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Cisco Duo vs Secret Double Octopus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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)
Secret Double Octopus
Ranking in Authentication Systems
24th
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Passwordless Authentication (4th)
 

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 Secret Double Octopus is 0.5%, down from 0.7% 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.
Gaurav Gaurav - PeerSpot reviewer
A solution with good capabilities across a wide range of platforms that comes with a useful mobile application, but upgrades cause issues
We have noticed that patches and upgrades cause issues with how the application functions, due to the lack of stability of the product. However, we would recommend the solution because it has good capabilities, across a wide range of platforms, and the mobile application allows for use via Bluetooth, so users don't have to be connected to the internet. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Cisco Secure solutions are great for detecting and remediating threats across our infrastructure from end to end. The integration of Talos in SecureX is great. Everything is clear in one dashboard. You have a dashboard there, your dashboard, and now you can have one look in your dashboard and see everything. It's on one pane of glass."
"At the moment, the ease of use is what is the best feature for me. Once it has been set up and the security can hoc to my mobile device, it's very simple to use my single sign-on, get prompted for a Duo Security, push, go to my phone, accept the push, and I'm done. It's a very simple process."
"The most valuable features of Duo Security are visibility and OTP authentication. The OTP is very important because it is a self-enrollment feature, you are able to enroll users very quickly with a shorter time period."
"Cisco Duo has benefited our company overall by giving us the ability to have multi-factor authentication."
"The app has greater stability than rival solutions such as Google Authenticator, and Duo Push authentication is a valuable feature."
"The two-factor authentication is valuable because that is the use case for which we are using it."
"Cisco is the perfect product for our current size, and I don't think we'll have problems with scalability as we grow."
"This solution has a mobile application, which comes with multi-factor authentication; allowing for more flexible usage, without having to sacrifice system security."
 

Cons

"The only thing I can think of to improve for tech support is to have a dedicated engineer but then I would get an engineer that has priorities in one area or another and maybe not the scope I need."
"Duo Security should better organize its tile feature to organize applications better."
"I wouldn't mind seeing some options for remembering a device for a short period of time or a specific login, particularly for administrative engineering staff, as we may be logging in to four or five different services."
"More automation and device insights would be helpful in achieving a seamless single pane of glass. Having the additional capability to streamline processes would also make things better."
"Certain customers can not use this product because it is cloud-based."
"Integration with a product such as Microsoft Sentinel would be great. As the product continually improves, I'm unsure if this feature is available."
"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."
"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 product suffers from frequent disturbances in service, that have impacted our end users when we deploy software updates."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"I haven't seen any information on the pricing in four years, so I can't comment on that."
"The licensing is very good because it does not cost a lot of money. It's affordable for all-sized customers, including enterprises. There is an additional cost for premium support."
"You pay per user when using this solution and the pricing is fair."
"I haven't seen it in a while, but it's at par with everything else licensing-wise."
"The cost was reasonable. Licensing was pretty straightforward for a change."
"From a reseller perspective, it's still challenging to explain the whole license strategy to a client, so we really have to be ahead of that for all the true forward conversations."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
27%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Hospitality Company
7%
 

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
Octopus Authenticator
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
United Technologies (UTC), American Family Association, ASL Airlines France, BNP Paribas, A Fortune 50 Bank, Bingham County Idaho, Britannia Financial Services, Carolina Behavioral Health Alliance LLC, European Commission, County of Midland Michigan, JRM Construction Management, Greer Commission of Public Works, Poste Italiane, Kennedy Wilson Europe, Key Mechanical, Marker Therapeutics Inc, Mediawan, Ministero Dell'interno, FairPrice, NTUC Health, Mercatus, TBC, Techni-Photo, Tinsa Group, Yates Law, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, Z-Medica Corporation, A Member of the 5 largest US law firms.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Cisco, Fortinet and others in Authentication Systems. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.