Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco Duo vs One Identity Defender comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Duo
Ranking in Authentication Systems
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Cisco Security Portfolio (6th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
One Identity Defender
Ranking in Authentication Systems
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 9.8%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of One Identity Defender is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

RyanDeppe - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps reduce the risk of a breach and is easy to deploy and onboard
For our customers, Duo Security is a significant advantage because it provides them with a straightforward method to implement MFA across their entire environment. Moreover, once we delve into the more advanced features of Duo Security, it enables us as a partner to engage in ongoing discussions regarding security strategies with our customers. Initially, we may only introduce them to MFA during the onboarding process. However, as their security strategy evolves, we can leverage Duo to perform additional tasks such as risk-based assessments and deployments, thereby assisting in the development of their security measures. Duo Security helps secure our infrastructure. It serves as our gateway layer of protection, allowing us to understand who is logging in and why. We conduct risk-based assessments on each user to determine whether their actions are appropriate or not. Duo Security is not a comprehensive security solution, but it is undoubtedly a crucial component, a critical layer of security. This aspect resonates with our customers consistently. Their ability to reduce the risk of a breach is of utmost importance. It serves as the primary line of defense. Currently, credential gathering and leaks are widespread in the market. By implementing an MFA solution like Duo Security, we can effectively prevent these issues. When we put a stop to credential harvesting, it becomes much harder for attackers to infiltrate and navigate our network. Therefore, Duo Security acts as an excellent first line of defense. User authentication and device verification are the methods through which we envision our customers navigating in order to prevent identity-based attacks. Initially, when we employ Duo Security, it is a straightforward implementation of multi-factor authentication. As we progress, we enhance security measures by incorporating device risk assessment and potentially even regional assessment. This includes considerations such as whether the login is being attempted from a specific IP address. These gradual enhancements contribute to the establishment of an additional layer of protection. Thus, it is not necessary to implement a completely disruptive strategy right from the start. Instead, it is possible to gradually adopt and integrate this approach, following a crawl, walk, or run methodology. The Duo Security self-service portal helps free up our customers' IT staff time, allowing them to focus on other projects. As a Cisco partner, we have received feedback from our customers that the portal is highly interactive, enabling them to easily navigate and resolve issues. After setting up their Duo environment, we rarely receive callbacks for assistance, as the portal is intuitive and empowers users to handle everything they need on their own. The appealing aspect of Duo Security is its ability to establish trust for every access request, regardless of its origin. It is a cloud-based solution with excellent API integrations. It doesn't matter where or how a user logs in; Duo will be there to protect the user, whether it's through MFA, risk assessment, or similar methods. It is extremely beneficial to our customers that Duo Security considers all resources as external. Our customers frequently inquire about a zero-trust model, and this is a key component of it. Unfortunately, I would love to say that there is a simple solution for zero trust where we can just deploy this solution and be done with it. But that's not the case. It requires a layered approach, and that's what we convey to our customers. Duo Security is definitely a part of that. Duo Security has helped improve our customers' cybersecurity resilience. Internally, it protects our users from accessing sales operations-based environments. Additionally, our customers use it regularly to protect business-critical applications.
Maksym Tkachenko - PeerSpot reviewer
Good compatibility, responsive support, and a nice interface
The solution works very well. The initial setup is pretty easy. It is stable and pretty reliable in general. We find that the product scales very well.  Technical support is responsive. The interface is good.  It is compatible with other products.  It has everything we need right now. The login…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I love Duo Security's push notifications. It's simple, fast, and secure. From the user's perspective, the solution is seamless. The security aspect is great."
"We get fewer threats to remediate due to the two-factor authentication, which does not allow as many threats through."
"The two-factor login is great. I receive a message and just have to press okay."
"The most valuable feature of Duo Security is the ability for the user to easily approve access. The application prompts the user, and they can see the location and the IP address. This makes it easy for the user to approve it and go through the process of logging in to the VPN."
"The most valuable features of Duo Security are visibility and OTP authentication. The OTP is very important because it is a self-enrollment feature, you are able to enroll users very quickly with a shorter time period."
"I lead an IT organization that has a significant amount of technical debt, and we're not in a zero-trust architecture yet. I'm pushing in that direction. Duo helps me considerably with my identity in an environment where I don't have zero trust. It's helping me bridge the gap until I can build a zero trust architecture."
"Duo has allowed us to add an additional layer of security to our organization and to establish trust for every access request and secures our environment."
"The app has greater stability than rival solutions such as Google Authenticator, and Duo Push authentication is a valuable feature."
"One Identity Defender has good network protection."
"We find that the product scales very well."
"It's very fast, and it's easy to use because it's integrated with Active Directory."
 

Cons

"I would appreciate it if Duo Security could improve its integrations with Windows Hello."
"While two-factor authentication with mobile devices provides a high level of security, it's still not foolproof, as someone could potentially steal your phone. It would be beneficial to have information about the authentication location."
"We were considering purchasing other products, like AMP for Endpoints, and it was not properly integrated with the firewall function. It might be better now with SecureX."
"The technical engineers in the first line of support should improve their knowledge."
"We have users who move throughout the world, and their levels of connectivity change. It can be a challenge, if someone is in Bahrain, to authenticate via Duo."
"The price of Cisco Duo could be better."
"I would like to see Duo Security increase the time that the users have to log into the devices. The maximum time interval is 50 minutes at the moment, and I would like it to be 60 minutes. When you try to log into a device and have to authenticate yourself, sometimes it's not very pleasant. It's not the best thing particularly if you have to do this every 50 minutes, which is the maximum time that Duo gives. This makes it difficult to use and does not save time."
"Most of my colleagues from other companies use the Microsoft MFA solution because it's included in Office 365. Few people are considering Cisco Duo. That's the primary problem in our area. It's a solution mostly adopted by Cisco users."
"We have some clients that are wanting to protect their Apache web servers with One Identity Defender but all the research I have done says cannot be done. It can only be oriented to an IIS server. One Identity Defender should have more integration with more types of web servers."
"The login capabilities could be better."
"Maybe it could provide support for more web applications. It seems more focused on IIS web applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has a fair pricing model. I know they have different tiers, but it would be nice to have different types of licenses for certain groups of users in our organization. That way, we wouldn't have to lump everybody into one group. That would be also one complaint."
"It falls in line with everything else."
"Its price is reasonable. It is not highly expensive."
"I haven't seen any information on the pricing in four years, so I can't comment on that."
"The pricing was a lot more than what we were paying for our previous solution."
"Their pricing model is a little bit weird. Currently, there is no price advantage in signing up for yearly contracts. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing costs."
"The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it."
"Price wise, it's not cheap, but it's not expensive at all either. It's in the middle."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Authentication Systems solutions are best for your needs.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
24%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Non Profit
15%
Retailer
12%
Government
12%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What do you like most about Duo Security?
They are users who, as mentioned before, utilize RDPAP and MDPAP. It includes functionalities related to finance, specifically in single sign-on.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
The setup cost is reasonable, estimated at around six euros per month.
What do you like most about One Identity Defender?
It's very fast, and it's easy to use because it's integrated with Active Directory.
What needs improvement with One Identity Defender?
Maybe it could provide support for more web applications. It would be useful to focus on other web applications. For example, if an application needs to be installed on an iOS server and it's not, ...
What is your primary use case for One Identity Defender?
Our primary use cases include functions such as role-based access control, user registration, and integration with other systems. We use it to improve the security of our web applications. Addition...
 

Also Known As

Duo Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Bakersfield Police Department, Village of Westmont, Illinois
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. One Identity Defender and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.