In June, I attended the Gartner Security Summit in Washington, D.C. where I was asked by quite a few security executives, "My network folks just bought ISE, but what is ISE and what type of security does it provide?" Fast forward to July, and I wish I had this SANS review on ISE to offer a month earlier. (SANS, as many security professionals know, is a highly regarded organization on IT security and cyber security.)
Bottom line: ISE achieves over half of SANS' critical security controls, which is huge for every organization and quite unique. So my answer: "You bet ISE does secure."
SANS is not the only group talking about ISE, especially now that the long-awaited version 1.2 is available. In a recent Network World article, ESG suggests that ISE requires a new categorization, "Endpoint Visibility Access Security (EVAS)," given new security and mobility demands. There is also a recent publication featuring Gartner research. This paper addresses secure access and mobility security and how Cisco's distinguishable network approach achieves deep levels of context awareness with network and device intelligence to provide highly comprehensive secure access.
Stay tuned - shortly, I will share some new ISE customers and let them tell you their viewpoint on ISE. Hope this was helpful to the network and security professionals! Heading to BlackHat where Cisco Security has lots to show. For secure access, we will demonstrate how TrustSec is a unique critical enforcement mechanism on your network infrastructure to control Advanced Persistent Threats (ATPs) and malware on parts of your network. The intelligence or "brains" behind TrustSec is a combined effort between ISE and our partners. Come by Booth 101 and see it!