Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
Make Progress on Zero Trust Access with Cisco ISE
Find the Cisco ISE features and licensing tier that best support your access and security goals.
Start here
Choose how you want to explore Cisco ISE guidance.
This guidance covers ISE Essentials, Advantage, and Premier feature licensing tiers.
How Cisco ISE helps with Zero Trust Access outcomes
Use this overview to understand the outcomes ISE can support.
Who this tier is for
Organizations establishing secure, centralized access control across employees, devices, guests, contractors, wired, wireless, and VPN access.
Key outcomes
- Verify users and devices before granting access.
- Standardize guest, contractor, and unmanaged-device access.
- Centralize audit-ready access policy.
Key ISE Essentials features for this outcome
Who this tier is for
Organizations ready to move beyond basic access into device classification, BYOD, segmentation, and shared identity context.
Key outcomes
- Classify endpoints and use device context in policy.
- Reduce lateral movement with identity-based segmentation.
- Share identity and endpoint context with security tools.
Key ISE Advantage features for this outcome
Who this tier is for
Organizations that need access decisions to account for device health, MDM/EMM compliance, audit needs, or risk context.
Key outcomes
- Validate endpoint posture before or during access.
- Use MDM/EMM compliance in authorization decisions.
- Restrict access for unhealthy or non-compliant devices.
Key ISE Premier features for this outcome
Who this tier is for
Organizations connecting security detection, access policy, and network enforcement to reduce exposure from risky endpoints.
Key outcomes
- Use integrated tools to trigger network containment.
- Restrict access for risky or compromised endpoints.
- Add threat or vulnerability context when containment must be risk-driven.
Key ISE Advantage features for this outcome
Key ISE Premier features for this outcome
Recommended Cisco ISE feature licensing tier
Your selections
Recommendations
Your Zero Trust Access plan
Recommended next steps for your Zero Trust Access outcomes
Zero Trust Access typically progresses from verification to control, continuous trust, and containment. Based on your selections, start here:
How Cisco ISE supports your Zero Trust Access plan
Cisco ISE acts as the identity and access policy control point for these Zero Trust Access outcomes.
Your licensing next step
Why this tier fits
How this helps your outcomes
How to enhance your outcomes
Recommended ISE features to meet your outcomes
Only features directly tied to your selected outcomes are shown here. Select a feature to learn what it does and how to enable it in Cisco ISE.
Supporting ISE capabilities that may be needed
These capabilities may provide supporting authentication, telemetry, or policy enforcement. Requirements depend on your access methods, network infrastructure, telemetry sources, and existing configuration. Not every supporting capability must be enabled.
Guidance only: This recommendation is not a final quote or validated configuration. Confirm final licensing and deployment fit with Cisco or an authorized partner.