Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
Jai Prakash Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive Vice President Technology at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Feb 10, 2026
Strong multi-factor security has supported audits and protects diverse remote server access
Pros and Cons
  • "Cisco Duo is very user-friendly."
  • "Scalability could be better if the price were reduced, as scaling is quite expensive."

What is our primary use case?

Cisco Duo is primarily used for MFA purposes, whether for remote server login or dual login. It has not been integrated onto an application yet, but it has been integrated across all remote servers, including Windows, Linux, and heterogeneous environments with dual MFA.

We work with major cloud providers and integrate Cisco Duo wherever there is a critical workload to maintain the balance between cost and security. It is not a blind deployment everywhere.

What is most valuable?

Cisco Duo is very user-friendly. You do not need to struggle, and you do not need to teach non-technical users or executives how to use it. If you miss a device or change your phone or handheld devices, you can still reactivate on your new device very easily. It is very user-convenient, and there are many methodologies available. You can get SMS alerts, web plug-ins, and push notifications. It is available for both Android and iOS.

As long as we are clearing the audits, that confirms that we are secure enough. We have been able to convince our security auditors that we are compliant with all the laws, at least from an MFA standpoint, regarding the return on investment from using Cisco Duo.

What needs improvement?

There are some areas for improvement. Cost could be one opportunity, as if the cost is further reduced, we can increase it to the maximum user base. Since DPD is becoming very aggressive and active, especially in countries like India, once the cost is reduced, we can probably scale it to all 6,000 to 7,000 users. Right now, it is only limited to the production environment and could be extended to all applications.

Scalability could also be better if the price were reduced, as scaling is quite expensive. The account manager could reach out for the next level of expansion and offer certain premium support along with a lower cost.

The main areas for improvement regarding Cisco Duo are cost and scalability, which are directly connected.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Cisco Duo for almost more than seven or eight years.

Buyer's Guide
Cisco Duo
February 2026
Learn what your peers think about Cisco Duo. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2026.
882,410 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Cisco Duo is quite stable when using it recently.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability could be better if the price were reduced, as scaling is quite expensive.

How are customer service and support?

Cisco's technical support is good, as in the last couple of years, we have not needed to reach out to them. Since I have not dealt with it a lot, I would rate them a six or seven in terms of support.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used a couple of products in the past, but the main reason for not adopting them was that the convenience was not comparable. There were no such two or three methodologies through which a user could get alerts, especially push notifications. Google Authenticator is available, but it does not offer push notifications. It offers them only for Google products, but may not work for other third-party applications. Microsoft Authenticator has some capabilities, but it runs quite smoothly on the Microsoft platform but may not work on any third party. Cisco Duo is quite neutral from a product standpoint.

How was the initial setup?

We ran POCs for a couple of months with Cisco Duo. After seeing the usability and user-friendliness, we slowly expanded it to a couple of users. Although it is a costly product, the features themselves enabled us to adopt it.

What about the implementation team?

The deployment of Cisco Duo has been done in-house.

What was our ROI?

As long as we are clearing the audits, that confirms that we are secure enough. We have been able to convince our security auditors that we are compliant with all the laws, at least from an MFA standpoint, regarding the return on investment from using Cisco Duo.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It has not reduced the cost for authentication-related functions, but the cost remains the same. There have not been many changes in the cost. However, because of the user convenience, we are pretty good with the existing cost.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have not deployed Duo Directory to manage user identities.

We have not implemented Duo's end-to-end phishing resistance with capabilities like proximity verification.

We are using CrowdStrike and we are not using SentinelOne.

What other advice do I have?

We certainly use Cisco Duo and Cisco switches and pre-switches, but those are the products.

We are a customer of Cisco.

We are not using Cisco Identity Intelligence.

Phishing attacks in our organization have increased, which is very common. It keeps fluctuating both ways, but we have been able to mitigate this quite well.

