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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs MetaAccess comparison

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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 Network Access Control (NAC)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
144
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (4th)
MetaAccess
Ranking in Network Access Control (NAC)
14th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
2.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Network Access Control (NAC) category, the mindshare of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is 18.5%, down from 23.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MetaAccess is 0.9%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Access Control (NAC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)18.5%
MetaAccess0.9%
Other80.6%
Network Access Control (NAC)
 

Featured Reviews

SunilkumarNaganuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Line Manager (Service Operations Expert) - Network Access Control at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
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.
JD
Delivery Lead at altisec
Positive support experience and affordability boost overall satisfaction
The OESIS framework platform has been developed by OPSWAT itself. They license it to other OEMs for posture assessment, and they are pioneers in this particular field. The rest of the features are the same when compared head-to-head because all NAC works seamlessly. The advantage is this supports a virtualized environment, so you don't need to depend on hardware, allowing you to go live at any point in time. When discussing policy enforcement, it has predefined templates and objects that help draft a policy easily, reducing the need to define variables and create a policy from scratch. For instance, if I want to allow a certain network range, I just need to put out the network range, and they have that policy enforcer to help define the policy precisely. OPSWAT has an integrated solution for threat detection and response capability. If you are opting for threat detection, it will scan your endpoint, which is something no one else is doing. It does take some time for the scanning, but if you want your endpoint to get scanned for threats first, OPSWAT can do that. Regarding reporting tools and real-time monitoring capability, you get a detailed report of compliance as well as non-compliance systems, which is comprehensive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"[One of the most valuable features] is just the ease of use. It's pretty simple to set up certs that we can add to our clients to make sure that they connect properly, [as is] whitelisting Mac addresses."
"It does a good job of establishing trust for each access request, no matter the source, and it's also very effective at helping with the distributed network and at securing access."
"I found the CMDB Direct Connect in Cisco ISE 3.2 the most promising feature for my use case."
"For my use cases, the in-depth troubleshooting into why a client can't connect or why they failed, is very valuable. I can go back to someone and say, 'Hey, it's not my network. It's their certificates or user error,' or something else."
"We find Cisco to be innovative and to offer good products."
"Cisco ISE has enabled my customers to deploy secure wireless and secure wired networks and gave them a lot of flexibility to do security enforcement."
"Without Cisco ISE, we couldn't authorize our users, contractors, and everyone else."
"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."
"OPSWAT has an integrated solution for threat detection and response capability; if you are opting for threat detection, it will scan your endpoint, which is something no one else is doing."
 

Cons

"Third-party integration is important, as well as the continuous adaptation feature which is the AIOps. It would be helpful to include the AIOps."
"The opinion of my coworkers, and it's mine as well, is that the user interface could use some tender loving care. It seems counterintuitive sometimes. If you go to the logs, it's hard to figure out which one you need to look at."
"The pricing and licensing structure are not ideal for customers."
"The UI and UX could be more seamless and easier to use."
"Some of ISE's features need to be more agile. For example, we couldn't integrate our data because Cisco needs your data to be in its own format."
"The customer server was great but it would have been better for me if they had support in other languages such as Spanish."
"It would be nice if it could be configured easily by default."
"The area where things could be improved is education. It's complicated to deploy initially because you have to know what you're getting into."
"The only limitation is that customization is pretty limited."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"There is a license to use this solution and the price is reasonable."
"In general, licensing can be quite complex with Cisco products. It would be nice if it was a bit more intuitive and had fewer "gotchas" in there."
"ISE has always been expensive compared to other products in terms of what it does on a user level."
"It's damn expensive and the licensing is terrible... If you have perpetual licenses on 2.7 and you upgrade to 3, you are forced to go with Essentials. That is one of the issues that I'm seeing with my clients now."
"The licensing is subscription-based and based on the user account."
"The price is okay."
"We are running Version 2.9 because Version 2.9 of the ISE has a persistent license — it's a one-time payment. The latest version (3.1) is only available if you do a yearly subscription."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise32
Large Enterprise91
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...
What needs improvement with MetaAccess?
The only limitation is that customization is pretty limited. We have predefined templates available, but the granular customization is restricted. I am speaking with respect to the Indian customer ...
What is your primary use case for MetaAccess?
The MetaAccess product is primarily for providing secure network access, functioning as a Network Access Control (NAC). It first performs a posture assessment to check whether your endpoint is comp...
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
OPSWAT MetaAccess
 

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
Juniper Networks, Expert Global Solutions (EGS), PCWizrd,
Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco, Portnox Security and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: October 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.