We performed a comparison between Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) and Cisco Umbrella based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Cisco Security Portfolio solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."I love the policy sets, they are really nice and dynamic."
"Technical support is okay."
"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."
"Having access and being able to add people or change authentication yourself is nice. In the past, we've used other group authentication services, and we always had to go to them and get permissions. Having that control is key."
"Member Access Control and the ability to integrate all Cisco wireless, Cisco networking, switches, routers, and firewalls."
"ISE's most valuable feature is integration between IT and OTs."
"For device administration, all devices have multifactor authentication in collaboration with IT, so it secures access to all of our devices. For guest and wireless access, it's a matter of a lowly manager who we give access to the portal and he can assign access to the guests, so it's a very simple process now. It keeps the IT focusing on their work, and gives the business people the right access."
"For guests we give them limited access to the internet when they come in so that access has been useful. Previously, we just used to give them the APN key which they would leave with. Now, we give them credentials to use that are for a limited period of time."
"When it comes to hybrid work it's pretty effective. We've got the agents. We can protect people inside our building and, when they're using their laptops out in the field, they're still protected. It's working well."
"Meraki features and cloud-based functionality are advanced and easy to manage centrally."
"I also think that the dashboard view is really helpful. Whenever sites get blocked, we get the details and the users who are connecting to them."
"Umbrella enables customers to be secure. We are happy with this and this is the most important benefit for customers."
"Some clients only want DNS security, while others want more of the advanced features that it has available."
"By using Cisco Umbrella, you are sure of inspecting all the traffic. Whenever the user machine is connected to your network, it is inspected. That's the best thing. It means you are sure that nothing is being exported or imported without your choice. That is the best feature."
"It offers good visibility for the Administrator. The administrator has full visibility of what is blocked or has the knowledge of where users go when they are surfing the internet."
"Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy."
"The interface is a little bit complex."
"I'd like to see the logging be a bit more robust in terms of what it has baked in. If I want to do any in-depth searching, I have to export all the logs to an external platform like Elastic or LogRhythm and then parse through them myself. It would be nice if I could find what I want, when I want it, on the platform itself."
"On the network services devices, when you click on filter, the filter comes up. However, when I type in a search and I want to click on something it defaults back to the main page. I keep having an issue with that, and I'm not doing anything wrong."
"There are always some things that I would request."
"The compliance and posture don't always work. They should make it more stable. With each upgrade, we lose some functionality. We have to wait for another upgrade."
"Cisco ISE's real-time data analytics for database logging could be improved."
"In a future release, I would like to see network access control. That is something that customers seem to be looking for."
"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."
"Having ready-to-go templates with best practices is definitely something that would be an improvement. Deployment, from day one, is something that definitely needs to be improved for Cisco customers."
"Some countries don't have a DNS server leading to a domain resolution IP, not at a local level."
"We would like to see the enhancements made to the EDR, as we see features that are running endpoint management."
"The pricing is a bit high. Being outside of the USA, we have issues with the exchange rate."
"For us, as an MSP, the initial licensing changes were a roadblock, and they still could be a lot clearer. Specifically, it's an honor-based licensing system. We'd like it to be more specific to our traffic or our users so that we can make sure that the customer is paying for all their licensing."
"Data reporting could be improved."
"If you wish to inspect all the traffic and it's integrated with Cisco AnyConnect, all the traffic basically goes through Cisco AnyConnect, which is not a good idea. That means you need to have more internet capacity as a data sampler, so in the case of a split tunnel, we cannot inspect the traffic that is being migrated through the local internet. I'm not sure whether there is a possibility wherein Cisco Umbrella can also inspect the traffic that is outside the AnyConnect tunnel."
"The only thing I can think of is that I'd like to see a little more flexibility in policy creation. The way that policy is currently structured is like a "first hit succeeds" kind of policy. It would be nice if it were more hierarchical."
More Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is ranked 1st in Cisco Security Portfolio with 138 reviews while Cisco Umbrella is ranked 2nd in Cisco Security Portfolio with 108 reviews. Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is rated 8.2, while Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) writes "Gives us that extra ability to assist the end user and make sure that we are making them happy". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is most compared with Aruba ClearPass, Fortinet FortiNAC, Forescout Platform, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and Fortinet FortiAuthenticator, whereas Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection. See our Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) vs. Cisco Umbrella report.
See our list of best Cisco Security Portfolio vendors.
We monitor all Cisco Security Portfolio reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.