Cisco Duo is quite easy to deploy, and I do not see much technical challenges. Any technical team can adopt it quite easily. The overall rating for this review is nine out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Last updated: Feb 10, 2026
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
Charles R - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Jun 14, 2025
Push notifications improve security and convenience for faculty and staff
Pros and Cons
  • "The feature of Cisco Duo that I appreciate most is the push notifications. They are great."
  • "The feature of Cisco Duo that I appreciate most is the push notifications."
  • "Cisco Duo could be improved if there were a way to make two-factor authentication quicker."
  • "Regarding the stability and reliability of the Cisco Duo solution, we have experienced some outages over the last few years that are significant because people can't log in."

What is our primary use case?

My main use case for Cisco Duo is that we use it for two-factor authentication for all of our faculty and staff. We don't use it for our students, however, we implement it for faculty and staff.

How has it helped my organization?

The features of Cisco Duo improve our company by increasing security since they're relatively simple to use.

What is most valuable?

The feature of Cisco Duo that I appreciate most is the push notifications. They are great. I'm glad that they can be accessed from my watch personally. Many of our staff use the phone calls so they can just answer and press one without needing to pull out their mobile phone and get the code. 

From a management perspective, I appreciate that we can enroll or control devices on the back end for people who get a new phone and forget to handle Cisco Duo properly and need to add a new device.

It makes logging in easier than alternatives.

What needs improvement?

Cisco Duo could be improved if there were a way to make two-factor authentication quicker. Sometimes it takes a few seconds to jump from page to page during its login flow.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cisco Duo since probably 2020. It's hard to determine the exact timing with COVID. That's when everything started.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Regarding the stability and reliability of the Cisco Duo solution, we have experienced some outages over the last few years that are significant because people can't log in. 

While we wouldn't want those outages, they haven't been catastrophic or terrible enough to make us consider looking elsewhere.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Cisco Duo scales with the growing needs of my company. While we don't grow significantly as a university compared to some other companies, it scales appropriately for our size.

How are customer service and support?

I haven't had to interact much with customer service and technical support of the solution, so I don't have substantial feedback to provide.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We use two solutions on campus: Cisco Duo for faculty and staff, and Microsoft Authenticator for students. The main difference between the two is that Cisco Duo appears more reliable. Microsoft Authenticator seems to have more friction and breaks down more frequently, meaning users might complete the authentication flow but still not authenticate properly.

Our students use Microsoft Authenticator, and we get more negative feedback from that than we do from Cisco Duo. Cisco Duo works better than Microsoft Authenticator. Not everybody prefers two-factor authentication, however, Cisco Duo has the least friction of the two solutions we use.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment experience of Cisco Duo was relatively easy compared to other similar projects we've rolled out. This implementation seemed straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We had good support and guidance with the implementation, and we relied heavily on skilled people at Cisco to help us implement it properly.

What was our ROI?

Regarding the return on investment when using Cisco Duo, separate from the financial aspect, I cannot answer that thoroughly. 

It seems valuable and performs better than our other solution for faculty and staff, so I would hope it provides a better return on investment. I'm not familiar with the financial details.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have not considered other solutions while using Cisco Duo in the last five years.

What other advice do I have?

In evaluating the benefit of having a complete passwordless environment in my company, we're not entirely passwordless since we use Cisco Duo for two-factor authentication. We still authenticate with a password before being moved to a Cisco Duo page. If there's a passwordless feature, we're not utilizing it.

Regarding challenges when using Cisco Duo, issues are usually client-side related, such as someone's phone not working correctly. 

Regarding Advanced Identity Threat Detection and Response in Cisco Duo, I don't believe we utilize it. I have received inquiries when I've authenticated from new locations, however, I'm not certain if that's part of this feature.

My impression of Cisco Identity Intelligence's capability to detect and respond to identity-based risks is satisfactory. 

I have not used Cisco Duo's conversational AI interface for admin tasks.

