Every category where a model named Cisco Identity Services Engine for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Microsegmentation	Network and edge	2%	19 of 94	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by ColorTokens Xshield at 25%
Network access control	Network and edge	0%	22 of 111	13%	15	accepted challenger
Data center networking	Network and edge	0%	131 of 165	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by Arista Networks at 27%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Cisco Identity Services Engine yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment and per category, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Cisco Identity Services Engine across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

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Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	1	0	0	0	1
GPT-5.4 mini	1	1	0	0	2
Gemini 3.5 Flash	1	0	0	0	1
Perplexity Sonar	1	0	0	0	1
Grok 4.1 Fast	1	0	0	0	1
Mistral Small	1	0	1	1	3
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	0	0	1	2
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	1	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	2	0	0	3
Kimi K2	0	0	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0	1	1
MiniMax M2.5	1	0	0	0	1
GPT-6 Luna	0	0	0	0	0
Muse Glimmer 30B	0	0	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct13 labels8

Paraphrase11 labels7

Comparative22 labels18not counted in share

Budget-constrained3 labels2

Scale-constrained3 labelsNone

Negative8 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative60 labels in all, every segment counted; 17 of the 35 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Cisco ISE is widely considered the market leader in enterprise-grade NAC, offering the most comprehensive feature set for large, complex networks.” MiniMax M2.5 · NAC · comparative prompt · first choice

“Offers easy deployment and low long-term costs, making it a good choice for budget-conscious organizations already in the Cisco ecosystem.” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Microsegmentation · budget prompt · first choice

“Choose Cisco ISE if your network is already Cisco-centric and you want a mature enterprise NAC platform.” GPT-5.4 mini · NAC · comparative prompt · first choice

“If you need strict enterprise policy governance, Cisco ISE is usually the benchmark.” Perplexity Sonar · NAC · comparative prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Avoid if you're a mid-sized company, have a mixed-vendor network, or lack a dedicated NAC engineer.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · NAC · negative prompt · hard negative

“it is more complex and costly, and its licensing model can be restrictive for mid-sized companies” Mistral Small · NAC · paraphrase prompt · soft negative

“multiple critical remote‑code‑execution flaws” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Data center networking · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Cisco Identity Services Engine, over the 60 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Cisco Identity Services Engine was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Portnox Cloud36 of 605Not among the top eight

Fortinet FortiNAC33 of 601Not among the top eight

Forescout29 of 600Not among the top eight

HPE Aruba ClearPass18 of 601Not among the top eight

Aruba ClearPass17 of 603Not among the top eight

PacketFence7 of 601Not among the top eight

HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass Policy Manager6 of 601Not among the top eight

Ivanti Policy Secure6 of 600Not among the top eight

Juniper Mist Access Assurance6 of 600Not among the top eight

Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager5 of 600Not among the top eight

A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Cisco Identity Services Engine. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 53 of the 60 answers that named Cisco Identity Services Engine and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

cyberpress.org31

portnox.com31

cybersecuritynews.com27

gartner.com27

us.fitgap.com26

comparitech.com25

elisity.com23

g2.com23

virima.com22

cloudnuro.ai21

256 of the 256 domain citations in answers naming Cisco Identity Services Engine came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cyberpress.org/nac-solutions-by-business-size31

cybersecuritynews.com/best-nac-solutions26

comparitech.com/net-admin/network-access-control-software25

gartner.com/reviews/market/network-access-control23

portnox.com/cybersecurity-101/access-control/top-nac-solutions22

us.fitgap.com/search/network-access-control-software22

virima.com/blog/best-network-access-control-solutions22

cloudnuro.ai/blog/top-10-network-access-control-nac-solutions-for-zero-trust-implementatio21

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

Where Cisco Identity Services Engine stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.

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In search

Google, US estimates

Searches for its name, Google: 5,400 a month (“cisco identity services engine”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 15 a month
Its own site: It sits on Cisco's site (cisco.com), so there are no site figures for it alone

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

rank 19 of 94 in microsegmentation

Segment leader

25%

ColorTokens Xshield

First choices: 17 across its categories
Named in: 60 answers
Its own site cited: in 53 of the answers that named it

Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read October 5, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.

Names read as Cisco Identity Services Engine

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Cisco Identity Services Engine; a claim can dispute any of them.

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) 17

Follow Cisco Identity Services Engine

An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.

Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.

The company

Cisco is the company behind Cisco Identity Services Engine.

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On record

Company records

Also from Cisco: Cisco ACE, Cisco ACI, Cisco ACI / Tetration, Cisco AI Defense, Cisco ASA/Firepower, Cisco AnyConnect, Cisco AppDynamics, Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure and 68 more

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Cisco Identity Services Engine's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Cisco Identity Services Engine, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives

A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Cisco Identity Services Engine by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Cisco Identity Services Engine is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
who was chosen in the answers that did not name Cisco Identity Services Engine, and every reason the record gives;
a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.