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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Proofpoint Insider Threat Management 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...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
144
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (4th)
Proofpoint Insider Threat M...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (3rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (7th), Insider Risk Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Proofpoint Insider Threat Management aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is designed for Network Access Control (NAC) and holds a mindshare of 21.7%, down 27.1% compared to last year.
Proofpoint Insider Threat Management, on the other hand, focuses on Insider Risk Management, holds 12.8% mindshare, down 12.9% since last year.
Network Access Control (NAC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)21.7%
Aruba ClearPass20.8%
Fortinet FortiNAC15.0%
Other42.5%
Network Access Control (NAC)
Insider Risk Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Insider Threat Management12.8%
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management15.6%
Dtex Systems10.9%
Other60.7%
Insider Risk Management
 

Featured Reviews

NF
Network and Technology Information Manager at Akkodis
Has improved authentication management and simplified visitor network access
The log capacity in Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could be enhanced because today natively on the ISE can only have a look at the logs from the day before. You cannot search into the oldest logs; you have to use another tool for that. This can be blocking if you don't have any log consolidation solution. To do a search for an issue or something that happened two days ago, you cannot search directly in there. The capacity of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could be enhanced. Something between one week and one month for the log capacity would be nice.
reviewer1271289 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Leader at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Good value, easy to use, and easy to deploy
In terms of what can be improved, that is a question I think the end users can tell you better. I'm not the end-user for this system. However, I can say that it needs to be more scalable. I think they already have a good value proposition in terms of being a hybrid model, and the reporting is okay, as well. It could have better integration with other SIEMs, but this integration has to come from the SIEM side, not ObserveIT.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is great for establishing trust for every access request no matter where it comes from."
"It's a great tool for that, if you want to profile your network and you want to secure your network inside."
"Cisco ISE now competes with any other product in the space because of its centralized and unified highly secure access control with ISE."
"Before, our port would be wide open, anyone could come to the network and put their laptop into the port or any device and they would be able to get the IP; now, if someone tries to connect to our network through an IU port or internet, they will not be able to access it."
"The integration with Active Directory is the most valuable feature for us."
"RADIUS is the best feature because it supplies authentication to our entire campus."
"The solution is integrated with other Cisco devices and can offer automation for an organization, making deployments more dynamic and providing real-time visibility."
"It has tremendously improved our organization through BYOD and guest wireless access."
"All my clients are very pleased with this product as it helps them to keep track of what partners and employees are doing on the servers."
"It resolved security issues of the organization by providing audit reports and records to our customers."
"ObserveIT is small, easy to use, easy to deploy, and is not complicated, so it's more generally suited for only SMBs. It's a good value with a cheaper price."
"Record videos that have a very small file size Management interface is very convenient and intuitive"
"Meta data search Alert generation."
"Overall, it gives a consistent and really good return on investment."
"Customer Service: The ObserveIT professional services team has been excellent, extremely engaged and genuinely concerned with our success."
 

Cons

"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."
"The solution is not so user-friendly."
"There are issues with respect to the posture assessment function. It's been observed that customers are not receiving total access to the network because the assessment agent is glitchy and malfunctions from time-to-time."
"The user interface can be improved."
"Whenever we see the authentication logs, we can't see what device we're logging into. We can see who logged in, but we can't see the IP address of the device."
"I don't see as many customers as I should adopting the onboarding feature. I think Cisco should make that process a lot easier and less intrusive on the end users' devices."
"It would be helpful for us to know what needs to be deployed, configured, and what changes we need to make to our devices when we don't receive the specific login which is an indication of a lack of connection or incorrect configuration."
"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."
"ObserveIT is not scalable and it's not for the medium to large corporations."
"OCR capability, support for Mainframe, Ticketing and Incident workflow."
"The tool is still not providing records of tunnels established - we would like to see it in future versions."
"Ticketing and issue management. Based on the new system, one needs to go through the sales people."
"I had some problems with an instance of ObserveIT in a Proof of Concept, when I installed ObserveIT with an SQL Express instance and the DB used all provisioned space."
"ObserveIT is not scalable and it's not for the medium to large corporations. It's for the smaller environments. For the larger corporations, we have other scalable solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you're not going through an agreement, it's very expensive."
"The SMARTnet technical support is available at an additional cost."
"The solution is not that cheap."
"Cisco is expensive, but it's the cost for all the functions and value it brings. Functions like internet solutions, integrations, security, and many more features are important, but it's expensive for some clients."
"I think licensing costs roughly $2,000 a year. ISE is more expensive than Network Access Control."
"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 pricing is complicated."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Media Company
9%
Performing Arts
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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...
Looking for recommendations and a pros/cons template for software to detect insider threats
In addition to responsesfrom Xavier Suriol and reviewer1324719, also consider ObserveIT from Proofpoint.
Looking for recommendations and a pros/cons template for software to detect insider threats
Hello All,I hope you had a merry Christmas.In this case it is as simple as it is.Just take Proofpoint ObserveIT - many companies in the public and financial sector have been using it for years.By ...
 

Also Known As

Cisco ISE
ObserveIT
 

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
Coca Cola, Allianz, Premiere League, Xerox, AIG, Cigna, Starbucks, Revlon, Toshiba, Nissan and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC). Updated: March 2026.
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