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Cisco Duo vs RSA Adaptive Authentication comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
6.9
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (4th), Access Management (5th), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (3rd)
RSA Adaptive Authentication
Ranking in Authentication Systems
25th
Average Rating
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.7%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of RSA Adaptive Authentication is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo3.7%
RSA Adaptive Authentication1.3%
Other95.0%
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

Charles Slaustas - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
Supports seamless authentication for users across multiple organizations and personal portals
The features I use in Cisco Duo include Duo Pushes to confirm my identity to the device, and eventually as MFA security was increased, I actually had to use exchange passcodes. Sometimes, I have to go into the site and get into Cisco Duo to retrieve the passcode, and many of them have been two-factor, where the sites send a passcode that I have to enter into Cisco Duo. It has been more of the latter. I have not seen issues with lagging or crashing on Cisco Duo's end; it was usually on the client end, often because someone set up a bad upgrade or there were connection issues with the Cisco Duo cloud through the administrative site.
Directorc4e7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Cyber Security at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
We need better ease of use; the product is overly complicated
There are many use cases that we have defined based on our business needs Ingestion of logs and raising alert space on those logs are the most valuable features. The product is basically unusable. We need better ease of use; it's overly complicated. It has taken years to implement. We used RSA…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In my opinion, the best features Cisco Duo offers include its 2FA authentication, which is very good, everything is perfect about the features, it is very easy to use, and the integration with other systems is very good."
"Right now, I do not think there is anything about Cisco Duo that I would improve; I have been happy with everything so far."
"It has continuously evolved by introducing new solutions and products to address emerging security threats in our industry, demonstrating its commitment to staying ahead of evolving security challenges."
"As a former employee, I think it's top-notch when it comes to protecting internal and external threats and preventing unauthorized access to the network."
"The UI of Cisco Duo is easy to use, especially the web backend, and it's really intuitive and easy to set up."
"Regarding stability and reliability of Cisco Duo, I would say it is 99.9% reliable and stable."
"Regarding the valuable features, I would say that Duo Security is easy to use, has speed, and is dependable."
"The technical support is of a very high level, and if you have a problem they will be able to support you, logging in remotely as an engineer to give assistance, and with the upgraded license the support is even better and they will do everything for you if you have a problem, so the support is extremely good."
"Ingestion of logs and raising alert space on those logs are the most valuable features."
"Once we started adopting these products, we've seen the fraud losses go down considerably."
"The capability to manage your business policy related to security when required without vendor involvement."
"Risk Engine’s risk score, eFN, GeoIP, and device binding all coming together in the Policy Rules to decide when to escalate to MFA."
"The most valuable feature is the stock tokens. That works the best for us."
"It has reduced false positives greatly in our fraud detection ability."
"One of the most valuable features is the fraud detection capability with minimal friction in the customer experience."
"Our customer are seeing value from the product, as they experience cost reductions. They can stop fraud from their customers, then their customers can have a better experience from their services."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, it's a little harder for customers to adopt."
"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."
"I believe Cisco Duo needs to be improved on the delay process because there is a delay when we send a Duo Push or when we are signing into any applications."
"Regarding the stability and reliability of the Cisco Duo solution, we have experienced some outages over the last few years that are significant because people can't log in."
"Cisco Duo could be improved if there were a way to make two-factor authentication quicker."
"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."
"Cisco Duo can be improved by exploring a way to make it a more seamless integration and by deploying an in-house server."
"To improve Cisco Duo, wherever the team can try to reduce the number of clicks an end user needs to go through to authenticate would be good."
"I would like to see a more adaptive type of solution, something that we could use on our web pages..."
"Better filters when searching for events. The current features for current filters when searching fraud events are not very comprehensive. You can only filter by certain fields in the transaction."
"Reporting modules is one of the major areas that can be improved further."
"It has taken years to implement."
"The product is basically unusable. We need better ease of use; it's overly complicated."
"RSA Adaptive Authentication lacks a mechanism to verify the identity of a new user in the Enrollment event workflow."
"I think I would like to see them use more of our data, and give us more ability to control or configure how the protection patterns work for a specific business, and also provide more transparency into the methodology."
"It's an okay solution. It's just old technology and it's time to move on."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it."
"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."
"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."
"It was very reasonable."
"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"I haven't seen it in a while, but it's at par with everything else licensing-wise."
"You pay per user when using this solution and the pricing is fair."
"Its price is reasonable. It is not highly expensive."
"The pricing is $50 per head, yearly."
"Keep the proxy service layer on premises. That consumes SaaS security services on the back-end."
"You may need to opt for second best if funding is low and the number of users is huge. However, the pricing is able to be negotiated if your user figures are huge."
"Customers need to deploy the solution in a very expensive infrastructure. RSA should should think about a less expensive infrastructure for customers because the solution costs around $100,000, and the infrastructure needed to support that solution may be even more expensive than that price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Construction Company
16%
Healthcare Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise79
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
Regarding Cisco Duo's affordability for the Ukrainian market, I think it is affordable. It depends on an installation base. For a medium and mid-range market, I think it is a fully affordable price...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
Cisco Duo is a fully cloud-based solution. It would be beneficial if Cisco provided a fully on-premise solution. I have discussed this with the local Cisco office in Kyiv regarding any possibility ...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Duo Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ADP, Ameritas, Partners Healthcare
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. RSA Adaptive Authentication and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.