Cisco ISE Competitive Battle Card – vs.
Aruba ClearPass
Aruba Company Overview
Aruba is one of the three (Cisco & Forescout are the other two)
leading vendors in the Security & Access Policy space.
• Founded in 2002 with a focus on WLAN Networking.
• Acquired by HPE in 2015 and expanded portfolio to a “full stack”
• HPE-Aruba later acquired Niara (UEBA), RASA (Assurance), Cape
Networks (Sensor)
• HPE Aruba recently added a new product to the ClearPass
portfolio, ClearPass Device Insight - dedicated & seperately
licensed device visibility product.
ClearPass Solution Components
1 ClearPass Appliance/VM 2 Entry/Access License
© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
August 2019
Aruba Sales Pitch
“ClearPass has the best 3rd party support capability,
including integration with PAN Firewall.”
“ClearPass Guest capabilities are unmatched and
completely customizable for many different use
cases - ”
“ClearPass and its integration with Aruba Introspect,
the core components of Aruba 360 Secure Fabric
architecture, provides the industry leading
Enterprise IT Security solution”
3 Onboard/OnGuard License
ClearPass’ Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
• Well established product from an infrastructure vendor
• Ability to import/export complete configuration & wizard based
workflow for all key use cases
• Intuitive and a responsive user interface
• Agentless compliance for Windows
• Strong partnership with PAN & many other security vendors
Weaknesses
• ClearPass has very low number of built in device profiles. Hence they
recently added a new product ClearPass Device Insight, which is a
network overlay solution and requires a separate license.
• ClearPass Guest customization is always charged as an add-on
professional service engagement
• Aruba role based access is very complex to deploy and manage. Roles
have to be managed independently. Cisco’s Group based access is a far
superior segmentation solution.
Cisco ISE Competitive Battle Card – vs. ClearPass
ClearPass Playbook
ClearPass as Trojan-Horse: Aruba targets Cisco Enterprise customers (either in
the ACS migration or ISE upgrade cycle) and pitches them ClearPass as an easy to
deploy guest solution, just to get a foothold in the account.
3rd party integration: Show case their tight integration with other security
vendors – Palo Alto Networks (PAN) for example and create both NAC and
Wired/Wireless opportunities.
360 Secure Fabric: Pitching Aruba 360 Secure fabric to security buyers – This is
their new marchitecture which integrates with their Wired/Wireless
infrastructure, ClearPass and Aruba Introspect (Niara UEBA) to support role based
segmentation and threat control use cases.
Show case ClearPass Guest features: During demos/PoVs, they highlight their
Guest feature differentiation – Social login support, payment gateway & hotel
management system integration, customizable guest portal and Multipsk. Any
customization of the ClearPass guest portal is considered a chargeable
professional services engagement.
Frictionless PoV aka ClearPass Ninjas: Aruba deploys ClearPass trained dedicated
technical resources (ClearPass Ninjas) to manage and conduct most of the
customer facing proof of value engagements. These well trained resources have
well established & proven setup and configuration scripts/files and hence are able
to create a positive impression about the product in the customer’s decision
making team.
© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
August 2019
Win by highlighting Cisco’s strengths, security expertise & product superiority
Cisco’s unique position: Security is Cisco’s #1 priority! With over 5000+
dedicated security professionals and Billions invested in R&D and acquisitions,
Cisco is uniquely positioned to provide an industry leading Secure Policy &
Access Solution
Market Leadership & Acceptance: Cisco ISE is deployed in 40,000+ customers,
the largest deployed Network & Device Security and Access product.
pxGrid ecosystem: Cisco ISE integrates with over 70+ security products providing
unmatched ability to share security context and enhance the overall security
posture.
Guest Deployment with Ease: With prescriptive deployment guides and free
Guest Portal builder support, ISE provides a complete Guest deployment
solution.
East-West Traffic Segmentation: Group based policies with Scalable Group Tags
(SGT) is critical to prevent malware propagation with effective East-West traffic
segmentation.
Best Device administration in the industry: Device administration with TACACS+
capability in ISE is unmatched and it is the widely deployed solution in the world.
World Class Support: Cisco Global TAC presence and service quality are
consistently ranked highly by J.D. Power and TSIA. Cisco has achieved it’s 11th
consecutive J.D. Power CTSS certification – an honor unmatched by any other
technology company
Cisco ISE Competitive Battle Card – vs. ClearPass August 2019

Cisco ISE vs. ClearPass Key Features

Y Cisco ISE ClearPass
RADIUS 802.1X Yes Yes

Guest Lifecycle Yes Yes

Self Service BYOD Yes Yes
Profiling Yes Yes
Posture Yes Yes

MACSec Yes No

Scalable Group Tag Yes No

Certificate Authority Yes Yes

RADIUS CoA Yes Yes

Single VPN, Posture, 802.1X Agent Yes No

Multi-forest AD Yes Yes

Feed Service Yes Yes (separate product)

Large Product Support Team Yes No

Best of Breed – ISE Industry Awards TACACS+ Yes Yes

SAML Yes Yes

DACL Support Yes Yes
IPv6 Yes Yes

Clientless Posture Yes Yes (Windows Only)

Scalable Wired Guest Yes No

Supplicant provisioning without MDM Yes No

Flexible 802.1X Yes No

Integrator Required No No
© 2018 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.