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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Cisco SecureX [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
145
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (4th)
Cisco SecureX [EOL]
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

NF
Network and Technology Information Manager at Akkodis
Has improved authentication management and simplified visitor network access
The log capacity in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could be enhanced because today natively on the ISE can only have a look at the logs from the day before. You cannot search into the oldest logs; you have to use another tool for that. This can be blocking if you don't have any log consolidation solution. To do a search for an issue or something that happened two days ago, you cannot search directly in there. The capacity of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could be enhanced. Something between one week and one month for the log capacity would be nice.
Dene Lewis - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Technical Strategy and Direction CAE Technology Services Ltd at CAE Technology Services Limited
A scalable SaaS based platform that helps with cyber threat intelligence and automated hunting
I would rate Cisco SecureX a ten out of ten. I find the product to be a fantastic platform. If you are eligible, start using it straight away. The best way to evaluate it is to start using it and see where it fits within your organization. I think it helps our customers really deliver their SecOps goals, and I see it as a core foundation of CAE's own security strategy going forward. Our partnership with Cisco is one that was built on trust over a long period of time. This has enabled us to work together to be able to provide the solutions that our customers need to drive their organizations forward. The value we add as a reseller is being able to work closer with our customers, understand them, and get intimate with their organizations. That enables us to offer them the right solutions that will help them achieve their goals.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco ISE provides authentication for various applications. It can integrate with other applications to manage access, including Privileged Access Management for those applications. For a comprehensive environment, Cisco ISE should be able to integrate and provide asset management for an IT organization or any organization."
"I like that Cisco ISE is easy to use."
"I like the logging feature."
"The solution cuts down on the repercussions of getting malware or ransomware."
"The product is useful for device administration."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility element, the ability for customers to be able to see what devices are actually on their network. Without a solution like ISE, they would have no idea what devices are connected to their network. It offers them the ability to authenticate devices via mobile."
"There are a lot of integrations available with multiple vendors. This has made the solution easier to work with."
"RADIUS is the best feature because it supplies authentication to our entire campus."
"One of the most valuable features is the simplicity of deploying SecureX. It's very easy to do that and then you gain very detailed visibility into everything that's going on in your network and, obviously, at the device level. There's just a wealth of information that you can pull from all of these products that are part of SecureX. You know exactly if you have an issue or not."
"It has evolved a lot, just that monitoring piece to the current Orchestrator piece. The additional analytics are there. They now have something called Insight, which can basically take data from Microsoft Azure AD and Intune to give us information about our endpoints. This is detailed information about the endpoints, from Secure Endpoint and all these different products. So, it is just constantly evolving. Every time that it evolves, we have more information with more visibility. There are more features that we have that just make everything so much easier, and it is in one place. I don't have to keep going back and forth. I don't have to go to Secure Endpoint and ISE to get the data. I don't have to go to Intune on Microsoft to get the information. It is all in one place."
"I like that I don't have to jump around to five different products and log into five different places to view the data that it returns."
"Using SecureX, a tool provided by Cisco, we can easily integrate it with many of our other Cisco products such as Cisco ISE and many networking devices."
"Integrates well with our existing security infrastructure."
"The ability to create firewalls online has been most valuable including the ability to create rules."
"The forensics are amazing because when you have enrichment, and the solutions talk with each other, when you need it, you have the ability to know everything in the organization: when, why, whatever."
"Our customers find the product's third-party integrations valuable. Our customers are also impressed with the tool's capability to pick up third-party threat feeds and use that as part of the decision-making process."
 

Cons

"I'm frustrated by the resource consumption and how many resources it needs to run. It takes a lot of RAM. It takes a lot of space and a lot of IO power. It's frustrating to do upgrades because it takes a long time."
"The ISE software needs to be improved so that it is easier to administer."
"The product is expensive. It would also be a good add-on to have some machine learning."
"The customer server was great but it would have been better for me if they had support in other languages such as Spanish."
"In order to make it a ten, it should be more user-friendly. You need somebody who is knowledgeable about it to use it. It's not easy to use. We have to rely heavily on technical support."
"In an upcoming release, it would be nice to have NAC already standard in the solution."
"There are issues with respect to the posture assessment function. It's been observed that customers are not receiving total access to the network because the assessment agent is glitchy and malfunctions from time-to-time. I would like to see refining of the compliance assessment and adding more detailed compliance of endpoints on the user end."
"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."
"One of the improvements the product needs is more integration with collaboration platforms."
"If they could make the Cisco Umbrella piece a little bit more advanced or easier to manage, that would help. We use it for filtering and when you compare it to a normal content filter, it lacks some functionality."
"The playbooks provided with the product are great, although I would appreciate having more playbooks available. Threats are constantly evolving, so having access to updated playbooks is crucial."
"The documentation can be improved and the on-prem integration. The set of applications that it was integrated with wasn't comprehensive."
"what's missing right now is the multi-tenant capability."
"I'm not sure that I would call it a bug, but sometimes the solution is a little slow."
"The front-end work controls the new algorithm and the firewall rules. The search feature of these rules could be improved."
"They could expand into more areas. The more third-parties that we have tied into it, the better. The capabilities are there. As they just continue to involve the product, the more things that you can look into, then the more analytics that you can get. Also, the more data that we can get, then the better off we will be."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am not aware of the current price for Cisco ISE, but considering it is a Cisco product, it is likely to be quite high."
"Previously, Cisco ISE had a perpetual licensing model, but now they have shifted to a subscription-based licensing system."
"Its licensing could be improved. It used to be perpetual, but now they are moving away from that."
"Licensing is a disaster. It's a mess and I hope they fix it soon."
"The Essentials licensing is reasonable, but I would like the Premier version to be perpetual instead of a subscription."
"In general, licensing can be quite complex with Cisco products. It would be nice if it was a bit more intuitive and had fewer "gotchas" in there."
"It is not that pricey."
"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 pricing is the best part of this solution. It is free if you buy Umbrella or Duo Security. It is also a good solution."
"It is free. It can't get any better than that."
"The pricing is competitive, especially for education institutions. Licensing can be a little bit difficult to navigate, especially with resellers with Cisco, but for us it has been pretty easy."
"For the value you get, the pricing of the solution is excellent."
"It comes free with all Cisco products. So, it is a good price."
"Cisco SecureX is more expensive than Trend Micro. However, considering the integration capabilities with other solutions and the quality of technical support, I believe there's justification for the price difference."
"It would be nice if they had a different pricing model. Most of our budget for projects goes towards Cisco."
"The product is absolutely free to any customer. As such, the only thing one must keep in mind is that as long as he already has one Cisco security product, irregardless of what that product is, SecureX is available for free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
22%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise32
Large Enterprise91
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise3
 

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...
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Also Known As

Cisco ISE
Kenna.AppSec, Kenna.VI
 

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
NHS, Rackspace, UNC Pembroke, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Missing Piece
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco and others in Cisco Security Portfolio. Updated: February 2026.
882,637 professionals have used our research since 2012.