ISE, ClearPass, Forescout or FortiNAC: Six Decision Points

Cisco ISE vs Aruba ClearPass vs Forescout vs FortiNAC: 6 Decision Points for Indian Enterprises

Choosing between Cisco ISE, HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass, the Forescout Platform and Fortinet FortiNAC comes down to six decision points: what you already run, whether you need agentless discovery or deep enforcement, how big the team maintaining it will be, how the licence model scales, what a regulated Indian buyer's tender will demand, and an honest reading of where each product wins. 

Most Indian NAC evaluations are decided by the switch vendor already in the rack, and that is not as lazy as it sounds. Network access control is enforced through the switches, controllers and firewalls you own, so the product that speaks their language natively has a head start that no feature comparison fully erases. The mistake is treating that head start as the whole race. Four products, six questions, and a table at the end that says who fits whom, including where Cisco does not. 

The six decision points: 

1. What do you already run? 

2. Agentless discovery or enforcement depth? 

3. How large is the team that will maintain it? 

4. How does the licence model scale? 

5. What will a regulated Indian tender demand? 

6. Where does each one win? 

1. What Do You Already Run? 

If your switching and wireless are Cisco or Meraki, ISE is the default; if they are Aruba, ClearPass is; if the firewalls are Fortinet, FortiNAC is the economical fit; and if the estate is mixed or heavy in unmanaged devices, Forescout earns a look. Start from the enforcement points you own, because that is where the integration work lives. 

The reason is practical. ISE integrates with Cisco switching, wireless and firewalls through TrustSec and pxGrid in ways that are native, and the same is true of ClearPass inside an Aruba estate or FortiNAC inside a Fortinet one. All four can enforce through third-party switches using standard RADIUS, SNMP and CLI, and all four claim multi-vendor support with some justification. The difference shows up in the second year: the native pairing gets new features together, and the cross-vendor pairing waits for the integration to catch up. A mixed estate is normal in India, and Proactive runs plenty of them, but it changes which product you should shortlist first. 

2. Agentless Discovery or Enforcement Depth? 

Forescout's reputation rests on agentless visibility, classifying devices from network behaviour without an agent, which is why it appears on shortlists heavy in IoT, OT and medical equipment; ISE's rests on enforcement depth, pushing policy into Cisco infrastructure through TrustSec tags and dynamic ACLs. Decide which problem is bigger for you before comparing feature lists. 

The honest version: ISE profiles agentlessly too, and has improved at it, and Forescout enforces through switches, firewalls and integrations with real effect. The distinction is emphasis, not capability. If your estate is 60 percent devices that cannot run an agent and will never do 802.1X, printers, cameras, ATMs, PLCs, then discovery and classification is the daily work and Forescout's strength is relevant. If your estate is mostly managed endpoints and your goal is segmentation that follows the user, ISE's enforcement model does more with less. ClearPass sits between the two with strong device profiling and broad enforcement; FortiNAC leans toward visibility and is often chosen for IoT-heavy sites on a Fortinet fabric. 

3. How Large Is the Team That Will Maintain It? 

A NAC platform is a system you run, not a box you install, and the team that will patch it, renew its certificates, manage its policy and tune its alarms is the single best predictor of whether the project succeeds. ISE has a reputation, earned in forum threads and in Proactive's own deployments, of rewarding teams that invest in it and punishing teams that do not. 

ClearPass is often described by its users as quicker to stand up and lighter to run for a small team, and that is fair. Forescout's operational load scales with how many integrations you switch on. FortiNAC is approachable for a team already fluent in Fortinet's console. None of the four is a weekend project. The question to ask internally is who owns certificate lifecycle, upgrades and policy change after go-live, and whether that person exists. If the answer is a managed partner, ask the partner the same question. Proactive Data Systems runs ISE estates for Indian customers from a 24x7 NOC with 100+ engineers, and even so we tell prospects that ISE needs a named owner on their side. 

