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Cisco Duo vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 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 Single Sign-On (SSO)
3rd
Ranking in Access Management
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
157
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (3rd)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
14th
Ranking in Access Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.1%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.1%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo3.1%
Symantec Siteminder3.1%
Other93.8%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

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.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
Improved user experience with seamless integration and easy installation
The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows. Additionally, it is very beneficial for deploying single sign-on sessions between different windows on a web browser, provided I am connected to the right identity provider. That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's easy to deploy. It's easy to manage. It's easy to integrate with other applications."
"The features of Cisco Duo that I like the most are all of the above, especially the multifactor authentication that is very easy to use now."
"Without Cisco Duo, that would be very tough because Cisco Duo is a one-stop-shop, especially with their console."
"Duo allowed us to greatly enhance our security."
"Cisco Duo has definitely improved my operational efficiency and reduced costs in areas like authentication and IT support, as evidenced by a reduction in security tickets since we don't see too many password change requests or forgotten password calls anymore."
"The most valuable feature of Duo Security is the ability for the user to easily approve access. The application prompts the user, and they can see the location and the IP address. This makes it easy for the user to approve it and go through the process of logging in to the VPN."
"Cisco Duo helps minimize the risk of attack vectors and prevents unauthorized access to our data since it's tied with multi-factor authentication, which helps block threats."
"The ease of deploying Cisco Duo Security and onboarding has greatly benefited our customers."
"Whatever you're considering, this is a good solution."
"It is one of the most stable products in the banking organization that I am in."
"It allows us to get, again, both externally hosted and internally hosted web applications up and running using centralized credentials in short order."
"It has performed very well, it does what we need it to do, it's reliable, and it doesn't impose any overhead on the user or on the platform."
"It is pretty easy to learn."
"SSO affords us the opportunity to have a federated connection between our members, groups, and companies, giving providers the ability to transpose across the different Delta Dentals without having to authenticate more than once with one identity for all sites."
"The features most valuable to us are its usability, the way you can customize it, and its supportability."
"It has considerably reduced the amount of time that new users would take to join into the organization. Previously, it was a lengthy, manual process because it's a very secure environment, where they need to verify the user before they can actually grant him a user-ID and password. Integrating with the built-in custom application, and exposing CA Single Sign On to the internet, we were able to get the employees onboard. The time that we gained was: previously it would generally take from four to eight weeks for each employee, we brought it to one to two days."
 

Cons

"Smart Licensing needs improvement. It's terrible. We have problems with it every year and we need to involve support to fix it."
"Duo Security should have more customized use cases. For example, if a client needs to have more customization, it would be better to connect directly with Duo's R&D to try to discuss the issues together in order to add customizations."
"I am not certain how Cisco Duo has helped me evolve in my IAM strategy from simple authentication to a more comprehensive identity security platform."
"I think we'd need more experience to learn Cisco Duo because we're just at the beginning of using it."
"To improve Cisco Duo, the biggest consideration is the licensing standpoint; the most common issue I've found is customers not setting up the Active Directory sync properly, leading to inflated licensing usage when they try to delete inactive users that are still being charged."
"An improvement for Cisco Duo would be a simplification of the licensing model since it's quite complicated to know what's included or not, especially now as it's part of Cisco Secure User Suite, and there are many modifications happening regarding the licensing."
"Its documentation must be in French because we are a French-speaking country. They should also provide more training documentation. Its management interface should also be improved. They should also improve its update period. If I compare its update period with other products such as Palo Alto firewalls, this solution is really slow in updates."
"Cisco Duo can be improved, but additional features that should be included in the next release are not my area of responsibility."
"Not great. The first level of support is not up to the mark or able to understand the actual problem."
"Identity Manager and GovernanceMinder should integrate better."
"The GUIs are not very clear, especially when integrating with other products from CA."
"The policy store configuration, and tuning the policy store is a bit complex in ensuring it does not corrupt."
"We had some performance-related issues that caused some outages. Outages actually happened pretty frequently back then."
"If the reporting feature can be integrated into SSO itself that will be an icing on the cake."
"All of the feedback within our team for CA Support is not good. It really is on a very low level, but then it is very specific for CA SSO."
"Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I haven't seen any information on the pricing in four years, so I can't comment on that."
"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"Its price is reasonable. It is not highly expensive."
"It falls in line with everything else."
"It was very reasonable."
"I haven't seen it in a while, but it's at par with everything else licensing-wise."
"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."
"Overall, the pricing is fair. Customers can wrap it into their Enterprise Agreement, making it easier for them to solve their issues."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"Siteminder is a little costly. You pay for licensing, and they offer packages, so if you have less users, then you have to buy different products at different prices. If you have more of a user base, then the package is different. They also include other features—for example, if you have a database and you're using Siteminder, then it's good to use a Semantic-specific database, but if you are using less, then you have to purchase the database separately. Whereas if you are going for a bigger license, then it comes within the package. It depends on which plan you are using."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise79
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

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?
My experience with the pricing, the setup cost, and the licensing of Cisco Duo is that it is really inexpensive in the first place, but the value that I get in return is hard to beat, especially wh...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
For the next release, Cisco Duo could be improved by adding touchless authentication and biometric features.
What needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features. Currently, multi-factor authentication is available as a separate solution, and it ...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Siteminder?
I deploy and support Symantec Siteminder ( /products/symantec-siteminder-reviews ). I have been a partner and reseller.
 

Also Known As

Duo Security
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.