Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Cisco Secure Workload

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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...

Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

142

Ranking in other categories

Network Access Control (NAC) (1st)

Cisco Secure Workload

Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio

9th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud and Data Center Security (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (16th), Microsegmentation Software (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is 23.1%, up from 18.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 7.6%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cisco Security Portfolio

Featured Reviews

SunilkumarNaganuri

Service Line Manager (Service Operations Expert) - Network Access Control at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is very good at device administration."

"The ability to allow or deny hosts onto the network is valuable. It provides great security to the network environment."

"[One of the most valuable features] is just the ease of use. It's pretty simple to set up certs that we can add to our clients to make sure that they connect properly, [as is] whitelisting Mac addresses."

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

"The profiling model included is the most valuable feature."

"Improves switch account management."

"The solution is great for establishing trust for every access request no matter where it comes from."

"SGTs are valuable because they make it easy to enforce policies, instead of pushing them across all the other platforms."

More Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) pros

"The product provides multiple-device integration."

"By using Tetration insight, we are able to get the latency on our level accounts and we can determine whatever the issue is with the application latency itself."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."

"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."

"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."

"The only use case I can see that makes sense is micro-segmentation. I think there are other use cases for it. The main purpose of the product is to do micro-segmentation by collecting IP. That could be done by installing an agent, and then you have all the communication coming in and out. You could also use some flow sensors installed in the network that receive a copy of the traffic and then report that back to the system."

"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

Cons

"The UI is not as intuitive as some other products, even products inside of Cisco's wheelhouse."

"We do tend to run into a lot of issues with ISE when it comes to bugs."

"An issue with the product is it tends to have a lot of bugs whenever they release a new release."

"Adding new devices was a little cumbersome. I haven't done it that many times, but I remember that adding new devices to the authentication piece of it was a little cumbersome. The way I was shown to do it, I thought it was odd because we had to go into the active device, copy the file down, export it, make some changes to it, and then reimport it as opposed to being able to click it and having a template to fill out."

"The web UI should be made similar to the one in DNAC."

"Cisco ISE can become quite complex, especially with policy sets, the entire authentication process, and everything involved."

"The tracking mechanism in Cisco ISE is relatively costly, especially its vendor-specific protocol."

"It would be helpful for us to know what needs to be deployed, configured, and what changes we need to make to our devices when we don't receive the specific login which is an indication of a lack of connection or incorrect configuration."

More Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) cons

"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."

"I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications."

"There was a controversy when Cisco reduced the amount of data they kept, and the solution became quite cost-intensive, which made its adoption challenging….Although they have modified it now, I preferred the previous version, and I wish all the functionality were back under the same product."

"The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring."

"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and I need to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."

"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."

"It is not so easy to use and configure. It needs a bunch of further resources to work, which is mainly the biggest downside of it. The deployment is huge."

"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For the Avast virus scan, we pay around USD $95 per machine for five years which includes all updates and technical support."

"Cisco ISE is not inexpensive, but the solution is well-built and worth the expense."

"According to my sales and account team, the prices we're getting are pretty good."

"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"

"The solution’s pricing is okay."

"The pricing is fair for what it does."

"If you consider money only, Cisco ISE is not a cheap solution."

"The SMARTnet technical support is available at an additional cost."

More Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

26%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

27%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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 Secure Workload?

The product provides multiple-device integration.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?

CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

Aruba ClearPass vs Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

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Fortinet FortiAuthenticator vs Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

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Product Reports

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

Download Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) product report

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) report

Cisco Secure Workload

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Also Known As

Cisco ISE

Cisco Tetration

Overview

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) offers comprehensive network access control and visibility, supporting features like 802.1X authentication, profiling, and posturing. It integrates with Microsoft and other Cisco products, facilitating robust security policies across distributed networks.

Cisco Identity Services Engine is a key player in network access control, offering centralized management and a user-friendly interface. It supports zero trust principles and provides strong authentication for wired and wireless networks. ISE's capabilities include granular security policies, enhanced device posturing, and seamless integration, bolstering security infrastructure. Users benefit from its dual authentication through EAP, simplifying access management across networks.

What are the key features of Cisco ISE?

802.1X Authentication: Supports network security for authorized device access.
Profiling: Identifies devices for accurate policy enforcement.
Posturing: Evaluates device compliance for access decisions.
TACACS: Streamlines network device authentication and authorization.
Guest Access: Provides secure access to visitors.
Microsoft Compatibility: Seamlessly integrates with Microsoft environments.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Security Enhancement: Offers strong network security policies.
Operational Efficiency: Centralized management improves operational aspects.
Improved Compliance: Ensures adherence to industry standards.
Scalability: Supports growing network demands effectively.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and education, Cisco ISE is pivotal for securing wired and wireless networks, implementing BYOD policies, and managing user access. Organizations leverage ISE for effective authentication and authorization, while maintaining compliance with industry security standards.

Cisco

Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

Reviews from Real Users

“The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

Cisco

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

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Cisco Secure Workload