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Cisco Duo vs One Identity Defender comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 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
75
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (4th), Access Management (5th), ZTNA as a Service (5th), Cisco Security Portfolio (4th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (2nd)
One Identity Defender
Ranking in Authentication Systems
28th
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 October 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 8.1%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of One Identity Defender is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Duo8.1%
One Identity Defender1.0%
Other90.9%
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

Thomas Botts - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing security policies effectively with seamless authentication
The feature of Cisco Duo that I prefer the most is the policies, being able to control what we need to within the policies. You can get pretty granular. There isn't a lot of training that goes on in school districts. Email is an easy way where many people give out their credentials, so the level of protection is something that we definitely need in a school district. Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system has been easy when logging in, although the teachers don't appreciate it as much. We have it configured so users essentially just hit accept. If it sees any sort of built-in risk, then it steps up authentication. It's pretty easy. I appreciate it. I've encountered advantages with Cisco Duo in that it has stopped significant pushback from teachers. It has prevented credential sharing and unauthorized access. We've seen a huge decrease since we've rolled it out across the entire district.
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

"The anti-phishing feature is the most valuable."
"For me, the biggest return on investment when using Cisco Duo is my time."
"The most valuable aspect is the authentication and the SSO."
"Cisco is the perfect product for our current size, and I don't think we'll have problems with scalability as we grow."
"Multifactor authentication and secure two-factor authentication are the most valuable features. It's been around for a while, but now it's becoming an enforced behavior as opposed to something that you used to do as optional."
"What I most appreciate about Cisco Duo is the ease of use."
"The feature that my organization started using more recently in Cisco Duo is offline authentication."
"The single pane of glass management is very important and it is part of the reason we went with Duo. Anything we can do to save time for our administrators, help desk staff, and engineers, is valuable to us."
"It's very fast, and it's easy to use because it's integrated with Active Directory."
"We find that the product scales very well."
"One Identity Defender has good network protection."
 

Cons

"Integration between Duo Security and FTDs needs improvement. Integrating Next Generation Firewall safety with Duo Security currently requires a proxy agent between Active Directory and the appliance. It's an additional factor that we need to think about. It would be great to have direct integration with FTD so that we don't have to worry about middleware products. For the rest of the Cisco Secure solutions, the APIs need improvement."
"Duo Security could be improved with the addition of more applications."
"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."
"Smart Licensing needs improvement. It's terrible. We have problems with it every year and we need to involve support to fix it."
"There might be a little slowness, but that could be my connection."
"They can make authentication easier. It should be done in a shorter time. Sometimes, it can take a bit more time to get the answer on your phone. You have to wait a bit longer to get the SMS code and other things. There can be some internet or connection issues. They should make it faster because sometimes, it's urgent, and you need to access something as soon as possible."
"I believe there are two new features. I am interested in adding auto-admin services and incorporating icons for easier navigation. This could contribute to a new business idea platform. I have seen the features, and they make things easier, resolving issues from before. The platform has been updated, and there's now another link in my platform for media access. When it comes to improvements, the UI can be more user-friendly, and there is room for easier navigation. Perhaps there could be enhancements in customization. I haven't faced issues in storage or backup, but I am open to improvements in customization functionality. It's not my environment, but I see possibilities for improvement in the deployment of funds. The addition of new features is appreciated, and for customization, it could provide more freedom for users."
"One area that might be improved is that setting up SMS texting is not as easy as using the app, even though it does support it."
"The login capabilities could be better."
"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."
"Maybe it could provide support for more web applications. It seems more focused on IIS web applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With regard to pricing, for a small business buying a one off, it's pretty expensive. If it's an enterprise that has thousands of employees, however, it's really nothing to protect your data because if your network goes down or it's breached, you're losing millions of dollars every minute. When it comes to a large enterprise, it's priced where it should be because you're talking business to business. You're not talking business to consumer."
"From a business perspective, it is a little bit costly. The licensing is on a per-user basis."
"Price wise, it's not cheap, but it's not expensive at all either. It's in the middle."
"The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it."
"The cost was reasonable. Licensing was pretty straightforward for a change."
"Price-wise, the solution has been very, very reasonable...Licensing is the last thing I think about Duo Security because it's so easy, and I had no problems with it."
"My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been good, with no issues. I am pleased that the prices remained stable after Cisco acquired the solution."
"It was very reasonable."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Non Profit
12%
Retailer
12%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise36
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?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco Duo is honestly above my pay grade. I don't know any of that.
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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: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.