I would rate Cisco Duo overall as probably an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Last updated: Jun 14, 2025
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Cisco Duo
February 2026
Learn what your peers think about Cisco Duo. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2026.
882,410 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer2801991 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Information Security Officer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
Feb 13, 2026
Identity intelligence has reduced detection time and now improves control over risky user behavior
Pros and Cons
  • "I now have the Identity Intelligence feature, which makes me very happy, and it was indeed the big feature, the big step ahead that we achieved thanks to Cisco Duo."
  • "At the moment, I believe that more integration between Cisco Duo Identity Intelligence and the classic Cisco Duo console can be improved, since it is still a separate platform, and when I click on Identity Intelligence, I have to open a new window and log in again."

What is our primary use case?

Our main use cases for Cisco Duo are to start using it for multifactor authentication and then to enforce the controls around endpoints and user behavior, and also the Identity Intelligence part to ensure a holistic approach around identity security.

What is most valuable?

As a CISO, I like the Cisco Duo Identity Intelligence feature the most because it allows me to collect a lot of insights and reduce the time to detect issues on identity.

An example of how Cisco Duo helped in my organization is that we reduced the time to detect anomalies in user or identity usage within our organization.

Now with the automation in Cisco Duo, we are able to open a ticket in three minutes after the platform is able to understand that there is something wrong, whereas previously, it could take hours for our CM to understand and correlate to understand that there was something that was not good happening.

What needs improvement?

At the moment, I believe that more integration between Cisco Duo Identity Intelligence and the classic Cisco Duo console can be improved, since it is still a separate platform, and when I click on Identity Intelligence, I have to open a new window and log in again.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cisco Duo for four years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I did not experience any crashes or downtime related to Cisco Duo; there were no issues at all.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of Cisco Duo in my organization is pretty easy; it is very scalable, and you can start easy and then little by little increase the tuning of the platform in order to achieve a higher level of identity security.

How are customer service and support?

Since I did not have any problems, I did not really use customer service, but I was able to talk with the Cisco Duo product team because we tested the Directory part a little bit earlier than others, and I had a good experience with them.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used other solutions before; initially, we were under Microsoft with their multifactor authentication system, but it was lacking some risk context and the risk control that Cisco Duo offers. Two years ago, we compared it with Google's multifactor authentication solution, but again, they were lacking some features that Cisco Duo has.

How was the initial setup?

I had no challenges with Cisco Duo deployment; we simply tested when running a pilot before the final rollout, which was very easy. We leverage a lot of smart working and remote working in our company, so we did not have the opportunity to have everyone at the office for training. Therefore, we pushed everything remotely, and everything worked perfectly.

What was our ROI?

I can say I have seen a return on investment from having Cisco Duo, as the deployment was not hard to do, saving time for our IT team, and we are able to block a lot of identity risks and issues. Although I have not calculated it, there is definitely a good return on investments.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Regarding the experience of pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco Duo, the setup cost was easy, and the licensing is pretty easy, not with so many levels. For example, the Identity Intelligence feature was a good surprise because it came with our actual licensing, so we didn't have to purchase an additional license. For pricing, we included it inside an enterprise agreement, which allowed us to get a good discount because it was together with other licenses.

What other advice do I have?

We are using Cisco Duo Identity Intelligence as well.

Cisco Duo Identity Intelligence has helped to improve the visibility of the identity risks because it is the platform that allowed us to gain more logs and more telemetry around identity.

I have not noticed any increase in phishing attacks in my organization recently, since last August, when there was a peak in August followed by a new level that was higher than before.

I feel the phishing attacks I am dealing with are maybe not harder but more frequent, and the volume of the phishing messages is raising little by little, while the complexity of the phishing campaigns is growing.

We have implemented the Cisco Duo end-to-end phishing-resistant solution.

For high-risk applications, I use a different level of controls, and we have enabled proximity verification in our organization.

The proximity check in Cisco Duo works fine, and it is easy to use, so my colleagues and employees are not so frustrated by the fact that they have to enter new data or clear a new level of authentication.

We are in the process of rolling out the Directory in the coming months, and we expect to perform a migration in March, so we are close to enrolling and using the Directory pretty soon.

