We performed a comparison between Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) and Cisco Secure Email based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Cisco Security Portfolio solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The product is stable."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with StealthWatch and DNA as one fabric."
"I have found that all of the features are valuable. It is very easy to deploy because we are able to port users directly from Active Directory (AD) and LDAP."
"I like the automation of the collection of information."
"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."
"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."
"The feature that I found most valuable is profiling. We use that to profile certain types of devices, and then depending on the manufacturer, drop them into the appropriate VLAN without us having to go in and manually add the devices."
"I really enjoy the live log section. Sometimes, you will have someone who is having issues connecting to the network, and then you have to ask them the dreaded question of, "Did you type a password wrong?" They will probably tell you, "No," but the live log can help sort that out. It gives us that extra ability to assist the end user and make sure that we are making them happy."
"The system provides our service desk with the means to troubleshoot email delivery issues with ease."
"Cisco Secure Email is part of Cisco's extensive efforts and investments in technology, especially in the realm of cyber security. The product is one among many security solutions offered by Cisco."
"This solution provides some benefits, like comfortable access to TAC support. You get prompt support when working directly with Cisco."
"The solution is very configurable. It has enabled us to configure some specific filters to stop emails that general configurations didn't stop. It's a powerful solution. It can analyze a lot of emails simultaneously, with no problems of capacity or system load."
"The product blocks spam emails."
"The most valuable features are Advanced Malware Protection, URL filtering, and of course Reputation Filtering."
"The tech engineers are very knowledgeable."
"The malicious URL scanning, as well as the anti-malware features, have been really useful for us in our environment."
"Difficult to figure out the protocols and nodes in order to implement correctly."
"A lot of people tell you the hardware requirements for ISE are pretty substantial. If you're running a virtual environment, you're going to be dedicating quite a bit of resources to an ISE VM. That is something that could be worked on."
"I'd like to see the logging be a bit more robust in terms of what it has baked in. If I want to do any in-depth searching, I have to export all the logs to an external platform like Elastic or LogRhythm and then parse through them myself. It would be nice if I could find what I want, when I want it, on the platform itself."
"If I was going to improve anything, it would be the ease of migration. It's really difficult at the moment if you're looking to upgrade ISE 2.1 and you want to go to ISE 3.1 or 3.2, that whole upgrade path and, particularly, the licensing is quite a minefield to sort out."
"The support could be faster and the pricing could be reduced."
"In a future release, I would like to see network access control. That is something that customers seem to be looking for."
"If Cisco could grant more control, the features could be more focused on network and security administration, reducing the need for integration with other components."
"Since we have started, we struggled a lot to implement this solution into our network, and we opened a case a couple of times. Up until this point, nothing else needs to be improved with this product."
"The user interface could be updated."
"The UI is definitely one area of improvement because it doesn't match other interfaces and the navigation can be a little clunky."
"The tool's pricing can be improved."
"Cisco Secure Email can be improved from the administrator's point of view. Usually, you have to work with different areas, and they can try to make it easy for the administrator to use different functions."
"We have Microsoft and we have the E5 licenses, they have more EDR responses on certain emails. That's something that Cisco ESA on the cloud doesn't have. They don't do anything about MITRE attacks. They only detect if there is a malicious email or a threat and they remove it."
"The scalability must be improved."
"Many smaller businesses opt for more cost-effective solutions, such as Gmail or Hotmail accounts, instead of investing in Cisco Secure Email, given its higher cost."
"The area of license renewal should be improved. We normally renew our license every year. There is a feature called smart licensing, and I switched from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode because of what I thought smart licensing does. I thought it would make licensing renewal seamless and very swift, but ever since I've switched to smart licensing, each time I want to renew my license, it is a whole lot of headache. The process is not smooth, and I had to keep calling Cisco TAC to see how the issue can be resolved. At one point, I wanted to revert back to the legacy mode, but I can't revert. Once you switch from the legacy mode to the smart licensing mode, you can't revert. They should improve on the visibility of the smart licensing mode so that it can indeed be smart and easier to use for the license renewal every year. That is one challenge."
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Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is ranked 1st in Cisco Security Portfolio with 135 reviews while Cisco Secure Email is ranked 10th in Cisco Security Portfolio with 55 reviews. Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is rated 8.2, while Cisco Secure Email is rated 8.4. 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 Cisco Secure Email writes "Has effortless spam control, improves security posture, and frees up our IT department's time". Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is most compared with Aruba ClearPass, Fortinet FortiNAC, Forescout Platform, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and Fortinet FortiAuthenticator, whereas Cisco Secure Email is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Trellix Collaboration Security, Fortinet FortiMail, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) and Proofpoint Email Protection. See our Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) vs. Cisco Secure Email report.
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