Cisco Duo vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

Cisco and Broadcom are both solutions in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category. Cisco is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.8, while Broadcom is ranked #13 with an average rating of 6.8. Cisco holds a 3.5% mindshare in SSO, compared to Broadcom’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Cisco Duo

Read 86 Cisco Duo reviews

6,543 Views
2,028 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Symantec Siteminder

Read 75 Symantec Siteminder reviews

2,039 Views
1,325 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Cisco Duo

Symantec Siteminder

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Symantec Siteminder and Cisco Duo are two leading solutions in the authentication and access management space. Cisco Duo seems to have the upper hand due to its extensive features and overall value.

Features: Symantec Siteminder is valued for robust policy management, strong enterprise-level capabilities, and comprehensive security controls. Cisco Duo stands out for its user-friendly design, seamless integration, and adaptive authentication strengths.

Room for Improvement: Symantec Siteminder users highlight the need for a more intuitive design, better integration with cloud services, and enhanced user interface. Cisco Duo users request enhancements in detailed reporting, more flexible deployment options, and improved offline capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Symantec Siteminder’s deployment is noted for being complex, requiring significant time and resources. Customer service is responsive but sometimes slow. Cisco Duo is praised for its straightforward deployment process and efficient customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Symantec Siteminder's setup costs are perceived as high, with users reporting a substantial investment and gradual ROI. Cisco Duo is considered competitively priced, offering quicker ROI with lower initial costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Duo vs. Symantec Siteminder Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Duo vs. Symantec Siteminder

January 2026

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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

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (3rd), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)

Symantec Siteminder

Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)

13th

Ranking in Access Management

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Web Access Management (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.5%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.7%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Single Sign-On (SSO) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cisco Duo	3.5%
Symantec Siteminder	2.7%
Other	93.8%

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Featured Reviews

Charles Slaustas

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.

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Muzi Lubisi

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The biggest benefit of Cisco Duo for my customers is the license because they count licenses for the user—one user can use many applications integrated with Cisco Duo."

"The ability for users to authenticate via phone, from any random phone number, has been very helpful for managing a distributed workforce. Using it across a distributed network for securing access to our applications is big for us."

"Another feature is the single pane of glass management. That's important for analytics and also for troubleshooting. It means there's one place that you go to at least start the troubleshooting process."

"Cisco Duo has positively impacted my organization by helping to implement zero trust, ensuring that every user is protected against phishing or password theft, and reducing security incidents according to my records and reports for a year."

"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."

"The integration with Azure Active Directory and the AWS cloud is amazing, as most products nowadays require the creation of a customized integration. With Duo Security, it was more like native integration, and it took me five minutes to register."

"Cisco Duo seems very scalable; in my experience, I started with a small-medium business, and in my last contracting position, it was a large one for a major worldwide airline that had hundreds of thousands of devices that could use Cisco Duo, and it scaled very well."

"It was a simple way of providing two-factor authentication for remote access when we hit the COVID pandemic. It was very easy and quick to get it going."

More Cisco Duo pros

"The solution is easy to use for our managers."

"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."

"The Directory is secure. It's our user store, and it's important to keep our members safe. The product does well with that."

"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."

"It provides the breadth and the width to provide solutions for the different kinds of technologies which we have."

"It's quite scalable."

"The most valuable feature is the Federation part of Single Sign On, which is customizable and is easily integrated with any customer application or any third party application."

"I liked the debugging part. There are only two files (trace file and log file) that you need to look into while performing debugging, and the logs give you the exact info on where and what needs to be fixed."

More Symantec Siteminder pros

Cons

"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."

"While two-factor authentication with mobile devices provides a high level of security, it's still not foolproof, as someone could potentially steal your phone. It would be beneficial to have information about the authentication location."

"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."

"The technical engineers in the first line of support should improve their knowledge."

"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."

"We found it difficult to integrate it into our broader product family of Microsoft tools and other applications used across our organization."

"We have users who move throughout the world, and their levels of connectivity change. It can be a challenge, if someone is in Bahrain, to authenticate via Duo."

"Removing the need for a password would be a positive change as well as the ability to cover all the different enterprise applications. They don't have coverage for everything."

More Cisco Duo cons

"The tech support has not been very good for us so we don't use them anymore. We have had some issues. Nobody is perfect."

"CA has reporting at the moment. With the reporting, every particular segmented product has a reporting engine. I would like to see centralized reporting for all of them together."

