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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Ping Identity Platform 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 valued for expertise but criticized for delays, reactive approach, and integration challenges.
Sentiment score
6.5
Ping Identity Platform's support is prompt, knowledgeable, and proactive, though some users find the support portal confusing.
I rate the technical support as one out of ten.
Sometimes it's challenging to identify which support team is responsible for certain issues, which is a significant concern.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
4.4
Cisco ISE users face challenges with complexity, performance issues, integration, intuitive interface, documentation, and licensing concerns.
Sentiment score
4.9
Ping Identity Platform requires stronger functionalities, enhanced user experience, better security, and comprehensive support to compete effectively with Microsoft.
They are very poor in asset classification and should focus on improving the preauthentication profiling, especially for NAC use cases.
Pricing can be more expensive compared to other vendors, and there is a significant price gap observed, which doesn't seem justified by some specific features.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Cisco ISE offers scalable solutions for diverse enterprises, supporting expansions with additional nodes or licenses for efficient endpoint management.
Sentiment score
7.5
Ping Identity Platform efficiently scales across servers and clusters, supports large environments, but performance varies based on configurations.
Factors like architecture, business nature, and legal limitations such as GDPR affect it.
 

Setup Cost

Sentiment score
3.5
Cisco ISE's pricing model is complex and costly, with subscription expenses, though discounts benefit larger clients.
Sentiment score
6.5
Ping Identity Platform is competitively priced, offering robust features and good ROI, but may be costly for small businesses.
Compared to other solutions like HPE ClearPass, Cisco is more costly, and the conversation suggests a possible forty percent price gap compared to competitors.
Cloud solutions are expensive, while on-prem setups with shared environments are cheaper but not effective.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Cisco ISE is generally stable, though some face issues during updates; reliability improves with proper configuration and recent versions.
Sentiment score
7.9
Ping Identity Platform is highly reliable, with minimal bugs or crashes, though some infrastructure and server connection issues exist.
The stability of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is poor for certain use cases, like authentication.
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is considered very reliable and stable.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco ISE offers robust security and ease of use, integrating AAA management with scalability and improved GUI, enhancing network control.
Sentiment score
8.2
Ping Identity Platform offers robust security with multi-factor authentication, seamless integration, user-friendly interface, and extensive customization options.
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is very good at device administration.
The solution is integrated with other Cisco devices and can offer automation for an organization, making deployments more dynamic and providing real-time visibility.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Identity Services Eng...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
141
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st)
Ping Identity Platform
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (4th), Authentication Systems (5th), Data Governance (6th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (5th), Access Management (3rd), Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) (2nd), Directory Servers (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Ping Identity Platform 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 28.8%, down 31.6% compared to last year.
Ping Identity Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Authentication Systems, holds 3.9% mindshare, down 4.8% since last year.
Network Access Control (NAC)
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

Bill Masci - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps across a distributed network, giving you a central way of authenticating everybody
A lot of people tell you the hardware requirements for ISE are pretty substantial. If you're running a virtual environment, you're going to be dedicating quite a bit of resources to an ISE VM. That is something that could be worked on. The upgrade process is not very simple. It's pretty time-consuming. If you follow it step by step you're probably going to have a good time, but there are still a lot of things that could be a lot more user-friendly from an administrator's perspective. [They could be] easing a lot of the issues that people have. Instead of just saying the best practice is to migrate to new nodes [what would be helpful] would be to make that upgrade process easier. The UI is a lot nicer in 3.0. It's pretty slow, but for the most part, it's easy to find what you're looking for, especially things like RADIUS live logs, TACACS live logs. From a troubleshooting perspective, it's really nice finding stuff. For setting up policies, from that perspective, it could be a little bit better looking.
Dilip Reddy - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use but requires improvements in the area of stability
In my company, we have worked on authorization, and I know that there are different types of grants. We have worked on the authorization code, client credentials, and ROPC grant. There are two types of tokens, like the JWT token and internally managed reference tokens. JWT tokens are useful for finding information related to the claim requests. Internally managed reference tokens are useful for dealing with visual data and information. For the clients to fit the user information, they need to do additional work to fit all the user info into the site, which is to define and validate the token issue and provide the request for VPNs. I worked on the key differences between the authorization code and implicit grant. In the authorization code type, you will have the authorization code issued initially to the client, and the client has to exchange it with the authorization server, like using a DAC channel to get the access token. In implicit grants, tokens are issued right away if the application is a single-page application. We can either use the authorization code or an implicit grant.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
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 PingID?
The mobile biometric authentication option improved user experience. It's always about security because, with two-factor authentication, it's always a separate device verifying the actual user logg...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingID?
The pricing is neither too expensive nor too cheap.
What needs improvement with PingID?
The management console needs to be improved. PingID should revise it.
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
Ping Identity (ID), PingFederate, PingAccess, PingOne, PingDataGovernance, PingDirectory, OpenDJ
 

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
Equinix, Land O'Lakes, CDPHP, Box, International SOS, Opower, VSP, Chevron, Truist, Academy of Art University, Northern Air Cargo, Repsol
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, HPE Aruba Networking, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: November 2024.
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