I found that the Identity Intelligence feature was very interesting and an unexpected add-on because at the very beginning, it was not part of Cisco Duo four years ago.

I now have the Identity Intelligence feature, which makes me very happy, and it was indeed the big feature, the big step ahead that we achieved thanks to Cisco Duo.

I would rate this review as a 9.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Last updated: Feb 13, 2026
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
Sales Consultant Network And Security at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
Top 20
Feb 9, 2026
Unified authentication has simplified daily access and strengthened protection against phishing
Pros and Cons
  • "The biggest return on investment for me when using Cisco Duo is gaining time, as I don't have to look at ten different MFA apps, and I know it will work."
  • "An improvement for Cisco Duo would be a simplification of the licensing model since it's quite complicated to know what's included or not, especially now as it's part of Cisco Secure User Suite, and there are many modifications happening regarding the licensing."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use Cisco Duo for MFA purposes to aggregate MFA solutions, so we don't need five different apps for MFA on our phones, which is excellent. We also link it for identity posture with other Cisco solutions.

I don't think we use that part of Cisco Duo, perhaps other teams do, but not on my side.

We do use Cisco Duo to mitigate phishing attacks and make threat defense. We have a lot of attacks; some are clearly identified and discarded before they reach our emails, although some still reach our email. There are a lot of phishing attacks for us internally and for our clients.

What is most valuable?

The features of Cisco Duo that I have appreciated so far include the seamless integration with many MFA features, so we can correlate everything in one app and don't multiply MFA apps, which is excellent.

Cisco Duo helps our company by allowing us to manage many internal solutions we use efficiently. If every hundred solutions we use each had a different MFA app, we simply couldn't manage that on our phones; it would be too complicated. For security purposes, we want a real posture approach for our MFA to correlate who has access to what, making it easy for our internal security team to give access to those who can access the app.

What needs improvement?

An improvement for Cisco Duo would be a simplification of the licensing model since it's quite complicated to know what's included or not, especially now as it's part of Cisco Secure User Suite, and there are many modifications happening regarding the licensing.

We see the licensing model for Cisco Duo as favorable for our company since we are on NFR because we are a Cisco partner, so we're not exactly clients. The licensing model is quite good except for small countries like ours, where for less than 100 users, the cost is prohibitive, making it too expensive for small companies.

For how long have I used the solution?

Since I entered my current company, I have sold Cisco Duo to our clients, and inside our company, we use Cisco Duo as our MFA solution for some solutions we have running in our labs and also production solutions we have internally. It has been four years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We don't have any complaints about the stability and reliability of Cisco Duo; it is quite reliable.

How are customer service and support?

I am not in charge of customer service and technical support for Cisco Duo as it is managed by our technical team, but overall for Cisco, we are quite happy. I had a licensing problem last week that was solved in about two hours, so I am always satisfied.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What about the implementation team?

I'm not on the technical part of Cisco Duo's deployment process, so I don't deploy it myself, but I think our engineers are quite happy about it, and I haven't received negative feedback on that.

What was our ROI?

The biggest return on investment for me when using Cisco Duo is gaining time, as I don't have to look at ten different MFA apps, and I know it will work. On a daily basis, I could say I save around ten minutes not searching for the correct app, and if we multiply that by the number of days I work, it amounts to hours and even maybe days over the years, so that's excellent.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco Duo, I find it's not cheaper or more expensive than other products. We do have to pay sometimes for quality, but it's not an outrageous price, so I think it's at the right spot.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

My company considered some other solutions before choosing Cisco Duo, but I am not sure if I can disclose them.

The biggest difference I see between those solutions and Cisco Duo is the integration with the other Cisco features like ICE.

What other advice do I have?

I am not currently using Cisco Identity Intelligence, and I am not sure if it is part of ICE.

In my opinion, the spike in phishing attacks happens because AI simplifies it for hackers and malicious people to create attacks, as it's really easy for them to copy a website or an email that looks like an official Microsoft or other email and they can mass scale their attacks with ease, so it's not manual operations anymore, and they can generate thousands of attacks each day.

