No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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
144
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

"It does what it's supposed to. We use a certificate-based authentication method for corporate-managed devices. That means when a user walks in with their managed laptop and plugs it into the network, it chats with Cisco ISE in the background, allows it on the network, and away they go."
"The profiling model included is the most valuable feature."
"It has all of the features available, in fact, more than what you need."
"The biggest value of ISE is that it can get so granular with gaming systems, versus IoT and BYOD."
"It's great across a distributed network for securing access to all our apps and the network."
"I'm very satisfied with the product; it has been excellent so far, with excellent performance, expected outcomes that give control to the network, and good integration with third-party systems like antivirus, patch management, and MDM."
"In terms of scalability, you need to factor in your licenses. With a virtual platform, the scalability is more than sufficient. We have over one thousand users."
"We found all the features of the product to be valuable."
"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."
"The SecureX solution has the best impact for the customer because it has all the visibility of my applications and my users' applications."
"When it comes as a business bundle, we come to customers to provide a one-stop shop, and we provide a return of value on human resources, with an XDR SecureX platform offer that customers love."
"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."
"SecureX takes all the separate pieces of security within your company, adds in intelligence from different sites and services on the internet, and makes them work together."
"SecureX definitely provides us with contextual awareness throughout our security ecosystem, since it allows us to integrate multiple threat intelligence feeds, as well as multiple security appliances and platforms."
"Using SecureX, we can aggregate the data from all our security products, automate many of our tasks that we had to do manually before, save a huge amount of time, and provide many reports about usage of our systems and networks to our leaders and managers to show what we can do to make our security better."
"The ability to create firewalls online has been most valuable including the ability to create rules."
 

Cons

"The new web interface that they have is not as easy to manage and we find it to be very slow."
"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."
"In a future release, I would like to see network access control. That is something that customers seem to be looking for."
"Also, the menus could have been much simpler. There are many redundant things. That's a problem with all Cisco solutions. There are too many menus and redundant things on all of them."
"Because it's a Cisco product, if you're not in a Cisco environment, it's difficult to integrate with anything else, so the big concern is its interoperability with other technologies and other vendors."
"Scalability is good as far as adding another node. However, if you ever wanted to increase the node that you have, then you need to buy a bigger license. You also have to build a new VM for it because you can't just scale it."
"It would be nice if it could be configured easily by default."
"The learning curve is steep and the initial setup is complex."
"I'm not sure that I would call it a bug, but sometimes the solution is a little slow."
"I would like it to integrate with another solution, e.g., DNA."
"It would be nice if they had a different pricing model. Most of our budget for projects goes towards Cisco."
"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."
"If they could make the Cisco Umbrella piece a little bit more advanced or easier to manage, that would help."
"They could put in more third-party integrations, but also more playbooks out-of-the-box for automation would be helpful."
"It is good that it provides information. However, I think that there needs to be more actionable items for us based on the information provided."
"what's missing right now is the multi-tenant capability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing can be confusing, but it is still pretty good."
"The solution is not that cheap."
"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."
"Cisco is expensive, but it's the cost for all the functions and value it brings. Functions like internet solutions, integrations, security, and many more features are important, but it's expensive for some clients."
"The price can be lower, especially for subscriptions. It should be a lot cheaper to have a wide range of customers. The price should be comparable to competitive products like Forescout or Fortinet FortiNAC. Forescout is cheaper for customers looking for a cloud solution."
"The technology is good, but to use some of the other features, and capabilities, they request that we purchase the Cisco DNA Center. As a result, the bundled price is a little high."
"ISE has always been expensive compared to other products in terms of what it does on a user level."
"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."
"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."
"It would be nice if they had a different pricing model. Most of our budget for projects goes towards Cisco."
"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."
"You can spend less money for another solution, but if you really want to have a good solution you have to pay. We are happy that we are getting such a good solution for what we are spending."
"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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cisco Security Portfolio solutions are best for your needs.
886,932 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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: March 2026.
886,932 professionals have used our research since 2012.