The Shrew Soft VPN Client works great on Windows 8 as a replacement for the Cisco VPN client.  The only oddity after installing the software is that the client program is not registered in the start menu (only the documentation shows up when searching for VPN).  However, navigating to the folder C:\Program Files\ShrewSoft\VPN Client and running ipseca.exe allowed the Cisco .pcf file to be imported and the VPN tunnel established flawlessly.  Kudos to Shrew Soft.