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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)
4th
Ranking in Access Management
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
160
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)
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 September 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.2%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.0%, up from 2.3% 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 Siteminder3.0%
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

"Cisco Duo is an excellent solution to protect our network."
"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."
"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."
"The experience of deploying Cisco Duo is great; it is fast and not too complex in my opinion, as you can integrate basically anything into Duo, so I would say the experience is overall very great as an administrator."
"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."
"Duo allowed us to greatly enhance our security."
"The feature that my organization started using more recently in Cisco Duo is offline authentication."
"It's a lot easier for our end users to connect to our network. You don't have to type in a code. You get push notifications, that's probably the best thing about it. The fewer clicks they have to do to be online, the better it is. They can easily get into the network and do remote work."
"It's definitely a good product and you won't go wrong if you choose this product."
"We have three single sign-on products in our office and I believe that the CA product offers the best product of the three."
"Whatever you're considering, this is a good solution."
"It's quite scalable."
"It provides us with authentications, authorizations, and basically providing the client with better secure services."
"It puts the expertise around authentication and security on our organization where it belongs."
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
"It's our single solution for managing user authentication."
 

Cons

"Cisco Duo could be improved, possibly by adding features for the healthcare space. If you're selling something to a healthcare provider, there needs to be consideration for how to launch Cisco Duo with a handheld device that is not native, where you can install the application."
"What I dislike about Cisco Duo is that anything that Cisco Duo lacks, we can do through Microsoft, which is a workaround because we're integrated with Microsoft, and that was the first thing I did."
"I don't see Cisco Duo playing a significant role in managing agentic AI identities at this moment."
"There is a little bit of apprehension for some users thinking, well, "How do I know this app is not collecting personal information from my personal device?""
"Certain customers can not use this product because it is cloud-based."
"We have a 24 hour timer for our Duo cookie and we would like to reduce this to a shorter time when using Duo."
"I think Cisco Duo can be improved."
"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."
"For us, getting to that person or to the second level of support is time consuming."
"The GUIs are not very clear, especially when integrating with other products from CA."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"I used to get the runaround initially. They would ask us the same four questions all the time."
"We are finding some compatibility issues. We're still working with CA on them."
"I've seen a lot of analytics capability being built in for a number of products. Obviously, I want to be able to use analytics on CA SSO as well."
"Symantec SiteMinder is not easy to set up and maintain at an infrastructure level."
"Yes it can be complex, I think that's one area we have already given feedback to the product management, that is a little complex to get the set up and get it going and the upgrade process is very complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it."
"My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been good, with no issues. I am pleased that the prices remained stable after Cisco acquired the solution."
"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."
"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"From a business perspective, it is a little bit costly. The licensing is on a per-user basis."
"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."
"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."
"You pay per user when using this solution and the pricing is fair."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"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."
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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
16%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Construction Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise80
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 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 ...
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: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.