Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Reviews

The company implemented the solution to keep track of wired and wireless devices.

One of the most important features is the authentication security for the individual connection to the network through their computer or laptop. The solution is very complete overall.

There should be better documentation on the implementation of the solution. I learned how to implement it from watching videos. I felt the documentation was too complicated and I also learn better from watching videos.

In my experience, there needs to be better documentation for firewall integration as well, we had some trouble early on.

I have been using the solution over the last year.

A co-worker of mine had some issues with the solution crashing unexpectantly or some processes went down. 

We are using the solution with around 200 people and we had no problems with scalability. Most of our clients are small businesses.

The customer server was great but it would have been better for me if they had support in other languages such as Spanish. It was difficult for me to communicate in English.

The setup was easy for this solution.

We implemented the solution.

There are other cheaper options available.

We did evaluate Aruba ClearPass before the client picked Cisco ISE. I had suggested ClearPass because it was cheaper but the client decided to go with Cisco regardless.

Our clients and my company plan to continue the use of the solution in the future.

I rate Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) a ten out of ten.

One of the use cases was the certificate-based authentication for the endpoints. All the laptops and mobiles are embedded with certificates and once they get authenticated, then only they would be able to connect to the LAN. 

The other use case was the NAC use case wherein the integrity of the laptops and mobile and such were checked before the scan. They fulfill the policy requirements and then they are able to connect to the network.

The third use case was the consolidated access control management for all the network devices and security devices. 

It's flexible and stable. It's been good as a standard environment to run.

It was implemented in my last organization and we used it for three years. We are evaluating and will be implementing it in a couple of months at my current organization. 

It is stable and scalable. We have 5,000 to 6,000 users. 

Technical support is good because the partner is quite competent so we have all the support that is required.

The initial setup was a little bit complex. It's not that simple because it requires a lot of prerequisites for the solution to get a hold on. So the prerequisites and then onboarding all this like the landscape of endpoints was quite tedious. That was no surprise, because this is something which would be with other products as well. It took a long time for the implementation, but it's been rock stable now.

The deployment took six to seven months. 

We had consultants and we had a partner for the deployment. The system integrator was involved with the roll out.

The management part is much smoother. It takes care of all the costs across branded devices as well, so that it is a single panel we can manage all the end-to-end entry devices as well. That's something would be really good for Cisco ISE product.

I would recommend Cisco ISE. I would rate it an eight out of ten. I would like it to be more stable. 

The .1x authentication schema is the most valuable aspect of the solution. It makes it possible to have multiple policies and it can still adapt to us. We can authenticate and calculate our trajectory and so on. The policy is very easy to put in place. It's got to be easy due to the fact that we have more than 200,000 devices.

The implementation is very simple.

The web interface needs improvement. The new web interface that they have is not as easy to manage and we find it to be very slow.

The solution might require two authentications. They should make a new authentication to authenticate both the device and the users. Right now, we are authenticating the PC, the workstation, but not as a user. A good addition would be to authenticate the user separately to get more information.

I've been using the solution for five years.

The solution is stable. I haven't witnessed bugs or glitches. It doesn't freeze or crash. It's reliable.

The solution is quite scalable.

We started with two clients and we've since scaled up to 20 clients.

Cisco ISE was the first full solution we've used.

The initial setup wasn't complex for us. We found the process of implementing the solution very straightforward.

For our organization, in terms of deployment, the first implementation took one month, and for the global implementation took six months.

For maintenance, a company needs one or two people to handle it, one of which should be full-time.

The pricing is okay. It's reasonable for functionality, however, if you're going to implement it as a full-stack with Cisco Connect, and a work station, and so on, it's very high.

I'd advise other companies to really take care in regards to the network devices that they want to authenticate. 

For most of the cases, the biggest rooms are the easiest to manage, however, the smallest ones require specific implementation in all devices. It is very tricky due to the fact that you are obliged to put in place the rules that are not so secure and that's why it's very important to know what devices are connected on the network.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use Cisco ISE for 802.1 network authentication.

ISE integrates well with other Cisco products.

This solution does not provide us with enough visibility into our network. We would like to see additional information that it does not show. In general, the reporting is not very useful.

ISE needs to have better integration with third-party products.

A basic profiling engine would make a good addition because device profiling is very important.

This product requires the use of agents and ideally, I would like an agentless version. I think that they should get rid of them because they are hard to manage and deploy. Also, they are not useful.

The interface is not very user-friendly and it is not simple to use.

I have been using the Cisco Identity Services Engine for six years.

