We performed a comparison between Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) and Symantec Privileged Access Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, HPE Aruba Networking, Forescout and others in Network Access Control (NAC)."Cisco ISE now competes with any other product in the space because of its centralized and unified highly secure access control with ISE."
"The endpoint profiling feature is among the most valuable because it keeps me from having to manually maintain a MAC address bypass list to track endpoints. I can have ISE profile them for me and then put them in the right bucket."
"Cisco ISE's profiling and posturing features ensure that all devices are compliant with regulatory authorities."
"Assisting a larger number of users in gaining access and guiding them through the process of getting on Cisco ISE has been seamless."
"It integrates with the rest of our platform, like our firewall, and helps us a lot. It also does a good job establishing trust for every access request."
"The policy sets give us more granular groups for end-user access."
"For device administration, all devices have multifactor authentication in collaboration with IT, so it secures access to all of our devices. For guest and wireless access, it's a matter of a lowly manager who we give access to the portal and he can assign access to the guests, so it's a very simple process now. It keeps the IT focusing on their work, and gives the business people the right access."
"The ability to allow or deny hosts onto the network is valuable. It provides great security to the network environment."
"The product is very scalable in terms of concurrent sessions that it can handle at a time, number of device it can support, accounts that it can manage, or number of nodes that you can deploy in a cluster."
"We can enforce complicated password policies and very important frequent password changes."
"It is great for identity governance."
"Whoever built it from the ground up, they understand how an organization is laid out."
"The DB clustering is a really good benefit of using CA PAM."
"One of the key things for us about the product is around its simplicity. Being able to put in the technology that allows the business to remove complexity and also allow the security improvements."
"Password Management and Session Recording. The simplicity and ease that it is to be up and running out-of-the-box is very much appreciated."
"The two factor authentication, and the single most important capability was it supported PIV and CAC as one of the two factors. That was pretty huge for us."
"Cisco ISE could be simplified somewhat. I would also prefer certificate-based authentication over confirmation-based authentication for all the processes. It's possible for us to do a workaround, but the process needs to be simplified."
"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. I would like to see refining of the compliance assessment and adding more detailed compliance of endpoints on the user end."
"A main issue is that the upgrade process, over time, is extraordinarily fragile. Repeatedly, over the past several years, when we've tried to upgrade our Cisco ISE implementation, the upgrade has broken it. Ultimately, we have then had to rebuild it because we need it."
"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."
"I don't like the fact that we can see the logs only for 24 hours. Maybe that happens because of the way we set it up."
"The solution is not so user-friendly."
"There should be a single button that can be pressed to dismiss all of the alarms at once."
"Its user interface could be better. It's not bad. They've just redesigned the whole user interface. It's not terribly difficult. The drop-down menus are easy to use. However, when you're looking for some things in the user interface, it takes a minute to find where you were prior."
"They need to do a little bit more on the mainframe side."
"I’m no fan of Java as an application front-end, as it tends to have issues depending on what browser one’s using."
"The response time for support could be faster. Some features should be added: cloud-based, VPN-less, more secure, and it should be adjusted in a hybrid environment."
"What I hope happens with the new product CA PAM is to keep all the useful features that exist in PA, but what I’ve noticed with many new products is the UI gets polished but systems lags stability and performance or it adds additional complexity instead of simplifying the user experience."
"The setup is complex."
"The service account management functionality needs to be extended to application pools, SQL database, PowerShell scripts, service account discovery, etc."
"Instead of just giving passwords to the user based on job function, from auditing perspective, turn that cycle around. That would really help from an auditing standpoint."
"I would like this solution to be simpler. It should have a one-click access that works together with AWS."
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Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is ranked 1st in Network Access Control (NAC) with 76 reviews while Symantec Privileged Access Manager is ranked 18th in Privileged Access Management (PAM) with 3 reviews. Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is rated 8.2, while Symantec Privileged Access Manager is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) writes "Offers rich contact sharing, many self-service features, and the ability to categorically list all the endpoints in the infrastructure". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Symantec Privileged Access Manager writes "Allows IT and consultants to access the infrastructure environment but needs more security and better support". Cisco ISE (Identity Services Engine) is most compared with Aruba ClearPass, Fortinet FortiNAC, Forescout Platform, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager and Fortinet FortiAuthenticator, whereas Symantec Privileged Access Manager is most compared with CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management, ARCON Privileged Access Management, Delinea Secret Server and VMware Identity Manager.
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