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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
61
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Cisco Security Portfolio (4th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
One Identity Defender
Ranking in Authentication Systems
15th
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 May 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 9.7%, 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

"The anti-phishing feature is the most valuable."
"Regarding the valuable features, I would say that Duo Security is easy to use, has speed, and is dependable."
"It has definitely reduced embedding. We found a lot of problems with attackers being able to compromise accounts. Now, when they try to access accounts, they are not able to do so because there is an added layer of protection. Once we know that a username and password are compromised, we just reset the password to protect the company."
"It's simple. It's reliable. I haven't had any issues with it."
"It's easy to deploy. It's easy to manage. It's easy to integrate with other applications."
"My overall rating for the solution is ten out of ten."
"The product is reliable and easy to use."
"It's pretty easy for users to figure it out."
"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

"We had some trouble with the password reset function."
"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."
"There was an issue related to integration with third parties."
"Cisco Duo is a modern product that does not support older applications, lacking backward compatibility. It should work on supporting legacy applications and legacy approaches."
"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 price of Cisco Duo could be better."
"Cisco can further enhance the integrations, as they possess exceptional integrations with various providers' products and feature sets."
"I'm not a big fan of relicensing products every year or two years, but that's the model at the moment. I prefer to go back to licensing perpetually or permanent licensing."
"Maybe it could provide support for more web applications. It seems more focused on IIS web applications."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price wise, it's not cheap, but it's not expensive at all either. It's in the middle."
"It is affordable for what's coming to the table with it, but in this day and age, the cost is looked at under a microscope, and companies need to very finely define what is needed versus what is critical. In some cases, it might not be cost-effective for a company to have it. In a lot of other cases, it is the cost of doing business."
"Overall, the pricing is fair. Customers can wrap it into their Enterprise Agreement, making it easier for them to solve their issues."
"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 rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"The product’s pricing is reasonable."
"The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it."
"I haven't seen it in a while, but it's at par with everything else licensing-wise."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
Non Profit
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Retailer
13%
Government
11%
 

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 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.
851,823 professionals have used our research since 2012.