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Cisco Duo vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

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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)
5th
Ranking in Access Management
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
163
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (7th)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
13th
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 November 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.2%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.7%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo3.2%
Symantec Siteminder3.7%
Other93.1%
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

"The feature I like the most about Cisco Duo is that it allows us to authenticate users before they can connect to our network from outside of our company."
"The features of Cisco Duo that I like the most are the simplicity, and the benefits of these features to my organization include security components and security authentication components."
"I believe Cisco Duo is worth the investment, offering a good return on investment, as it is expensive but works very well without any downtime or high maintenance, and the support is also good."
"Cisco Duo has improved my operational efficiency and reduced costs in areas such as authentication, IT support, and security operations."
"The anti-phishing feature is the most valuable."
"Cisco Duo is very easy to deploy and the documentation is very thorough, which makes deployment straightforward."
"It's simple. It's reliable. I haven't had any issues with it."
"The administrator tool in the dashboard is the most valuable feature. It's really easy to quickly see if users are locked out from their device, firmware code, or just all the little dashboards and reports I can run to give the security for monthly reports. The dashboard's really good."
"If you look at our organization, and really all financial institutions, we have a lot of legacy apps. So it really helps to get Single Sign-On."
"It is reliable."
"You definitely need to consider CA SSO; it is quite solid, it's never really gone down, and it's a well-understood and reliable piece of our enterprise."
"This solution is meeting our requirements for all of our applications."
"We're able to have one single centralized way of logging in when you have shared sessions across all applications."
"All of our applications get a point, click, and you are in, while we increase security at the same time."
"It provides a secure interface and single sign-on to a variety of different applications."
"It has the ability to authenticate and authorize users. It is the main feature for our security."
 

Cons

"I faced a significant issue about a year back when I tried to integrate Cisco Duo with Citrix NetScaler and enable MFA for Citrix NetScaler integration."
"I would love to see improvements around Identity and Access Management with Cisco Duo, specifically how we can use that as a central source of truth for all of our IAM tools, including Active Directory."
"Cisco Duo can be improved because people have their own personal mobile devices."
"Cisco Duo did not help reduce the cost of the overall authentication method that we have in our company; instead, it increased, obviously."
"Cisco Duo can be improved, but additional features that should be included in the next release are not my area of responsibility."
"There is always room for improvement."
"I'm unsure how to disable the ping notification sound on my phone when using Cisco Duo. I don't know how to silence it."
"My experience with Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system is that sometimes there are difficulties, and sometimes users just won't be able to log in. We have to reset their password so they can use Duo."
"Symantec SiteMinder is not easy to set up and maintain at an infrastructure level."
"It’s really difficult to initially configure, but once you know where the traps are, it’s not a big deal."
"The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."
"They get us answers, but often they’re too slow."
"While I have some integration with a few major providers, support for more would be advantageous."
"We have challenges, performance issues for which we’re unable to find the root cause as we scale."
"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."
"As we are moving in to the mobility space, this is where we really see SiteMinder and their other product really come together to provide a solution base to a different area where the IoT is coming, the different business communications are happening. All of those things require authentication and we really want to see this product grow into that role."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost was reasonable. Licensing was pretty straightforward for a change."
"Cisco has the most expensive products because market leaders tend to charge a lot."
"The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it."
"Duo Security's pricing is good, fair, and very comparable to today's market."
"I believe the licensing model is excellent as it offers flexibility to our customers, allowing them to adopt a crawl, walk, or run approach."
"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."
"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."
"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise82
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?
Regarding the pricing, what actually happened was that we got the product purchased through our HQ, so the costing aspect and all those things sit with our HQ. I do not have much information in ter...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
I do not have a straight answer for how Cisco Duo can be improved at this time. With the implementation that we are going through right now, I was asking a question about how we can use Cisco Duo o...
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: October 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.