Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Reviews

The interconnection with the ecosystem and the ability to force rules all over the network are the most important features.

It is a good product, but in order to use all of the functions of the product, you must have a good understanding of the product. You must know how to use and manage it. It is a little bit complicated to configure and manage. It must be simplified to make it easy to manage for end users. In the initial stage, we found ISE complicated for end users. It was not easy to manage it or to write authentication and authorization protocol. They must improve its management and make it easy for end users. 

The monitoring and reporting capabilities can be improved because end users want to quickly see what is happening in their network. There were some restrictions in working with other vendors. It should also have a better and easy integration with other vendors. 

I have been using this solution for five or six years.

It is a stable product.

It is scalable.

It has good technical support. We also have local support now, which is better. There is no problem with their technical support. 

People who are experts should deploy such products. In order to preserve the reputation, a product must be set up with the help of a talented or expert person because when you set up, deploy, or install the product in a wrong way, it gives negative feedback to customers.

The price can be lower, especially for subscriptions. It should be a lot cheaper to have a wide range of customers. The price should be comparable to competitive products like Forescout or Fortinet FortiNAC. Forescout is cheaper for customers looking for a cloud solution.

I would rate Cisco ISE an eight out of ten.

We are a system integrator and Cisco ISE is one of the products that we sell and implement at our customers side. I have built ISE's POC and provided training to our customers.

I also used real rent lab which was including; Active Directory integration, network access and core switches, access points, wireless access controller, and end points. (some end points have cisco client - anyconnect, and have not), and Web Server for creating wireless authentication portal solution end to end

The AAA features were awesome and have important attributes, and also the security groups (SGTs) concept to enforce policies for each group of users, regardless they coming via wired or wireless network devices. also i see the guest authentication is very rich and easy tom implement 

Cisco ISE offer one central point to create different policies for different group of users and enforce policies to each entity regardless it connected to network through wired or wireless network devices. it provide in this way more mobility and wireless-wired converged network. Also it integrates very well with network devices to control ports configurations services authentication and authorization. ISE also integrate with DNA center and stealthwatch to enable customer have SDN (Software defined Network) Fabric. 

Combines authentication,authorization,accounting(AAA),posture,and profilerinto one appliance

Provides for comprehensive guest access management for Cisco ISE administrators.

Enforces endpoint compliance by providing comprehensive client provisioning measures and assessing the device posture for all endpoints that access the network,including 802.1X Environments

EmploysadvancedenforcementcapabilitiesincludingTrustsecthroughthe use of SecurityGroup Tags(SGTs) and Security Group Access Control Lists (SGACLs)• Supports scalability to support a number of deployment scenarios from small office to large enterprise environments

The ISE software needs to be improved  in role to be easier to administer. SOftware enhancement required to have easier way to find the featured required to implement and also need enhancement of features sorting. Completing processes can be complex when try to implement some solutions. also steps are complex and the troubleshooting as well. As an example, if you intend to make AAA policy and enforce it on a group of users, you will find the software very confusing................................

I have been using Cisco ISE for three months.

We did not use another similar solution prior to this one.

The initial setup was fine.

The price for Cisco ISE is high.

We did not evaluate other options before adopting this solution.

To be clear, I'm not an expert in networking, so I'm pretty much like a user.

I really like the guest WiFi. Those kinds of features are pretty convenient. When I have a guest in the form of a third party, I can grant access to the guest for a certain period of time and have a dynamic password generated. It's great.

The user experience of the solution is great. It's a very transparent system.

As I treat the system basically as a user would, and am not overly technical, I can't say what features, if any, the solution is missing.

I'm working from China currently and the only real issue is that, within the country, there's some concern around Cisco and its ability to offer the solution for the long term. As the United States has banned the Huawei version in their country, we feel there may be retaliation in ours and Cisco will get banned as a countermeasure from the government. The future of Cisco in China is in question. Our local partners are worried about the situation.

To be perfectly frank, I'm unsure of the exact amount of time we've used the solution. It's been a number of years. I've basically lost count.

The stability, from a users' perspective, is very good. I haven't encountered any issues before, and we've used it for quite a long time. It doesn't freeze. It doesn't crash. There aren't bugs or glitches. It's pretty reliable overall.

I'm not sure how many users are on the solution ultimately. Our reach is pretty global. I'm not with the network team, so I can't speak to the ability for the solution to scale.

As I'm not a member of the network team, I've never had to reach out to technical support. I don't know if they do or how often or how Cisco's technical support ultimately is. I've never dealt with them directly. I can't speak to the quality of their service.

I'm not a member of the network team, so I didn't participate in the implementation process. I can't speak to how straightforward or complex it was.

We're just a customer. We're in the manufacturing industry, not IT. We don't have a business relationship with IBM.

We try to keep up with the latest upgrades, therefore, I believe we are using the latest version of the solution.

