cisco-ise-mcp

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) 3.2, exposing ISE ERS and MNT APIs as MCP tools. It runs locally (stdio), in Docker, and as a Cloud Foundry application, with ISE credential passthrough as the primary authentication model.

Scope (and deliberate non-scope)

This server focuses on identity, endpoints, sessions, authentication, policy, profiling, and authorization context from ISE. It intentionally does not try to duplicate topology or device discovery — those belong to Catalyst Center, Arista CVaaS, NetBox, and similar source-of-truth MCP servers. It is designed to be one sub-agent that a future orchestrator combines with:

• Cisco Catalyst Center MCP

• Arista CVaaS MCP

• NetBox / other network MCPs

Related MCP server: Palo Alto Networks MCP Server

Primary use cases

1. Query endpoint info by MAC, IP, hostname, username, or endpoint ID.

2. Query authentication/session logs for a MAC.

3. Query active session info for a MAC or IP.

4. Query policy/context associated with a MAC.

5. Aggregate ISE context for a MAC (endpoint group, profile, identity group, SGT/SGACL, authorization profile, auth status, recent RADIUS failures, MNT data where available).

6. Produce NOC/incident-style summaries.

7. Act as an ISE identity/policy sub-agent for orchestration.

8. Run centrally on Cloud Foundry for Copilot Studio, Teams, and direct MCP clients.

Architecture

MCP client ──HTTP(S)──> [cisco-ise-mcp]
                           ├── auth/       passthrough | service_account (pluggable)
                           ├── tools/      endpoint, session, policy, sgt, identity, write
                           ├── ise/        client (async httpx) → ERS + MNT
                           └── audit/redaction/validation
                                     │
                                     ▼
                         Cisco ISE 3.2 deployment VIP (ERS :443 /ers, MNT /admin/API/mnt)

See docs/architecture.md.

Authentication (two independent concepts)

1. Client → MCP server: the client authenticates with ISE credentials; the server validates them against ISE and issues a random MCP session id. Subsequent calls present that id in the X-MCP-Session header (or Authorization: Bearer <id>).

2. MCP server → ISE: in passthrough the server uses the authenticated user's ISE credential context; in service_account it uses configured ISE service-account creds.

Modes: ISE_AUTH_MODE=passthrough (default) | service_account. Reserved for later: api_key, entra_oidc, jwt, reverse_proxy_header, mtls (interface is pluggable — adding one does not touch tool logic). Full detail: docs/authentication.md.

Sessions are memory-only in v1 (lost on restart); TTL and idle timeout are configurable. Credentials are never written to disk, never logged, never returned.

Read-only vs read/write

ISE_MCP_MODE=readonly (default) | readwrite. Write tools (ise_create_endpoint, ise_assign_endpoint_group, ise_delete_endpoint) are gated by this flag; delete additionally requires ISE_ENABLE_DANGEROUS_TOOLS=true. ISE still enforces the caller's own permissions server-side.

Quick start (local)

uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate      # or: python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e ".[dev]"                # or: pip install -e ".[dev]"
cp .env.example .env                      # edit; .env is gitignored
python -m cisco_ise_mcp                    # honors MCP_TRANSPORT (streamable-http default)

For stdio (single-user local MCP client), set MCP_TRANSPORT=stdio and use ISE_AUTH_MODE=service_account (stdio has no place to carry a session header).

Tests

pytest

Docker

cp .env.example .env
docker compose up --build
# server on http://localhost:8005 ; health at /healthz

Cloud Foundry

Target: ORG ESM / SPACE POC. Two apps: cisco-ise-mcp-ro and cisco-ise-mcp-rw.

Only sample manifests are committed. Real manifests (manifest.yml, manifest-ro.yml, manifest-rw.yml) are gitignored because they carry environment-specific values:

cp manifest-ro.sample.yml manifest-ro.yml     # then edit routes/env for your space
cf push -f manifest-ro.yml

Secrets must come from your approved pipeline/secret mechanism into CF env vars — never commit them into manifests or VCAP. The external route (cisco-ise-mcp.churchofjesuschrist.org) is fronted by F5 later; nothing in this repo assumes F5 details. See docs/cloud-foundry.md.

MCP tools

Full reference: docs/mcp-tools.md. Summary:

Security

See SECURITY.md and docs/ise-permissions.md. No real secrets live in this repo; all examples are obvious placeholders.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.