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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Fortinet FortiToken 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:
 

Customer Service

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

Room For Improvement

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

Scalability Issues

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

Setup Cost

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

Stability Issues

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

Valuable Features

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

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Identity Services Eng...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
140
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st)
Fortinet FortiToken
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Fortinet FortiToken aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is designed for Network Access Control (NAC) and holds a mindshare of 29.2%, down 31.6% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiToken, on the other hand, focuses on Authentication Systems, holds 8.6% mindshare, up 8.4% since last year.
Network Access Control (NAC)
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Sutjipto Budiman - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to learn, provides secure access to our internal server, and integrates easily with other products
The product provides secure access to our internal server. The encryption is done by FortiToken. That is the reason we access our servers through Fortinet. We use FortiToken to ensure that no unauthorized person can access our servers. It is like two-factor authentication. It makes us more secure. The mobile application makes our authentication experience better. It is easy to integrate the solution with other products. I rate the ease of integration a nine out of ten.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
7%
 

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 Fortinet FortiToken?
The solution is simple and similar to Google Authenticator. It follows time-based authentication. We use it for hardware and software in one environment. The tool offers simple and fast authenticat...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiToken?
I would like to see the product improvements in dynamic VLAN pooling. Specifically, when users are assigned different VLANs based on their SSID, ensuring no unintended lateral traffic between users...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiToken?
The primary use cases of Fortinet FortiToken for my customers typically involve adding multi-factor authentication (MFA) for remote access. This is often required for remote workers or external pro...
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
No data available
 

Learn More

 

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
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, HPE Aruba Networking, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.