What is new in Cisco ISE 3.0
Cisco Identity Services Engine or ISE is the industry-leading tool for ultimate visibility into every device on your network and gives you the control to build visibility-based segmentation to support a zero-trust framework.
The dramatic increase in BYOD devices, work from home and cloud applications has made obtaining visibility harder than ever. That’s why Cisco ISE 3.0 now makes the experience incredibly simpler, adds complete and dynamic visibility and enables a cloud-first security.
Approach visibility is the number one function of ISE giving you a detailed view into every device. You can get a snapshot of activity, unusual behavior, access denials and more all in a new easy to read graphic interface and to maintain visibility with the increase in BYOD and IoT devices coming on and off the network.
Agentless Posture
Cisco ISE now supports agentless posture giving you the option to identify classify and configure an endpoint or device without installing anything on it. This gives your team the flexibility to manage the speed and ease of onboarding new users and devices at any time or place as they see fit what’s more.
ISE can also be set to automatically identify and classify new devices based on their behavior using AI endpoint analytics. This way policy can be applied dynamically as the device’s posture or situation changes and you don’t have to reconfigure it manually.
802.1X with Azure
You can now take ISE to the cloud as it is already deployable on VMware and AWS. ISE also supports SSO with Microsoft Azure active directory so you can use cloud-based identity to authenticate users.
Cisco is leading the migration to the cloud so as your company is headed there ISE is right there with you to support and enable your cloud first strategy. Finally, to help you manage it all with ease Cisco has completely overhauled the user experience with ISE to make it more intuitive, supportive and easy to set up monitor and use.
New User Interface
ISE menu system has been restructured into expandable categories accessible from Hamburger menu. Everything is logically organized to quickly get you to where you need via expandable pull-down menus.
On top of that you also have a smart search function that auto-populates terms and features and lists results in organized links and if you ever need to go back to a previous page. There’s an activity log in the sidebar that can take you there in one click.
With ISE you get robust in-app support features and interactive help like a configuration wizard that guides you through the configuration process to get you started quickly. It gives you step-by-step guided workflows for advanced use cases like agentless posture.
Cisco ISE interactive help also extends outside the app to Cisco online resources videos tutorials and even the cisco ISE community forum, where you can browse threads or even post your own question and for our ISE community. With make-a-wish portal where you can contribute or request features to be added in future versions ISE 3.0 gives you unprecedented dynamic visibility into all your devices with cloud compatibility and a clean intuitive interface connected to a robust support system.
ISE PLR License
The biggest change coming to ISE 3.0 is in its licensing model. In prior versions, licenses at the Base tier that provided entry-level 802.1X and Guest services were permanent licenses that did not require renewal. However, in ISE 3.0 Base licenses also become term-based in the same way as the prior Plus and Apex tiers.
Licensing tiers have also been renamed, in line with the current standard licensing tiers for Enterprise Network products:
- Base becomes Essentials
- Plus becomes Advantage
- Apex becomes Premier
Also after patching Cisco ISE 3.0 to its second patch (3.0.548), Cisco ISE PLR license (Permanent license registration) can be applied and register all instances permanently.