I have not implemented Duo's end-to-end phishing resistance with capabilities such as proximity verification internally.

I have not deployed Duo Directory to manage user identities, as I think it's linked to our AD.

Whether Cisco Duo has helped my company reduce its overall authentication-related costs, I don't know, but the ease of operation is definitely there. Cisco Duo makes everything easier.

I haven't heard any real complaints or gossip about the deployment.

I think the questions regarding my experience using Cisco Duo were quite exhaustive.

I would rate this review an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partners
Last updated: Feb 9, 2026
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
Dawid Viljoen - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer at a legal firm with 1-10 employees
Real User
Top 10
Dec 26, 2025
Secure access has protected remote portals and stopped spoofed logins with granular MFA controls
Pros and Cons
  • "Clients I implemented Cisco Duo at immediately feel more confident in their security environment, and we can see a lot of illegal attempts to get in, giving me faith in the product."
  • "One downside of Cisco Duo is the expense, as there are clients that can afford only the basic package, which does not include Geo-fencing, leaving them unable to pay for the more expensive level, which I do not feel justifies the double price of that upper tier version."

What is our primary use case?

My current use cases for Cisco Duo involve a pool of clients where most of our clients use Cisco Duo for MFA to access their online environments, whether it be a VPN connection back to their office or to Azure, where they usually have Cisco Duo protection on it. In our own environment, we also use Cisco Duo to access our company resources through a portal that is protected by Cisco Duo.

I am using the MFA component of Cisco Duo, which I think is the main component, along with all the granular functionalities such as bypass codes. We sync to Active Directory, and we utilize geofencing when our clients are traveling, allowing us to lift the geofencing off a certain account to grant them access. We do not really use the reporting features very much, only when we are troubleshooting to see why someone is unable to access their resources.

What is most valuable?

What I appreciate the most about Cisco Duo is the advanced license, which incorporates regional security such as geofencing, and I think that is quite valuable to have included. The bypass codes are also very useful from an administration point of view.

I think the integration of identity security into Cisco Duo's IAM solution is highly beneficial against modern threats, as it is integrated with many technologies and service providers to cover MFA, and it is quick and easy to set up.

I saw the benefits of Cisco Duo immediately after deployment; we started seeing spoofing attempts where the MFA request was not approved because the user was unaware of someone logging in. Clients I implemented Cisco Duo at immediately feel more confident in their security environment, and we can see a lot of illegal attempts to get in, giving me faith in the product.

What needs improvement?

One downside of Cisco Duo is the expense, as there are clients that can afford only the basic package, which does not include Geo-fencing, leaving them unable to pay for the more expensive level, which I do not feel justifies the double price of that upper tier version. That is about the only thing I would change, otherwise, it is a wonderful product, and I have interacted with their support quite often with no issues.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cisco Duo in my career overall for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have never seen any lagging, crashing, or downtime with Cisco Duo; I can definitely say we have not had any Cisco Duo outages across all the companies I have worked for that utilize Cisco Duo.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Cisco Duo is very scalable; with just a few clicks in the admin portal, I can add new portals and systems to cover with authentication, and it is almost too easy.

How are customer service and support?

I have contacted Cisco technical support a few times regarding technical matters, including transferring a client from their portal to our company portal, which was resolved almost instantly. I also got assistance for a trial license request from a client considering the more expensive license.

I would give Cisco Duo's support a nine out of ten, as there was one instance where I had to wait a bit to receive assistance, but that was just that one time.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used WatchGuard AuthPoint, the WatchGuard variation of an MFA product that is similar to Cisco Duo.

I definitely prefer Cisco Duo for the ease of configuration and how simple it is to use, while the WatchGuard counterpart is extremely difficult and technical to configure and set up.

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment of Cisco Duo was difficult because I had never used it before, and I had to set up a Cisco Duo AuthProxy server in a complicated environment. However, I reached out to Cisco Duo support, and their online documentation was of great help, so I managed to get it up and running, but it was not easy.

