanced features of Duo Security, it enables us as a partner to engage in ongoing discussions regarding security strategies with our customers. Initially, we may only introduce them to MFA during the onboarding process. However, as their security strategy evolves, we can leverage Duo to perform additional tasks such as risk-based assessments and deployments, thereby assisting in the development of their security measures. Duo Security helps secure our infrastructure. It serves as our gateway layer of protection, allowing us to understand who is logging in and why. We conduct risk-based assessments on each user to determine whether their actions are appropriate or not. Duo Security is not a comprehensive security solution, but it is undoubtedly a crucial component, a critical layer of security. This aspect resonates with our customers consistently. Their ability to reduce the risk of a breach is of utmost importance. It serves as the primary line of defense. Currently, credential gathering and leaks are widespread in the market. By implementing an MFA solution like Duo Security, we can effectively prevent these issues. When we put a stop to credential harvesting, it becomes much harder for attackers to infiltrate and navigate our network. Therefore, Duo Security acts as an excellent first line of defense. User authentication and device verification are the methods through which we envision our customers navigating in order to prevent identity-based attacks. Initially, when we employ Duo Security, it is a straightforward implementation of multi-factor authentication. As we progress, we enhance security measures by incorporating device risk assessment and potentially even regional assessment. This includes considerations such as whether the login is being attempted from a specific IP address. These gradual enhancements contribute to the establishment of an additional layer of protection. Thus, it is not necessary to implement a completely disruptive strategy right from the start. Instead, it is possible to gradually adopt and integrate this approach, following a crawl, walk, or run methodology. The Duo Security self-service portal helps free up our customers' IT staff time, allowing them to focus on other projects. As a Cisco partner, we have received feedback from our customers that the portal is highly interactive, enabling them to easily navigate and resolve issues. After setting up their Duo environment, we rarely receive callbacks for assistance, as the portal is intuitive and empowers users to handle everything they need on their own. The appealing aspect of Duo Security is its ability to establish trust for every access request, regardless of its origin. It is a cloud-based solution with excellent API integrations. It doesn't matter where or how a user logs in; Duo will be there to protect the user, whether it's through MFA, risk assessment, or similar methods. It is extremely beneficial to our customers that Duo Security considers all resources as external. Our customers frequently inquire about a zero-trust model, and this is a key component of it. Unfortunately, I would love to say that there is a simple solution for zero trust where we can just deploy this solution and be done with it. But that's not the case. It requires a layered approach, and that's what we convey to our customers. Duo Security is definitely a part of that. Duo Security has helped improve our customers' cybersecurity resilience. Internally, it protects our users from accessing sales operations-based environments. Additionally, our customers use it regularly to protect business-critical applications.
Rohit-Joshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables us to ensure that any machine that comes into the network is patched and secure
Posturing is the most valuable feature. There are other tools available that can do some of their other features, like network authentication. The posturing was something because of the nature of the industry that we are in. There are people who go outside for work. Their machines are at times not in the network, and not patched properly. We don't know when they're going to come back, whether it is in a good state, whether it has antivirus, whether it's installed on those machines. Posturing is something that we have made our baseline policy that whenever a machine comes back to our network, it should have a certain level of the operating system and a level of security and antivirus installed. We couldn't have done this posturing without Cisco ISE. This is its greatest feature. It does help me to detect and remediate my network. It enables me to detect any external threat that comes to my network and remediate. If a machine comes into my network that does not qualify per my baseline policy, I have a policy that the machine gets redirected to where it can be patched and remediated. I can ensure that it is fully patched and secure. The entire idea of having ISE is to enhance cybersecurity resilience. The zero trust architecture was coined by the cybersecurity team itself. It was a task given to us in the infrastructure space to see how we can bring resilience into the cybersecurity network and ISE was the solution.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
25%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What do you like most about Duo Security?
They are users who, as mentioned before, utilize RDPAP and MDPAP. It includes functionalities related to finance, specifically in single sign-on.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
I would rate the pricing of Cisco Duo as a seven on a scale of one to ten, which means it is quite expensive.
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...
 

Also Known As

Duo Security
Cisco ISE
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.