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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Symantec Identity Governance and Administration 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.6
Cisco Identity Services Engine boosts security, simplifies IT, reduces costs, mitigates risks, and enhances efficiency with long-term support.
Sentiment score
7.6
Symantec Identity Governance boosts ROI by streamlining onboarding, enabling self-service, and automating user management, enhancing IT efficiency.
Direct comparisons with Forescout reveal up to 30% to 40% difference in cost savings.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Cisco ISE customer service is praised, but tech support varies, with fast resolutions or delays and inconsistent expertise.
Sentiment score
6.2
Symantec's customer service is praised for responsiveness but needs improvement in geographical support and complex issue expertise.
I rate the technical support as one out of ten.
Cisco support has pretty good teams for support and every time we had good answers and we could somehow solve the issues we had.
Sometimes it's challenging to identify which support team is responsible for certain issues, which is a significant concern.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Identity Services Engine scales flexibly for various environments, though virtual deployments and licensing necessitate careful planning and hardware selection.
Sentiment score
7.3
Symantec Identity Governance scales well and adapts to organizational needs, though some face customization and resource challenges.
Factors like architecture, business nature, and legal limitations such as GDPR affect it.
However, you can have some latency issues depending on where your devices are.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco ISE is stable and reliable, though occasional bugs occur, but technical support and proper management ensure performance.
Sentiment score
6.6
Symantec Identity Governance's stability is generally satisfactory, with performance issues arising under heavy loads or improper tuning.
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.
Sometimes when we have upgrades or failovers with Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), we had some minor issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek simplified Cisco ISE setup, improved integration and UI, refined stability, transparent licensing, and enhanced logging and analytics.
Symantec Identity Governance needs improvements in UI, integration, documentation, security, cloud performance, scalability, and user-friendliness.
The whole setup works well with Cisco access points and Cisco switches, but when you have multiple vendors in the environment, such as HP switches or access points like Aruba, you'll find they will not work well with Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE).
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.
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.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco ISE provides three tiers; complex, costly pricing is offset by comprehensive features and potential discounts through partnerships.
Symantec Identity Governance pricing is mid-range, seen as expensive, with flexible licensing but time-consuming implementation.
Compared to other solutions like HPE ClearPass, Cisco is more costly, and the conversation suggests a possible forty percent price gap compared to competitors.
The license costs can range between $50,000 to $100,000 per year for enterprises.
The cost is about 100 million Ugandan shillings, which converts to approximately $30,000 per year.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Identity Services Engine enhances security via dynamic policy enforcement, seamless integration, and robust authentication for a zero-trust environment.
Symantec Identity Governance streamlines provisioning, access control, and policy compliance with flexible integration and user-friendly self-service features.
There is value because it helps us secure the network and prevents certain things from happening which could cause financial loss.
This solution ensures organizations have secure environments and also supports robust policy enforcement, allowing control over who has access to various parts of the network.
The adaptability of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) policy enforcement can fit to the site we have depending on which kind of devices we have on site and then the needs for authentication, granting access and then assigning each device into its correct network for segmentation.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Identity Services Eng...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
144
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Symantec Identity Governanc...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
User Provisioning Software (10th), Identity Management (IM) (27th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Symantec Identity Governance and Administration 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 24.2%, down 29.5% compared to last year.
Symantec Identity Governance and Administration, on the other hand, focuses on Identity Management (IM), holds 1.7% mindshare, up 1.6% since last year.
Network Access Control (NAC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)24.2%
Aruba ClearPass23.6%
Fortinet FortiNAC17.9%
Other34.30000000000001%
Network Access Control (NAC)
Identity Management (IM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Symantec Identity Governance and Administration1.7%
SailPoint Identity Security Cloud18.4%
Microsoft Entra ID11.8%
Other68.1%
Identity Management (IM)
 

Featured Reviews

SunilkumarNaganuri - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Sudip Karmacharya - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a simple GUI and is easy to deploy, but has no proper documentation on how to do backups, and has lengthy configurations and workflows
There are several areas for improvement in Symantec Identity Governance and Administration. They have no proper documentation on how to do backups. They also have a lengthy workflow process where we have to make some configurations to manage automation in the rules and in our tasks which takes time. We have to manually configure all the configuration files, and we cannot export users because there's no export system in Symantec Identity Governance and Administration. What we'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for them to make configuration and integration with other systems their top priorities. We have many API systems to manage, so hopefully, if they make these enhancements shortly, we can directly connect with our API systems when using Symantec Identity Governance and Administration.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
29%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Performing Arts
9%
Insurance Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise91
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise45
 

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 Symantec Identity Governance and Administration?
The product’s most valuable feature is flexibility. It can be customized as per the customer’s requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Identity Governance and Administration?
The pricing has been very reasonable, but licensing costs vary based on the customer. It follows a user-based licensing model.
What needs improvement with Symantec Identity Governance and Administration?
Symantec should develop a SaaS solution for cloud environments to make the solution available in various marketplaces for easy deployment. It should also offer bundle installation instead of one by...
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
CA Identity Suite, Symantec IGA, Layer7 Identity Suite, CA Identity Manager (CA IDM), CA Identity Minder, CA IAM, CA Identity Manager (CA IDM), CA Identity Governance
 

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
Acciona, Core Blox, DBS
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