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Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs. Cisco Umbrella

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AThe Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) offers a network-based approach for adaptable, trusted access everywhere, based on context. It gives the user intelligent, integrated protection through intent-based policy and compliance solutions.N/A

    Cisco Umbrella

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/ACisco now offers OpenDNS Umbrella Web Filtering. Cisco acquired OpenDNS in August 2015, and rebranded the product as Cisco Umbrella.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Cisco Umbrella
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Cisco Umbrella
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Cisco Umbrella
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) stands out due to its comprehensive network access control and security features. Unlike Cisco ASA 5500-X with FirePOWER Services, which focuses on firewall and intrusion prevention, ISE provides detailed endpoint profiling, posture …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
    ISE stacks well up against other products in our portfolio with protocols like RADIUS, TACACS and REST APIs.
    ISE is in many ways good for integration with both other Cisco products (switches, firewalls, WLAN controllers) and products from other vendors. Even with cloud services …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
    In our case, the entire core of our network is based on Cisco technologies as well as user access. For this reason it was the simplest choice given that both by integration and by knowledge of the platform it was the solution with the least complexity and the best adoption …
    Incentivized
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Umbrella
    Better integration with other Cisco portfolio of products.
    We have an enterprise subscription and Cisco Umbrella dns was already included as part of the offering.
    Also we are looking into integration with sd-wan in sites where it is hard to provide full spectrum of services that …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Umbrella
    I would not evaluate any other product
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Umbrella
    The simplicity of administration, the possibility of having a roaming user scheme with differential security policies for each case, and its integration with other products were key when deciding and undoubtedly generated a very positive impact both in the tasks of the IT team …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    109 Answers
    95%
    Would buy again
    76 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    98 Answers
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    73 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    108 Answers
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    77 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    74 Answers
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    63 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    92 Answers
    92%
    Implementation went as expected
    70 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Cisco Umbrella
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    FireMon
    Score7.9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    FireMon
    Score7.9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Cisco Umbrella
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.6
    (89 ratings)
    8.4
    (99 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.0
    (14 ratings)
    Usability
    7.0
    (3 ratings)
    8.0
    (9 ratings)
    Availability
    8.9
    (2 ratings)
    8.7
    (11 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.0
    (6 ratings)
    6.9
    (63 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.9
    (2 ratings)
    9.5
    (11 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.5
    (10 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)Cisco Umbrella
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    Cisco ISE integrates will with a Cisco solution such as firewalls, network switches and routers. It does an incredible job of granting access based on the role that an individual or groups have, and the ability to remove access to that individual or group is also east. In our environment ISE is used to authenticate external users that have access by vpn, and also to manage access to the large network infrastructure
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    It is good for whole network protection, and individual PCs with the client. Provide good reporting on where your network is going on the net. One thing I would like is a longer history with the logs 14 and 30 days are too short some times.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • The most beneficial thing that I love about it, there are tons of things that I love about ISE and that it does well, but the most fascinating that I feel about is its integration with DNA center or Catalyst Center using PX Grid as the protocol wherein ISE acts as a policy server for the entire campus hand in hand with Catalyst Center to make sure that the policy policy follows the user and also in the background hand in hand with DNA Center or Catalyst Center makes sure microsegmentation is implemented so that east west traffic is blocked and takes care of the campus.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • So for example, we had the problem in the past. We are connecting users to our own managed data centers. We had seven locations around the world, put them with Cisco, any connect to our on-prem data center and let them out to the internet. So that's causing some high latency bad experiences with teams and so on. And with Umbrella we can directly connect the user to the cloud and to the internet so the users have a good experience with speed with latency and it's much better than back hauling the traffic to their own company and then processing them there.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • Trustsec needs more documentation and configuration best practice examples
    • The licensing model can be difficult to explain and understand for customers
    • Difficult to get an accurate benchmark to know exactly how many Cisco Identity Services Engine nodes and the size of the deployment should be
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • The smart search feature in Cisco Umbrella is great addition for sure which helps us to identify malicious domain just by searching the URL and there is scoring system of Cisco Umbrella which mark the URL in low, medium and high risk. Sometimes Cisco Umbrella mark well known and good domain as malicious whether sometimes they mark malicious sites/domain as low risk. So, it's something that they should focus on, I think.
    • The live activity search is great for checking internet activities, but the filtering options could be improved. It would be helpful if we could filter by multiple parameters at once like combining username, destination IP and time range.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    We are so very reliant on Cisco Identity Services Engine at this point that finding another solution would be a big hassle for us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    First off I never give anything a "10" unless it's perfect. LOL - I grade on the curve. I think OpenDNS/Umbrella is a very good product. I think that fact that Cisco absorbed them is one of the proofs of that. I have used the product back when it was free for companies our size. I have not always appreciated the cost - but in the post pandemic cyber chaos, I believe the cost benefit ratio is still very high. I have honestly not looked at other products because Umbrella continues to work to my satisfaction. I consider Umbrella to be one of the key layers in my cyber security strategy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Cisco
