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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
74
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (4th), ZTNA as a Service (6th), 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 August 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 9.2%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of One Identity Defender is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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

"They are users who, as mentioned before, utilize RDPAP and MDPAP. It includes functionalities related to finance, specifically in single sign-on."
"It is very easy. Having just wrapped up my tenure at Cisco, it was used day in and day out for security. It was always easy to log in and not have to worry about logging in multiple times."
"It's easy to deploy. It's easy to manage. It's easy to integrate with other applications."
"The app has greater stability than rival solutions such as Google Authenticator, and Duo Push authentication is a valuable feature."
"Cisco Duo scales with the growing needs of our organization by making it easy to acquire more licensing, especially with an enterprise agreement, which allows built-in growth and minimizes worries about licensing as we expand."
"Since Duo Security provides a single place to log in for our SaaS applications, we don't have to manage user accounts and remember passwords for each specific application."
"My total rating for Cisco Duo is ten out of ten."
"It meets our security needs very well. It is easy to use, and documentation is also available. It is also very stable and scalable, and its support is also very good. We are satisfied with this solution."
"One Identity Defender has good network protection."
"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."
 

Cons

"From an administrative standpoint, I'd love to see it be a little better at remembering a device and location so that I don't have to continually authenticate. That's pretty much it."
"Integration with a product such as Microsoft Sentinel would be great. As the product continually improves, I'm unsure if this feature is available."
"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."
"The product could be more intuitive on the app."
"I'm unsure how to disable the ping notification sound on my phone when using Cisco Duo."
"We had some trouble with the password reset function."
"The price of Cisco Duo could be better."
"An enhancement they might make is if they can log it to Splunk since they're big into Splunk. Instead of me having to go into that portal to look at things when someone is trying to log in and they forgot their password, I can look in and tell them they forgot their password or didn't respond to the prompt. That would be an improvement."
"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

"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."
"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."
"The cost was reasonable. Licensing was pretty straightforward for a change."
"Cisco's licensing is always a bit complicated to understand, but the price is fair. It could be more expensive than others, but the way they integrate everything, it has a fair price."
"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."
"Overall, the pricing is fair. Customers can wrap it into their Enterprise Agreement, making it easier for them to solve their issues."
"Duo Security's pricing is good, fair, and very comparable to today's market."
"The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
No data available
 

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?
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: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.