The first full setup of Cisco Duo took me about an entire afternoon, mainly due to configuring the AuthProxy component, and that was only after joining a company for about two weeks, which contributed to the learning curve. Cisco Duo, including the AuthProxy and the online portal portion, probably took two hours.

What about the implementation team?

Cisco Duo does not require maintenance on my end if set up correctly; linking it to Active Directory or something similar means no regular maintenance is needed. We only need to generate bypass codes when users struggle or when we adjust profiles for clients traveling.

What other advice do I have?

I have not utilized the end-to-end phishing resistance feature of Cisco Duo to its full extent.

I have noticed an increase in attempts to access resources illegitimately in my organization; we have two MFA products, Cisco Duo and WatchGuard, and in the logs, we see a lot of attempts. I do not know if that is an uptick in attempts, but there are definitely a lot of attempts going about.

I give this review a rating of ten out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Last updated: Dec 26, 2025
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
Security Engineer at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
MSP
Top 20
Feb 15, 2026
Reliable, feature-rich product that significantly improves authentication security
Pros and Cons
  • "I appreciate the secured push feature of Cisco Duo, which requires you to choose a number, because it enhances the security of your users, especially when combined with geolocation for a Verified Push, benefiting my company and our customers by making logins much more secure."
  • "I think the prices of Cisco Duo are quite fair, but the main problem is that Microsoft Authenticator is built-in with Microsoft 365, so everyone is switching to that and not using Cisco Duo because it is a standalone product that costs extra, despite the price being fair."

What is our primary use case?

I mainly help customers to setup Cisco Duo for multi-factor authentication.

How has it helped my organization?

Duo significantly increases phishing resistance for application access. So the main benefit is improved security.

What is most valuable?

Passwordless authentication - This is the future of secure access. By eliminating passwords entirely through FIDO2/WebAuthn, Duo removes the primary attack vector for credential theft while also simplifying the login experience for users.

What needs improvement?

Cisco Duo is technically excellent, but the main challenge is market positioning rather than product capability. Microsoft Authenticator comes bundled with Microsoft 365 at no additional cost, so many organizations default to that solution rather than purchasing Duo as a standalone product.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cisco Duo for approximately one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Cisco Duo is very stable. I have never experienced major outages or service disruptions. The product itself is reliable - any minor issues we've encountered were typically user configuration errors rather than platform problems.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is excellent. Being cloud-based, Duo handles any user count without infrastructure concerns. We've scaled it across multiple customers without performance issues.

How are customer service and support?

I have no experience with their support - I have never encountered issues that required contacting Cisco. The product documentation and admin portal have been sufficient

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Yes, I used Microsoft Authenticator but only as a end user. In my opinion, Duo is simpler and more intuitive. From an admin perspective, I can't give a review.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward and fast. Duo's phased rollout approach shows they understand real-world deployment challenges. Overall, it's very easy to implement.

What about the implementation team?

My company is a Cisco Duo reseller and partner, so we perform the deployments ourselves for our clients rather than using external integrators or consultants.

What was our ROI?

I don't have quantifiable ROI data. The value is primarily in risk mitigation - preventing phishing and credential theft. The cost of a single breach would far exceed the investment in Duo. I cannot speak to operational cost savings like reduced password reset tickets.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is fair and straightforward - per-user licensing makes budgeting simple. Setup is easy and intuitive. The licensing tiers are well-structured and easy to understand.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?


What other advice do I have?

9 out of 10. Duo is technically excellent - stable, feature-rich, with outstanding passwordless capabilities and straightforward deployment.

My advice: Take advantage of the free tier (up to 10 users) and 30-day trial to test it in your environment.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partnership
Last updated: Feb 15, 2026
Flag as inappropriate
PeerSpot user
Network Administrator at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
Feb 12, 2026
Strong multifactor protection has improved remote access security and simplified user management
Pros and Cons
  • "Cisco Duo benefits the company by increasing the security footprint, and it is easy to manage users, disable users, or bypass if needed in case of an emergency."