    For us the solution is very easily useable on its own. Perhaps that has to do because we started using ISE in the 1.2 days and have seen it grow during the years. Policy creation, etc. is all very visible and thus easy to use. Deployment of multiple nodes is also incredibly easy and flexible. You can easily add or remove nodes as you wish.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Better features and easy to manage system with great customer support and overall usability is great as it works for hybrid environment with ease as it is having features for on prem users as wells as cloud users with great customer support and great team of trained engineers to support our opeartions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    We do have to occasionally reboot the servers when they get low on memory, but we're also a few versions behind. Availability has generally been pretty good though with no major outages in the time that we've had it implemented.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Cisco umbrella services in the cloud are always available. However, the weakness is the VM installed in the data center that are the first resolvers. If the VMs become unavailable for any reason or the vSphere goes down, then all DNS is affected
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Cisco
    yes it does. depending on where you coming from. Logs are pretty busy same as report. it also depending on devices count and design.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    our experience with cisco products has always been awesome and same is the case with cisco umbrella .Under umbrella cisco provides flexible and scalable software solution to use across different dept and sites . These softwares are very user friendly ,pages load quickly as these applications are designed for minimum latency and reports are also provided quickely
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Cisco
    Cisco support is second to none, both in terms of how you access support but also the knowledge of the individual support teams. If you focus on one technology and provide "manufacturer support" then you can rest assured that you are accessing Cisco's top individuals. I feel like this is a USP for Cisco support.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    Whilst the support is good once you get through to them, it's email only and the response is slow. This is a issue, because its a core system that needs to work. We have had issues in the past where several of our companies have gone down due to Umbrella and support is nowhere to be seen. It is very difficult to know whether Umbrella is having service issues, since they do not regularly update customers on the status of their services, such as is seen by providers such as Microsoft (status.umbrella.com just seems to show up all of the time, I'm not sure it's even updated)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Cisco
    Training can only cover certain areas, there are a lot of areas training just can't cover. You have to learn by doing it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Quite easy to understand training modules prepared by knowledgeable trainers. Training modules have included all the desired features of these softwares and the content delivery is very good from the respective module trainers and it explains in details the features and apart from that further training material support is also provided if needed.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    I did participate in the implementation of Cisco ISE and while there were times when it was confusing and we had a lot of trial and error, overall the experience was fine.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    At the time we were forced to move from Cloud Web Security to Cisco Umbrella, Cisco Umbrella was far from being a direct replacement. It was frustrating and difficult to migrate due to the lack of functionality. This has since been addressed, however we now have legacy rulesets that were built as bandaids that cannot be removed. Hopefully the migration to Secure Access will address this.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    I think all give some visibility of device monitoring and management, but Cisco Identity Services Engine gives a good way to manage more details about the device in a centralized way that gives a wider range of monitoring and control than the other softwares individually. I don't think Cisco Identity Services Engine eliminates the need for these other software as of now, but there is potential for Cisco Identity Services Engine to be able to take over more of these roles.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Different products in different spaces. The Z3 was more of a VPN endpoint so that users didn't have to worry about a client. If they are at home, they are on their corporate network and able to access resources. Cisco Umbrella can be used then to serve corporate DNS across the VPN tunnel to the Z3 device and extend the capabilities of Cisco Umbrella.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Cisco
    Cisco ISE was competitively priced and Cisco was able to leverage some of our existing contracts to help ease the purchase.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Cisco
    It's fully customised and comprehensive. only thing is you need to know what you want. Proper research and planning would save lots of time and effort .
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Cisco umbrella provides fleaxible and scalable software solutions which are easy deploy across multiple departments and sites wherever needed and this softwares are very easy to use and provides the best interface along with cisco support for other devices apart from cisco infrastructure but still there is scope for improvement on the inclusion of latest features
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • I don't know about negatives because we haven't seen it right now, but positive impact is one is the roadmap we have. And now since we are going ahead with doing the deployment of Cisco ISE, we see that we are getting closure to, so at the end of the day, we have to make sure that operationally we stay excellent. So that's where operational excellence comes in. Cisco ISE is basically addressing that for us. Right now we are in a situation if there is a WIFI issue or if there is an authentication issue, it gets really difficult to isolate the problem. But with Cisco ISE , this functionality is going to come in. So we believe that it would be a good ROI.
    Incentivized
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    Cisco
    • So it's always very hard to calculate return on investment, especially on security and especially in a physical product. So it's not like I'm going to be selling a lot more plastic or a lot more aviation fuel because I implemented Cisco Umbrella. What I know is that definitely, the return on investment is on the ability of the business to continue to run and give the assurance that our users are safe.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)