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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Identity Services Eng...
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
143
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st)
Cisco Vulnerability Managem...
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is 23.0%, up from 22.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM) is 1.8%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cisco Security Portfolio Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)23.0%
Cisco Vulnerability Management (formerly Kenna.VM)1.8%
Other75.2%
Cisco Security Portfolio
 

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.
AshishPaliwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers contextual prioritization and risk-based remediation of vulnerability
An improvement would be some sort of an integration with any GRC suite. There are a lot of GRC suites available, like Archer, MetricStream, Rsam, Protiviti, for example. So how would a solution like this work if my company has already invested thousands or maybe millions in a GRC solution? Do I still need it and how does it fit into an existing SAP environment? There could be interoperability, having more data sources, integrating Splunk, Qualys, FireEye, Rapid7, Carbon Black. I'm sure all that can be done to an extent, with a little more insight and a little more accuracy on the industry numbers and trends. I'd like the solution to offer any sort of assistance in any way with the remediation part, not just identification of vulnerability risk, and that is second.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"With NAC, the profiling feature is valuable. We're able to see what we have out there in the network and dynamically assign policies to it. We can then use that to enforce TrustSec policy or anything else with NAC."
"Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is very good at device administration."
"In terms of features, I think they've done a lot of improvement on the graphical user interface — it looks really good right now."
"The most important feature for us is visibility in terms of user connections. It's the ability to see what devices are online for a particular user that helps a lot with our troubleshooting."
"It provides client provisions and profiling as well as guest access."
"It's keeping our company safe from rogue devices connecting to our network. From a security standpoint, there's peace of mind knowing that every device that connects is a good one."
"They have recently made a lot of improvements. My clients don't have much to complain about."
"A lot of customers use a third party to manage their guest Wi-Fi. Cisco ISE presents the ability to bring that in-house so that customers can have full control over it, change the branding, and get extra telemetry from it and the user data. It works really well for our customers."
"The risk context of any vulnerability is a valuable feature."
 

Cons

"There should be an easier way to do the upgrades. There are a lot of steps to get to the next version from the previous version which ends up being a bit of the headache with the upgrade."
"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."
"The pricing is fair."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in CLI. Most things are done through the GUI, and there aren't many commands or troubleshooting options available compared to other Cisco products like switches and routers."
"When I work with customers to do my knowledge transfer, they're really overwhelmed with the navigation of the product and the number of things you can do with it. From a user interface standpoint, Cisco could focus on making certain tasks a bit more guided and easier for customers to walk through. That is, a user-friendly interface and streamlined workflows would be great."
"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."
"The product is expensive. It would also be a good add-on to have some machine learning."
"An improvement would be some sort of an integration with any GRC suite."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you're not going through an agreement, it's very expensive."
"The price of Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is expensive and we are thinking about changing to FortiGate."
"Licensing is a disaster. It's a mess and I hope they fix it soon."
"Over the years, licensing has been confusing and complicated because there are so many different licenses for each different product and each different iteration of the product."
"Being fully honest, the Cisco licensing model right now is really confusing. We don't know what licenses we have where. We have Smart licensing, but the different levels are way confusing."
"There is a license to use this solution and the price is reasonable."
"There are other cheaper options available."
"The solution’s pricing is okay."
"I think the pricing is based on the number of endpoints, so it's more subscription-based."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
20%
Retailer
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise90
No data available
 

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...
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Also Known As

Cisco ISE
Kenna.VM, Kenna Security, Kenna, Kenna Security Platform
 

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
TransUnion
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco and others in Cisco Security Portfolio. Updated: September 2025.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.