4. How Does the Licence Model Scale? 

ISE licences in three tiers, Essentials, Advantage and Premier, and since version 3.5 Advantage is consumed per active endpoint that uses an Advantage feature such as profiling, TrustSec or pxGrid; from 3.5 Patch 4, an authorisation rule that references a dynamic attribute such as an endpoint policy or identity group consumes Advantage as well. Posture and MDM compliance need Premier. Model your endpoints by tier before you price it. 

The other three license differently, and the detail changes often enough that any figure printed here would be stale by the time you read it. The pattern to check: ClearPass is licensed by concurrent endpoints with feature modules on top; Forescout by device count across its visibility and control modules; FortiNAC by endpoints with the platform licensed per site or centrally. The question for all four is the same: what is counted, what triggers the next tier, and what happens when you exceed the count. ISE shows an over-consumption message without blocking; not every vendor is as forgiving. Get the counting rules in writing before the purchase order. 

5. What Will a Regulated Indian Tender Demand? 

Indian banks are now writing NAC tenders that ask for more than the product: a scheduled commercial bank's 2025 RFP required DC and DR deployment with real-time replication and automatic failover, 99.99 percent uptime, agentless detection preferred, classification of ATMs and IoT alongside PCs, a back-to-back OEM support arrangement with the bank able to log calls directly, onsite spares within four hours, seven years of support from sign-off, and RBI audit rights over the product and the vendor. That is the shape of a regulated Indian NAC buy in 2026. 

Read that list against the four products and against your partner. All four vendors can meet the technical items; not every partner can meet the commercial ones. The OEM-direct support and seven-year support horizon favour vendors with deep Indian TAC presence, which is a point in Cisco's and Fortinet's favour and a question to put to the others. The 500-branch prior-implementation requirement in the same tender favours whoever has already done it at scale in India, which is a question for the partner, not the vendor. If you are in BFSI, build your evaluation from the tender your regulator would expect you to write, not from the vendor's demo script. 

6. Where Does Each One Win? 

Proactive sells and deploys Cisco ISE, so weigh this section accordingly, and then weigh the fact that we are putting the rivals' strengths in writing on our own website. ISE wins in Cisco and Meraki estates that want segmentation to follow the user, and in large regulated deployments where TrustSec and Cisco's Indian TAC depth matter. ClearPass wins in Aruba estates and for teams that want a capable NAC that is lighter to operate. Forescout wins where unmanaged, agentless devices are the majority of the problem, in healthcare, manufacturing and OT. FortiNAC wins on cost and simplicity inside a Fortinet security fabric, particularly for IoT-heavy mid-market sites. 

Where ISE loses: a small team with no Cisco skills, an Aruba or Fortinet estate with no Cisco in it, and a site whose whole problem is classifying a few thousand unmanaged devices with no segmentation ambition. In those cases Proactive will say so, because a NAC deployment that does not get finished is worse for us than a sale we did not make. 

Cisco ISE vs ClearPass vs Forescout vs FortiNAC: The Six Decision Points

Characterisations in rows 2, 3 and 6 are Proactive's opinion from evaluations and deployments, stated with hedges where the evidence is mixed; the licence model in row 4 is from Cisco's published guide for ISE and from vendor documentation for the others, as at October 2026. 

The Shortlist We Would Hand You 

Proactive Data Systems has deployed network access control for Indian enterprises in BFSI, manufacturing and IT/ITES across 35 years, and more than 1,500 customers have taught us that the product matters less than whether the deployment gets finished. We are a Cisco partner and we lead with ISE where the estate warrants it, with 100+ engineers and a 24x7 NOC behind it. Where it does not, we will tell you which of the other three to shortlist and why, because a NAC that stalls in monitor mode is a reference we do not want. 

Send us your switch and wireless inventory, your endpoint mix and the regulator you answer to. We will return a one-page shortlist against the six decision points, with the tier model priced for your endpoint count. [email protected].

Disclaimer: This is an independent comparison prepared by Proactive Data Systems, a Cisco partner, and reflects our opinion as at October 2026. Product capabilities and licensing change; confirm current details with each vendor. Cisco ISE, HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass, Forescout and FortiNAC are trademarks of their respective owners, and no endorsement by those owners is implied.