From a non-technical user-based standpoint, I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

I'd recommend it, however, there is this ongoing concern in China at this time that Cisco could get banned in the ongoing trade war with the United States. That should be a concern for companies here. That may not be so much of a concern abroad.

The feature that I most like is that it can notify me whenever someone plugs in their device, which is not allowed. I get notifications for new laptop devices.

I think the user interface looks good compared to previous versions. 

The software is a little bit complicated to understand in the beginning, meaning the implementation. It needs proper documentation so that we can understand the options more easily.

I have only very recently using Cisco ISE, since about one and a half months ago.

We have our own team for the maintenance of this solution.

I am still implementing it. So far it has been one and a half months.

Cisco ISE is a good product, but it requires some technical knowledge and knowledge about network security.

One a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cisco ISE a six.

As I said, I have not implemented it 100%. Maybe once I implement it 100%, and I start using it in production, then I will rate it higher.

We use this solution to monitor and secure devices on our network.

Using this solution gives us the ability to allow proper access to the network.

The stability of this solution needs to be improved.

It should not be necessary to go to each individual set of alarms and acknowledge them in order for them to go away. There should be a single button that can be pressed to dismiss all of the alarms at once.

This solution has problems in terms of stability. I have had certain things that do not work, and I have called technical support for help. They have sent me a patch, and then it still doesn't work, so we end up living with the problem.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution to provide wireless for our residence halls and guest networks. We're also a college that works primarily off of iPads, so we have to be able to keep resident hall activity off of the network so that students can do their homework and class activities. We use the Services Engine to authorize all of them.

The biggest value of ISE is that it can get so granular with gaming systems, versus IoT and BYOD.

I'd like to see an easier way to upgrade to larger versions, as well as more best practices that are easier to locate on their support page.

I have had a very good impression of its stability.

We're actually upgrading right now from a small version to a medium-sized one. It's not as simple as I'd like it to be for scalability, but it's still working well.

We were very late adopters in the education arena of wireless. We didn't adopt until about five years ago. We had a great relationship with our partner and got to see this demo several times. It was really good.

The initial setup was complex.

The name of the company at the time was MSN but they've been recently purchased. The engineers did a really good job. I would have liked a greater share of knowledge at the time, but they did a great job in implementing a complex situation.

Cisco was the only one that we evaluated. There was also Aruba, but Cisco was really the top choice.

My advice to someone considering this solution would be to seek the most comprehensive solution for residence halls.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. I would like the flow of authentication and authorization metrics to be easier to see.

We primarily use the solution for network admission control.

Previously, what used to happen is that we use to have anyone - any user, a staff member or a non-staff member, consultant contractors, etc. able to connect to our line without authentication, which I think posed a security risk. We felt that whoever connected to our network should be authenticated. We should know the person. We should have visibility to see who was connecting to our network so that we can detect anomalies. Now, we have different profiles, of different users and staff and for contractors or others. So, depending on the profile, there's control on the access that you can get.

An area that could be improved is the agent. The challenge now is that agent and most of the computers have changed. They could think about agent-less deployment. Also, I've not explored MDM but if it should be integrated. 

In terms of scalability, I think it's scalable. Quite scalable and very intricate. Easy to use and provides good support. 

We've had many issues with technical support but from the local vendor, we do get a lot of support which is good. The fact that we also did some training helped. We normally don't have so much trouble when we rescale. We see that we can fix it and then if there are issues, with the vendors and their help, we can rescale it.

Initially, the setup is a bit complex but that depends on the vendor. Maybe because of the complexities around it. Sometimes I think it's about how the best project team really does it.

The person who was put in place to implement it couldn't. So we got another vendor who was good and was a lot more experienced. It's a very new feature so we're hopeful here in Uganda. My country only has about maybe 2 or 3 clients. Those are the ones I know about, our team being one of them.

The deployment strategy was faster than the pilot. We had to see how it works and then we had to, in a transparent manner, see how it works. Deployment took about six months. But the rollout is on-going because we keep opening branches all the time, so we just keep adding them into the solution. For deployment, we used the front liner support but for documentation, we had professional staff. For deployment and maintenance, we have a small team of maybe about five to ten. 

I would give the solution 5.5 out of 10.

We use Cisco ISE for network management, user access for enterprise clients, and advanced firewall support. We use Cisco ISE on domains and clients jointly with other network software utilities.

We use Cisco ISE as our main controller for the management of clients that need to join our network.

The best feature of the Cisco ISE platform is that it is compatible with Microsoft products. 

Cisco ISE is complex. The deployment and design of networks with it is so complex. If it could change it would be better. 

It needs a better solution for reduced complexity.

I think to add more people to four-thousand users is going to be hard. Cisco needs to make it easier to add more people.

The Cisco ISE platform is stable.

On our network, we use Cisco ISE as a platform utility to support three thousand users.

The initial setup of the Cisco ISE platform was complex and the deployment was also difficult.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cisco ISE an eight because the server is so complex. Cisco needs to re-program or re-issue it and release a new version with more adequate sizing for small businesses.