    What is our primary use case?

    Cisco Duo is used for multi-factor authentication for VPN users and remote access users. I only use the MFA feature of Cisco Duo, and the application is excellent. The dashboards and everything about managing the product is clean and intuitive.

    What is most valuable?

    Cisco Duo benefits the company by increasing the security footprint, and it is easy to manage users, disable users, or bypass if needed in case of an emergency. The MFA feature is particularly strong, with an excellent application interface. The dashboards and everything about managing the product is clean and intuitive.

    What needs improvement?

    I have not implemented Cisco Duo's end-to-end phishing resistance with capabilities such as proximity verification. I am very happy with Cisco Duo as it is and would not be able to name a feature that could be improved. It was easy to set up and manage, making it an excellent product.

    I am uncertain whether Cisco Duo should focus on AI or cost-effectiveness. It is not an expensive product for our company size, and I am unsure what AI could benefit in the solution.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been working in my area of expertise for about 12 years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    I have not experienced any downtime with Cisco Duo proxy or the Cisco Duo service in the setup. The only downtime occurs when upgrading the proxy server.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Cisco Duo scales with the growing needs of the company straightforwardly. I have not implemented the other features of Cisco Duo such as Passport, but purchasing more licenses and adding more users is simple.

    How are customer service and support?

    I have never had to reach out to Cisco Duo's customer service or technical support, so I cannot comment from experience, but I am confident they are competent at what they do.

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    Prior to adopting Cisco Duo, I was using YubiKey.

    Before choosing Cisco Duo, I considered YubiKey. I had been using YubiKey for some time, but when evaluating a platform to perform multi-factor authentication for the organization, I advocated strongly for Cisco Duo because I had been using the Cisco Duo product for a long time for all two-factor authentication needs, and I was already satisfied with the product.

    I did not set up YubiKey, so I am not familiar with its technical specifications. YubiKey is a physical key on a keychain that is inserted into a USB port, and they are prone to breaking. Cisco Duo has always been on my mobile phone, making it simple to transfer everything when my phone breaks or I receive a new one.

    How was the initial setup?

    My experience with deploying Cisco Duo was straightforward, following the documentation. The only issue I encountered was that the documentation was somewhat outdated regarding the file structure of Cisco Duo proxy, but this was not difficult to resolve in a few minutes.

    What about the implementation team?

    I started the implementation, and then another project took priority, which is why Cisco Duo Directory has not been deployed.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Pricing for Cisco Duo is good, at least for the company size and scale. The setup process was simple. Cisco Duo provides excellent documentation on everything from the proxy and the RADIUS, and how the two should connect. It was a straightforward process, and I was up and running in about one day.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    Before choosing Cisco Duo, I considered YubiKey. I had been using YubiKey for some time, but when evaluating a platform to perform multi-factor authentication for the organization, I pushed hard for Cisco Duo because I had been using the Cisco Duo product for a long time for all two-factor authentication needs, and I was already satisfied with the product.

    What other advice do I have?

    I have tried Cisco Duo Directory to manage user identities, but it has not been deployed yet.

    I am not currently using Cisco Identity Intelligence.

    I have not noticed any increase in phishing attacks in the company recently.

    I would rate Cisco Duo a 10 because it is easy to manage, quick to set up, and offers good value for the price point, contributing to the organization's security. I would recommend going straight with Cisco Duo because it offers probably the best value for the price point, and setup is quick to reach a testing phase.

    Cisco Duo has not helped the company reduce overall authentication-related costs, but the organization does gain value from it, even though there is a cost involved.

    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    Last updated: Feb 12, 2026
    Flag as inappropriate
    PeerSpot user
    reviewer2802351 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Director at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Top 20
    Feb 11, 2026
    Multi-factor protection has secured all user access and simplifies single sign-on integration
    Pros and Cons
    • "Regarding the stability and reliability of Cisco Duo, it is very good."
    • "Cisco Duo did not help reduce the cost of the overall authentication method that we have in our company; instead, it increased, obviously."