"Symantec SiteMinder is not easy to set up and maintain at an infrastructure level."

"All the problems that we reported actually have never been resolved. We could not capture enough information for CA to be able to debug the problem."

"The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."

"I think they need to integrate some of the newer types of authentication into the product. I'm not seeing the innovation when it comes to biometrics in the product."

"The maintenance cost has increased significantly, and we are concerned about this."

"We are finding some compatibility issues. We're still working with CA on them."

More Symantec Siteminder cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"It has a fair pricing model. I know they have different tiers, but it would be nice to have different types of licenses for certain groups of users in our organization. That way, we wouldn't have to lump everybody into one group. That would be also one complaint."

"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."

"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."

"Cisco has the most expensive products because market leaders tend to charge a lot."

"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."

"Cisco's licensing is always a bit complicated to understand, but the price is fair. It could be more expensive than others, but the way they integrate everything, it has a fair price."

"Our licensing fee is currently on an annual basis."

More Cisco Duo pricing and cost advice

"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."

"The licensing is fair for this solution."

"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."

"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 solution's pricing is competitive."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."

"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Financial Services Firm

26%

Insurance Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	40

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	69

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing reveals that one of the most powerful features is the licensing model and the price. According to the pricing, it is really fantastic to get th...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Duo Security?

One downside of Cisco Duo is the expense, as there are clients that can afford only the basic package, which does not include Geo-fencing, leaving them unable to pay for the more expensive level, w...

See all answers

What do you like most about Symantec Siteminder?

It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Siteminder?

My experience with pricing is that it is all good.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Fortinet FortiAuthenticator vs Cisco Duo

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Cisco Duo

Compared 8% of the time

Fortinet FortiToken vs Cisco Duo

Compared 6% of the time

Yubico YubiKey vs Cisco Duo

Compared 5% of the time

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) vs Cisco Duo

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco Duo Competitors

Ping Identity Platform vs Symantec Siteminder

Compared 21% of the time

Okta Platform vs Symantec Siteminder

Compared 12% of the time

ForgeRock vs Symantec Siteminder

Compared 9% of the time

Keeper Enterprise Password Manager vs Symantec Siteminder

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Symantec Siteminder

Compared 8% of the time

More Symantec Siteminder Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Duo

January 2026

Download Cisco Duo product report

Buyer's Guide

Symantec Siteminder

January 2026

Download Symantec Siteminder product report

Also Known As

Duo Security

SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder

Overview

Cisco Duo is a cloud-based identity security platform safeguarding critical resources for any user and device worldwide. Known for its ease of use, Duo offers seamless protection across multi-cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments.

Cisco Duo is designed to secure access with identity-first protection and provides extensive visibility throughout an organization's identity ecosystem. Offering multi-factor authentication, Duo facilitates easy integration and management, allowing teams to protect data effectively on VPNs, applications, and networks. Its single-pane management improves security processes while enhancing trust, making it suitable for diverse IT infrastructures.

What are the key features of Cisco Duo?

Multi-factor Authentication: Strengthens user verification with multiple methods.
Push Notifications: Simplifies authentication with quick approvals.
Single Sign-On: Enhances convenience by allowing one set of credentials.
VPN Access: Secures remote connections with reliable authentication.
User Activity Visibility: Offers comprehensive insights into access patterns.

Which benefits and ROI should users consider?

Quick Deployment: Facilitates rapid integration within existing systems.
Effective Management: Streamlines IT operations with centralized control.
Regulatory Compliance: Aids in meeting industry standards for data protection.
Enhanced Trust: Strengthens security posture across networks.
User-friendly Approach: Simplifies authentication for non-technical users.

In industries like education and finance, Cisco Duo is widely employed to secure multi-factor authentication across platforms such as email, databases, and servers. Its integration capabilities with Microsoft 365, Active Directory, and VPNs like AnyConnect are instrumental in verifying user identities using mobile apps or OTPs, catering effectively to both remote and on-premise environments.

Cisco

Symantec® SiteMinder is designed to secure the modern enterprise through a unified access management platform that applies the appropriate authentication mechanism to positively identify users; provides single sign-on and identity federation for seamless access to any application; enforces granular security policies to stop unauthorized access to sensitive resources; and monitors and manages the entire user session to prevent session hijacking. Finally, Symantec SiteMinder is battle-tested and has been deployed in the largest IT environments in the world.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Duo vs. Symantec Siteminder

January 2026

Free Report: Cisco Duo vs. Symantec Siteminder

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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