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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Cisco Secure Network Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Identity Services Eng...
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
139
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st)
Cisco Secure Network Analytics
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (24th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (3rd), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2024, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is 21.0%, up from 14.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is 17.6%, down from 25.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cisco Security Portfolio
 

Featured Reviews

Adarge Ekholt - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 3, 2023
The ability to see what devices are online for a particular user helps a lot with our troubleshooting
Another big benefit for us is definitely security in terms of wireless user activity. We spent a lot of time looking at live logs and user logs to figure out where they've been in the network and in which buildings. We can get rogue granular with locations of where people are and where they're experiencing issues. We have definitely saved time since using ISE when it comes to building some of the policies around the types of users, like library users versus student union or even admin users. The policy building is complicated, but after a while, it's pretty straightforward in terms of repeatability of staff turnover, and things like that. It's not the learning curve that's hard for continuous maintenance.
Richard Payne - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 13, 2023
Improved our organization greatly but greater customizability would be beneficial
The customizability of the UI should improve. With Splunk and other SIEM tools, you have the ability to create custom dashboards and manipulate the data in a way that works for you. Cisco gives you some creative ability, but you are very much locked into their train of thought. It would be helpful if they went more down the Splunk and Elastic route. We found flaws in Stealthwatch, but thankfully it has the ability to interconnect with Splunk and other such tools. This enabled us to plug the information over where it falls flat and then start working on other platforms. The solution falls down but tries to make up for it. I would also like to have greater insight into how it works under the hood. I appreciate that that might not be possible due to commercial confidentiality. However, having that greater insight would allow us to covey a level of trust to the people who use it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have seen ROI. It has done its job. It has protected us when we needed it to."
"Cisco ISE now competes with any other product in the space because of its centralized and unified highly secure access control with ISE."
"The features that do work, work well, and we use it on a daily basis."
"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."
"I found the CMDB Direct Connect in Cisco ISE 3.2 the most promising feature for my use case."
"The most valuable feature is the provisioning of the device so as to ensure that they are compliant with the security policy that we need to have."
"The product is useful for device administration."
"Member Access Control and the ability to integrate all Cisco wireless, Cisco networking, switches, routers, and firewalls."
"The most valuable feature we got out of Stealthwatch is to be able to, while troubleshooting, go deep into one of our interfaces and verify what the bandwidth is and if there's any activity there that's causing problems."
"It has been pretty stable since we deployed it, and everything seems to be working fine."
"I value the feature which enables me to detect devices talking to suspect IPs."
"I believe this solution has reduced our incident response time."
"It does change the way we troubleshoot and it is relatively easy to use once you learn it. I would recommend it to someone considering it."
"It is a good application, providing for real-time monitoring of the organization of data. It can basically identify points of peak traffic where possible issues are being caused."
"Using this solution has helped us to detect and identify viruses or malicious activity in the network early on."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the way the net flow is being merged together in a single pane. That's been extremely useful for us, because can see what's going on with traffic in one single place."
 

Cons

"There should be a single button that can be pressed to dismiss all of the alarms at once."
"Some of ISE's features need to be more agile. For example, we couldn't integrate our data because Cisco needs your data to be in its own format."
"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."
"The customer server was great but it would have been better for me if they had support in other languages such as Spanish."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly."
"In a future release, I would like to see network access control. That is something that customers seem to be looking for."
"It is a good product, but in order to use all of the functions of the product, you must have a good understanding of the product. You must know how to use and manage it. It is a little bit complicated to configure and manage. It must be simplified to make it easy to manage for end users. In the initial stage, we found ISE complicated for end users. It was not easy to manage it or to write authentication and authorization protocol. They must improve its management and make it easy for end users. The monitoring and reporting capabilities can be improved because end users want to quickly see what is happening in their network. There were some restrictions in working with other vendors. It should also have a better and easy integration with other vendors."
"Some of the reporting could be improved."
"It would be better to let people know, up front, that is doesn't give you nice, clear information, as seen in the demos, without Cisco ISE installed."
"We would like the solution to make more advances in the way that Extreme Networks has been doing."
"The overall visibility into the actual device itself would be helpful. I don't just want support-specific data, but also to be able to see information such as CPU and other internal components or usage of the devices."
"Better integration between Cisco Secure Network Analytics and Cisco Secure Workload would be beneficial."
"Its granularity for RBAC roles-based access control needs improvement."
"One update that I would like to see is an agent-based client. Currently, Stealthwatch is network-based. A local agent could help manage endpoints."
"We are continuing down the road of ACI and ISE with Cisco, so we would like to see the continuation of Stealthwatch integrating into ISE for exchange of information, and also, more into the ACI environment too."
"Reliance on Java. Get away from that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price for Cisco ISE itself is very low, however, Cisco professional services are quite expensive. Subscription amount is dependent on number of users."
"The pricing is fair for what it does."
"This solution requires an annual license and it is a bit expensive than competitors."
"Pricing and licensing are not my expertise. As far as budgeting is concerned, we run an ELA with Cisco. It's a part of our ELA."
"Cisco is moving towards a subscription service, which would mean additional costs."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, one being cheap and ten being expensive."
"Standard licensing gives backup access and very few features, and then there's VM licensing - each VM we use needs to be licensed."
"The SMARTnet technical support is available at an additional cost."
"NetFlow is very expensive."
"The licensing costs are outrageous."
"Our fees are approximately $3,000 USD."
"We pay for support costs on a yearly basis."
"It has a subscription model. There is yearly support, and there is also three-year support. It depends on what the customers want."
"It is worth the cost."
"The pricing for this solution is good."
"Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside>in traffic."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
32%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
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 Cisco Stealthwatch?
The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is the Threat Intelligence integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Stealthwatch?
I would rate Cisco SNA as a nine out of ten in terms of costliness.
What needs improvement with Cisco Stealthwatch?
One area that could be improved in SNA is the integration with Cisco ISE for user and session details, which currently requires additional setup.
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Stealthwatch Enterprise, Lancope StealthWatch
 

Learn More

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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
Edge Web Hosting, Telenor Norway, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Webster Financial Corporation, Westinghouse Electric, VMware, TIAA-CREF
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Cisco Secure Network Analytics and other solutions. Updated: July 2024.
801,634 professionals have used our research since 2012.