    What is our primary use case?

    My main use case for Cisco Duo is providing MFA for all of our users and use cases.

    The first focus with Cisco Duo is securing externally available applications, such as SaaS applications. Mostly, we ingest or enforce Cisco Duo via our SSO IDP point because then we do not have to worry about the native integration with whatever application we are trying to secure. If it is SSO capable, we inject Cisco Duo into that.

    What is most valuable?

    When it came about, I was a big fan of the risk-based authentication feature of Cisco Duo. That was a big win. Additionally, the Verified Push after the Cisco breach was important, as Cisco recognized that they had to do something about that and they came up with the Verified Push, which is also a very good idea. Nowadays, if I would have known a couple years back what I know today, I would not have worried about that too much because I would have just moved over to passwordless and phishing-resistant MFA means in the first place.

    What needs improvement?

    The major improvement I would suggest for Cisco Duo would have been to collaborate with Microsoft more closely and get positioned in a way as a recognized MFA authentication method on Entra. Since Microsoft forced all of their customers to enforce MFA when logging into anything in the Microsoft universe, Cisco Duo was not a recognized way of doing that. It was enforced as an external authentication method, as Microsoft calls it, and it was not a native Cisco Duo integration. Even the external one was not possible to select as a default, so we had to use something else along with it, which for us was Microsoft. That was very annoying.

    Cisco Duo did not help reduce the cost of the overall authentication method that we have in our company; instead, it increased, obviously. Cisco Duo was the first technology that we introduced, which had to not just change or implement a certain technology. That was the easy part; the hard part was changing the habits and the culture, getting people to accept what MFA is and to go through the hassle of MFA every single time. The total cost of ownership increased, along with the implementation and the license cost, as well as the reluctance of users to handle IT systems. Security is always a fine balance, where we have to explain to the users what we are doing, why we are doing it, and not overdo it.

    Where it lagged behind a lot is in the RDP integration, because we have users, especially in Germany or other jurisdictions, where we cannot force users to use their phone. Therefore, we had to give them some kind of Passkeys, and they are not supported in every use case, or if they are accepted, it is extremely tedious. With standards such as OAuth or FIDO2, that can vastly be improved. Apart from that, it is a very solid MFA solution.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using Cisco Duo for seven or eight years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Regarding the stability and reliability of Cisco Duo, it is very good. It always does exactly what it is supposed to do, with no downtime over the years that we have had it in use, despite the issues I mentioned with Microsoft, where we were not able to integrate Cisco Duo at all.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    Prior to Cisco Duo, I did not use another MFA solution; that was the first one.

    How was the initial setup?

    I would describe the experience of deploying Cisco Duo as super simple. It was straightforward, one of the easiest consoles I ever had to implement.

    What was our ROI?

    I can still say that I have seen a return on investment from Cisco Duo, as having MFA is a basic requirement nowadays. MFA is considered state-of-the-art if you look at things such as GDPR or any other information security framework, so not having MFA means you cannot put a price tag on that because you will be hit with ransomware immediately.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Cisco Duo is that we have it as part of an Enterprise License Agreement, so that is probably not comparable.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    Before adopting Cisco Duo, I evaluated a couple of other solutions, but at that time, Cisco Duo won out primarily because it was available as part of the Enterprise License Agreement, and we were a big Cisco shop already.

    What other advice do I have?

    I am not using Cisco Identity Intelligence.

    I have not noticed an increase in phishing attacks recently in my organization because we are pretty well set up in terms of email protection.

    I just learned about the Proximity Verification capability with Cisco Duo. We do not have it because we are already using Passkeys, so we no longer need Proximity Verification.

    I did not deploy Cisco Duo Directory to manage the user identity.

    I would give this review an overall rating of 8.

    Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
    Last updated: Feb 11, 2026
    Flag as inappropriate
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Cisco Duo Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: February 2026
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Cisco Duo Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.