This is a stable product. The features that do work, work well, and we use it on a daily basis.

I would say that this product is scalable because we are using it in our central headquarters, in addition to several branch offices.

We do not pay for Cisco SMARTnet, so we did not contact technical support.

Prior to using ISE, we were using a solution by Trustwave. It is a different product because it uses Name Poisoning methods. It was an interesting solution but we changed because the price of support is too high. We opted to instead purchase a new product.

The initial setup is not simple. I don't consider our deployment to be complete because we were unsuccessful at trying to use the majority of the features. The fact that we can't solve these problems is why we are searching for another solution.

We had assistance from a consultant for the deployment.

Internally, we have a team of five administrators who manage this product.

The SMARTnet technical support is available at an additional cost.

I am currently doing research on Fortinet FortiNAC because I find that Cisco ISE is not a very powerful tool.

My advice for anybody who is considering Cisco ISE is to first run a proof of concept to see that all of the features work well. In my opinion, you have to see all of the features.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I'm an engineering student, studying smart information and communication technology.

The product has many useful features. It enhances compliance and security posture. It provides client provisions and profiling as well as guest access, features not available in other solutions. The product can be customized. 

Although the solution is easy to implement it's not so easy to understand. You need to be able to figure out the protocols, the nodes, and the personals of the nodes in order to implement correctly and make good use of it. 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. 

I've been using this solution for two months. 

The solution is stable. 

ISE is extensible. It can be deployed for small and large organizations, and can even be distributed and centralized. 

We haven't used the customer support but if I do need some assistance my supervisor and the manager I'm working with can help. 

I've looked at other network access control solutions and ISE is among the leading technologies. I recommend it but suggest taking a close look at the technology before implementing it. Try to really understand it, because if you miss anything and don't configure correctly, it's going to be awful and you'll lose the benefits that the solution provides. Even if you only need one or two of the features that the solution provides, I would recommend using it. 

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

We use it for SDA infrastructure. We have a challenge in recognizing different kinds of devices and that's what we are using ISE for in the SDA fabric.

We can better recognize our endpoints and we know whether they are allowed to access our network. That's really important for us.

It has also eliminated some rogue devices from accessing our network.

The integration with Active Directory is the most valuable feature for us.

The admin interface is really slow. It's horrible.

I have been using Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) for five years.

It's really stable.

It's scalable, but we need to upgrade some of our hardware to support more users.

Our SDA fabric has about 1,500 users that we are authenticating. We have plans to use it throughout the City of Helsinki, which has about 38,000 personnel whom we will need to authenticate in the future.

I haven't used the tech support.

We also currently have Microsoft RADIUS, but we are planning to move away from it and use ISE as our only authentication solution.

Other than the slow admin interface, it's an excellent product.

I primarily use ISE for segregating identities, IP addresses, and ports.

ISE's most valuable feature is integration between IT and OTs.

There are still some bugs in ISE that need to be worked out.

I've been working with Cisco ISE for three years.

ISE is stable.

ISE is scalable.

Cisco's tech support could be improved.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Regardless of your industry, I would recommend Cisco ISE if you want good identity management. I would rate this solution seven out of ten.

We use Cisco ISE to develop products for other people. We don't really use it in our system. We just buy it and implement it when our customers require ISE.

I like that Cisco ISE is easy to use.

Migration could be better. Right now, we back up with the new version, and it requires a lot of licensing and other things. Whenever we choose a product, it's very difficult because we have to meet the requirements of each feature. There is no standard feature, so the best system that we bought may not fit the solution. 

We have to look at every feature that the customer uses. If you compare it with other products like Aruba, it's not the same. With Cisco, I have to read all about the features on this version and the licensing required for the product. In Aruba, that thing is covered when you get one license because it covers almost everything. It could also be more scalable.

We have been using Cisco ISE for 20 to 30 years.

It could be more scalable. It's easy to scale initially, but it will become very difficult at a certain point. In the beginning, it's in the previous environment, and it's pretty easy. But after we integrate it, we need to do a couple more to scale the product, which is more difficult.

We have less than 300 people using it worldwide. We deal with an airline company, so people who come to use it aren't many, but it's available to everyone from everywhere around the world.

We deal with a local Cisco partner for technical support. I haven't dealt with Cisco directly in Bangkok. 

I think Cisco takes around six months to complete the migration from the old one to the new one. This is because we have compliance and a lot of other things here.

Our in-house team implements this solution. It takes about three people to maintain this solution.

It costs around 50,000 baht in the first year, but I'm unsure about the second year.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco ISE a seven.