We performed a comparison between Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) and Skybox Security Suite based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, HPE Aruba Networking, Fortinet and others in Network Access Control (NAC)."One of the advantages is that you can easily find rogue endpoints. For example, if you don't want to allow any endpoints where you don't know the people plugging into what kind of devices, ISE can give you a big, clear picture, e.g., what kind of endpoints are getting connected to your network. That is one of the advantages."
"After the product was installed, no one could access the secure connection network. In order for any laptop or any endpoint device to attach to my network, it needs to be authorized or be certified to be connected."
"The way the ISE works is you can get into defining. Let's say, in my case, I've got a Windows laptop and I've got an Apple product and those have unique identifiers, unique back addresses. It would say that this in my profile so I could get to those apps with either device, 24/seven. That's how granular the ISE or these NAC Solutions can get."
"Since migrating towards doing wired ports over ISE with 802.1X and MAB authentication, our organization's security risk has been better. We have been able to establish better layouts, so devices can move and we don't have to worry about where they need to go."
"The most valuable feature is the ASDM - the user interface makes it very easy to configure the firewall."
"It offers automatic profiling of phones and computers, enabling administrators to identify and categorize devices seamlessly."
"The features that do work, work well, and we use it on a daily basis."
"The ability to allow or deny hosts onto the network is valuable. It provides great security to the network environment."
"Key features for us include the firewall change audit every week. Also, being able to track firewall ACL usage, so that we can produce semiannual reports on ACL usage and shadowed and redundant rules on the firewall."
"This type of tool does a great job of reaching into those other devices producing risk recommendations, compliance recommendations, and a single plane of glass to do your queries, so you can find where these rules might exist."
"The most valuable features are Firewall Assurance and Vulnerability Control."
"The solution's most valuable and unique assets are the vulnerability management and change management solutions because they identify mistakes in the network before implementation which reduces risks."
"Overall, the tool has helped us reduce risks. If any step is missing, it's easier for my team or engineers to identify it. The tool provides accurate recommendations based on the data. Its integration is easy, and I have integrated it with Fortinet firewalls."
"The ability to appropriately prioritize vulnerabilities inside the environment, and then to have visibility into the traffic and rule sets of an organization, are two of the top capabilities that I recommend. Skybox is the only one that does both of those in a single platform."
"I am impressed with the tool's change management, firewall and network assurance."
"It has a good policy management feature and can provide customers with good quality outputs."
"We would definitely like to see a little bit of an improvement in the web GUI navigation. Some of the things are a little bit hidden in the drop-down menu. If we could get a way to get to those quicker, it'd be much more useful."
"Cisco ISE integration with Cisco ACI is something that can be done in a less complex way. And the simplification in that area may help us do better."
"The upgrades could be better. Every time we try to do an upgrade, we have problems. It's a pain."
"I would like for the next release to be easier to implement and to limit its dependencies around ISE, Windows, the network as a whole, etc."
"Cisco ISE has almost all the features we are looking for now, but sometimes the configuration, such as the conditions, is a little difficult to understand and not so easy to navigate."
"The UI is not as intuitive as some other products, even products inside of Cisco's wheelhouse."
"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."
"I would like to see integration with other vendors, and the RADIUS integration needs to be improved a little bit."
"Skybox should improve their UX features by making them easier to use."
"If anything could be improved it would be staying on top of the collector scripts, but I understand that's a very tough challenge."
"It's expensive."
"I've had issues with licensing where, when they were expiring and I asked for the updated licenses, I would the wrong ones. I think their process needs to be straightened out a little bit - I don't know if they fixed it already, it has been awhile. It wasn't as straightforward as it could have been."
"The stability is something that is questionable. I don't know whether it is because of the kind of infrastructure we have or because of the product in itself. We're running it on a virtual machine right now. Maybe once a month, or once in every 45 days, it requires a restart because the application fails to connect. So I have to restart the whole Skybox Manager itself, the Skybox server itself, and then connect to it from our Skybox Manager."
"The most recent update was not tested with all of the vendors before it was released, so some of the features are misbehaving."
"There are multiple dashboards but no custom dashboard. It would be good to include a custom dashboard so that we can actually choose which field and what kinds of things we want to look at."
"There is room for improvement in pricing. It would be better, especially if a customer bought all four modules."
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Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is ranked 1st in Network Access Control (NAC) with 138 reviews while Skybox Security Suite is ranked 19th in Vulnerability Management with 34 reviews. Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is rated 8.2, while Skybox Security Suite is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) writes "Gives us that extra ability to assist the end user and make sure that we are making them happy". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Skybox Security Suite writes "Efficient in vulnerability management, stable and easy to use ". Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is most compared with Aruba ClearPass, Fortinet FortiNAC, Forescout Platform, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and Fortinet FortiAuthenticator, whereas Skybox Security Suite is most compared with AlgoSec, Tufin Orchestration Suite, FireMon Security Manager, Palo Alto Networks Panorama and RedSeal.
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