Cisco Identity Intelligence vs Darktrace IDENTITY: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)

Cisco Identity Intelligence

Mid-market and enterprise teams drowning in identity alerts will find value in Cisco Identity Intelligence's AI filtering, which cuts noise by correlating user behavior across sessions and access patterns instead of flagging every anomaly separately. The tool maps cleanly to NIST DE.CM and DE.AE, meaning it prioritizes detection and analysis over response automation; you get visibility into risky privilege escalations and account takeover attempts, but incident mitigation still relies on manual session termination or user quarantine. Skip this if your team lacks the bandwidth to act on findings or if you need tight integration with your existing IAM platform; Cisco's strength is bolting onto what you have, not replacing it.

Darktrace IDENTITY

Mid-market and enterprise teams drowning in false positives from legacy identity tools will get immediate value from Darktrace IDENTITY's self-learning AI, which correlates peer group behavior to separate real account takeovers from noisy anomalies. The platform covers the full incident lifecycle across NIST Detect and Respond functions, with autonomous actions like forced logouts and IP blocking that actually contain breaches before humans can click. Skip this if your organization relies on on-premises Active Directory as your primary identity layer with minimal cloud SaaS adoption; the real ROI surfaces when you're managing identities across Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and a dozen other cloud apps where traditional rules-based detection fails.