We performed a comparison between Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) and Cisco Umbrella 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 access policies, and all of the policies in Cisco ISE, are important to us."
"TACACS and .1X security are the most valuable features. TACACS acts for user control, so no one can authenticate to our network devices, and .1X is to validate that unauthorized devices are plugged into our network."
"I found the CMDB Direct Connect in Cisco ISE 3.2 the most promising feature for my use case."
"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 return on investment we have seen is related to time in terms of troubleshooting. The logs, such as the security logs, inform us of the issues that people have had. ISE has been very instrumental in helping isolate those issues. We've seen a lot of cost savings because we don't have to pay an IT person to waste time doing something that should be instantaneous."
"I like the logging feature."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility element, the ability for customers to be able to see what devices are actually on their network. Without a solution like ISE, they would have no idea what devices are connected to their network. It offers them the ability to authenticate devices via mobile."
"Member Access Control and the ability to integrate all Cisco wireless, Cisco networking, switches, routers, and firewalls."
"The weekly reportings are great. The investigation is super and the application management is equally great."
"It has excellent resilience in cybersecurity. Cybersecurity for my organization is very important because we are a banking organization. We need this security to protect the personal information of our clients. This is very important for our security."
"It is user-friendly. It is easy to manage the solution."
"The insight into what our users are doing via Cisco Umbrella is valuable. Knowing that we're protecting our users as they leave our network is also valuable now because we've got more hybrid working."
"We use Cisco Umbrella for DNS filtering and as a secure gateway."
"I think recently with many people working from home, Cisco Umbrella has been very useful. For example, we can manage the device and the network when the employee is not working on the local host. Cisco Umbrella is very valuable for this kind of infrastructure."
"If it didn't have a single pane of glass, we would not be using it. The single pane of glass gives you a one-stop shop. It's like going to Home Depot. You find all your stuff there. You can see all your threats and your endpoints. It's a very important feature and makes things very simple."
"I haven't needed to reboot the servers for years due to their excellent stability."
"The UI is not as intuitive as some other products, even products inside of Cisco's wheelhouse."
"The knocks I have against the product are the number of bugs that we encounter, constantly, and the amount of upgrading that we have to do."
"ISE is a little clunky. The front-end feels like it is from the 1980s."
"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."
"Adding new devices was a little cumbersome. I haven't done it that many times, but I remember that adding new devices to the authentication piece of it was a little cumbersome. The way I was shown to do it, I thought it was odd because we had to go into the active device, copy the file down, export it, make some changes to it, and then reimport it as opposed to being able to click it and having a template to fill out."
"One of the issues that we used to have was with profiling because we're working with a service provider that uses a lot of bring your own devices."
"I would like to see the product simplified more, especially with the configuration."
"Cisco could improve the GUIs on their hardware."
"I would like them to make some videos, practical videos, the kind with steps that people can use to learn and deploy"
"Support for multiple domains is important to us."
"It had the ability to do a lot of app control. So, every single app that went through that portal was registered, but there is a general issue with the whole app control. As soon as you add a mobile phone to your network, all of the apps get registered through the system, and you can approve, reject, or just let them go through. When I looked at it, it was impossible to manage app control. There was just so much data. I didn't apply that service because I just didn't have the time to manage it. It would be good if there was a way to categorize applications."
"One of the issues with Umbrella is as you get into endpoint detection and response, such as EDR point solutions, some of them will not integrate well with Umbrella. Sometimes when you want to use technology, such as Always On VPN, it will not work. There are some looming issues as one type of technology starts to crossover with Umbrella. That is the challenge and Umbrella should find a way to be more compatible with some of the endpoint response solutions that are coming out on the market."
"I would like to see more integrations with more products. Some of the integrations need to be simpler as well. For example, the integration with Cisco Secure Firewall could be simpler. It would be good to make reporting simpler. For those who don't use SecureX, it would be good to make Umbrella really simple to use upfront. It's not a difficult product, but it can be daunting for someone who isn't exposed to it because there are so many options."
"We faced an issue regarding virtual appliances (VAs) during deployment. They could improve the quality and management of the virtual appliances offered right now. You can't see much because it is a Linux machine, and they have customized it. You don't have any route access to the machine, only seeing limited things in it. When we opened a ticket, they didn't know much about VAs themselves. So, that is where it is lacking right now. I know this will improve in the long run."
"The firewall capabilities could be better. Cisco is starting to introduce some layer 7 capabilities now, but there's still some room to grow. They should continue with the development of Umbrella so that it is a full-blown cloud-managed firewall solution."
"Something on our end that might make it better is alerting going to our ticketing system. It's not something that we have discussed, but that would be a proactive option for us to provide a learning experience for the staff."
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Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is ranked 1st in Cisco Security Portfolio with 135 reviews while Cisco Umbrella is ranked 2nd in Cisco Security Portfolio with 108 reviews. Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is rated 8.2, while Cisco Umbrella is rated 8.8. 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 Cisco Umbrella writes "Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent". Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is most compared with Aruba ClearPass, Fortinet FortiNAC, Forescout Platform, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and Fortinet FortiAuthenticator, whereas Cisco Umbrella is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and Fortinet FortiGate SWG. See our Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) vs. Cisco Umbrella report.
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