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Cisco Duo vs IBM Security Verify Access 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 Single Sign-On (SSO)
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Cisco Security Portfolio (4th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
IBM Security Verify Access
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (25th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (18th), Access Management (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 6.1%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security Verify Access is 2.3%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

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.
AsifIqbal - PeerSpot reviewer
Has good scalability and is stable with no glitches; has a multi-factor authentication feature
What we'd like improved in IBM Security Access Manager is its onboarding process as it's complex, particularly when onboarding new applications. We need to be very, very careful during the onboarding. We have no issues with IBM Security Access Manager because the solution works fine, apart from the onboarding process and IBM's involvement in onboarding issues. If we need support related to the onboarding, we've noticed a pattern where support isn't available, or they don't have much experience, or we're not getting a response from them. We're facing the same issue with IBM Guardium. As we're just focusing on the multi-factor authentication feature of IBM Security Access Manager and we didn't explore any other features, we don't have additional features to suggest for the next release of the solution, but we're in discussion about exploring ID management and access management features, but those are just possibilities because right now, we're focused on exploring our domain.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is reliable and easy to use."
"Another feature is the single pane of glass management. That's important for analytics and also for troubleshooting. It means there's one place that you go to at least start the troubleshooting process."
"The ability for users to authenticate via phone, from any random phone number, has been very helpful for managing a distributed workforce. Using it across a distributed network for securing access to our applications is big for us."
"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."
"Duo Security improved my organization by helping us secure all access points within the company infrastructure."
"Documentation is the most valuable feature, and if you ever have to reach out to them with a question, their support is also fantastic."
"If you have to log in to something, you must go to Duo Security to confirm that you're who you are on your phone."
"The multi-factor authentication process and the geo-locking features are great."
"From the integration point of view, it supports SAML, OIDC, and OAuth. For legacy applications that don't have support for SAML and other new protocols, it provides single sign-on access to end-users. From the integration compatibility point of view, it is highly capable."
"The solution has powerful authentification and authorization. It offers a good way to increase security."
"It's a good solution for identification and access management."
"Its stability and UI are most valuable."
"I have found this solution to be really practical and when a user wants to log in, it is effortless and runs smooth."
"The tool provides a password vault, single sign-on, and multifactor authentication. It offers various authentication methods like fingerprint integration, one-time passwords, or tokens sent via email or SMS. This ensures secure access to your accounts by providing multiple authentication options."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Security Access Manager, at least for my company, is multi-factor authentication. That's the only feature my company is using. The solution works well and has no glitches. IBM Security Access Manager is a very good solution, so my company is still using it."
 

Cons

"The only challenge is finding the right person sometimes. From what I've seen, being a named account is a big deal."
"The product price needs improvement."
"Duo has some issues that we're trying to work through. For example, if I install it on a WordPress site and another admin needs to log in, they can't because Duo hasn't been set up for them. It doesn't appear that I can add permissions on a user-by-user basis. It's not obvious."
"They could just continue to add more integrations."
"Integration with a product such as Microsoft Sentinel would be great. As the product continually improves, I'm unsure if this feature is available."
"Sometimes, it's a little harder for customers to adopt."
"When you come to the push in Duo Security, there are some integrations where you have to use the code instead of the push functionality."
"I wish that the support would be a little bit more prompt and a little bit more flexible because there are certain things that they will do and certain things they won't do."
"Configuration could be simplified for the end-user."
"They can improve the single sign-on configuration for OIDC and OAuth. That is not very mature in this product, and they can improve it in this particular area. OIDC is a third-party integration that we do with the cloud platforms, and OAuth is an authorization mechanism for allowing a user having an account with Google or any other provider to access an application. Organizations these days are looking for just-in-time provisioning use cases, but IBM Security Access Manager is not very mature for such use cases. There are only a few applications that can be integrated, and this is where this product is lagging. However, in terms of configuration and single sign-on mechanisms, it is a great product."
"The solution could be classified as a hilt system. There are a lot of resources being used and it is suitable for very large enterprises or the public sector."
"The user interface needs to be simplified, it's complex and not user-friendly."
"What we'd like improved in IBM Security Access Manager is its onboarding process as it's complex, particularly when onboarding new applications. We need to be very, very careful during the onboarding. We have no issues with IBM Security Access Manager because the solution works fine, apart from the onboarding process and IBM's involvement in onboarding issues. If we need support related to the onboarding, we've noticed a pattern where support isn't available, or they don't have much experience, or we're not getting a response from them. We're facing the same issue with IBM Guardium. As we're just focusing on the multi-factor authentication feature of IBM Security Access Manager and we didn't explore any other features, we don't have additional features to suggest for the next release of the solution, but we're in discussion about exploring ID management and access management features, but those are just possibilities because right now, we're focused on exploring our domain."
"There are a lot of areas that can be improved, but the main area is the lack of customization. You cannot easily customize anything in the product. It is not easy to tweak the functionality. It is challenging to change the out-of-the-box functionality."
"The user interface for users and administrators could be improved to make it easier. Automating some functions could also be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You pay per user when using this solution and the pricing is fair."
"It was very reasonable."
"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."
"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."
"I believe the licensing model is excellent as it offers flexibility to our customers, allowing them to adopt a crawl, walk, or run approach."
"I am not aware of the pricing. There are two departments, and I don't have any information about them."
"From a business perspective, it is a little bit costly. The licensing is on a per-user basis."
"I haven't seen any information on the pricing in four years, so I can't comment on that."
"The product is not expensive. It depends on the number of users."
"The license and costs depend on the amount range of users you have. For just approximately 2,000 users, the price is practical and fair. However, when you have 20,000 users, it starts to become really expensive, and the discount per user is not attractive enough to go ahead and purchase."
"It costs about 300K AED for a year. Its pricing is a bit on the higher end, but in comparison to other products in the market, its price is still better. There are lots of other products that are very costly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Insurance Company
16%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about IBM Security Access Manager?
The tool provides a password vault, single sign-on, and multifactor authentication. It offers various authentication methods like fingerprint integration, one-time passwords, or tokens sent via ema...
What needs improvement with IBM Security Access Manager?
The user interface for users and administrators could be improved to make it easier. Automating some functions could also be beneficial.
 

Also Known As

Duo Security
IBM Security Verify Access (SVA), IBM Security Access Manager, ISAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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