Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco Duo vs Venafi comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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
61
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Cisco Security Portfolio (4th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
Venafi
Ranking in Authentication Systems
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 9.7%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Venafi is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

RyanDeppe - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps reduce the risk of a breach and is easy to deploy and onboard
For our customers, Duo Security is a significant advantage because it provides them with a straightforward method to implement MFA across their entire environment. Moreover, once we delve into the more advanced features of Duo Security, it enables us as a partner to engage in ongoing discussions regarding security strategies with our customers. Initially, we may only introduce them to MFA during the onboarding process. However, as their security strategy evolves, we can leverage Duo to perform additional tasks such as risk-based assessments and deployments, thereby assisting in the development of their security measures. Duo Security helps secure our infrastructure. It serves as our gateway layer of protection, allowing us to understand who is logging in and why. We conduct risk-based assessments on each user to determine whether their actions are appropriate or not. Duo Security is not a comprehensive security solution, but it is undoubtedly a crucial component, a critical layer of security. This aspect resonates with our customers consistently. Their ability to reduce the risk of a breach is of utmost importance. It serves as the primary line of defense. Currently, credential gathering and leaks are widespread in the market. By implementing an MFA solution like Duo Security, we can effectively prevent these issues. When we put a stop to credential harvesting, it becomes much harder for attackers to infiltrate and navigate our network. Therefore, Duo Security acts as an excellent first line of defense. User authentication and device verification are the methods through which we envision our customers navigating in order to prevent identity-based attacks. Initially, when we employ Duo Security, it is a straightforward implementation of multi-factor authentication. As we progress, we enhance security measures by incorporating device risk assessment and potentially even regional assessment. This includes considerations such as whether the login is being attempted from a specific IP address. These gradual enhancements contribute to the establishment of an additional layer of protection. Thus, it is not necessary to implement a completely disruptive strategy right from the start. Instead, it is possible to gradually adopt and integrate this approach, following a crawl, walk, or run methodology. The Duo Security self-service portal helps free up our customers' IT staff time, allowing them to focus on other projects. As a Cisco partner, we have received feedback from our customers that the portal is highly interactive, enabling them to easily navigate and resolve issues. After setting up their Duo environment, we rarely receive callbacks for assistance, as the portal is intuitive and empowers users to handle everything they need on their own. The appealing aspect of Duo Security is its ability to establish trust for every access request, regardless of its origin. It is a cloud-based solution with excellent API integrations. It doesn't matter where or how a user logs in; Duo will be there to protect the user, whether it's through MFA, risk assessment, or similar methods. It is extremely beneficial to our customers that Duo Security considers all resources as external. Our customers frequently inquire about a zero-trust model, and this is a key component of it. Unfortunately, I would love to say that there is a simple solution for zero trust where we can just deploy this solution and be done with it. But that's not the case. It requires a layered approach, and that's what we convey to our customers. Duo Security is definitely a part of that. Duo Security has helped improve our customers' cybersecurity resilience. Internally, it protects our users from accessing sales operations-based environments. Additionally, our customers use it regularly to protect business-critical applications.
Adam Goldstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates certificate management across platforms and has enhanced integration support
Venafi's automation capabilities were significant, as they allowed us to automate certificate rotation and deployment effectively. We integrated it with GlobalSign and aimed to automate DNS verification, although challenges remained. Venafi's platform-agnostic nature was beneficial for handling certificates across different systems like IIS, AWS, and Azure. It ensures centralized certificate management, which is crucial for compliance and maintaining best practices. It significantly improved our operational efficiency by automating certificate workflows. This reduced the number of certificates requiring manual management, freeing internal resources from deploying trivial certificates. While some complex certificates still needed manual intervention, automating simpler ones eliminated internal bottlenecks associated with tasks like uploading certificates to Imperva. By automating these processes, we reduced errors, streamlined workflows, and eliminated the need to repeatedly remember and execute complex procedures, ultimately increasing our overall operational efficiency. The automation capabilities are good; when properly configured, it performs as expected.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"My total rating for Cisco Duo is ten out of ten."
"It is a good solution for hybrid environments and VPN."
"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."
"If you have to log in to something, you must go to Duo Security to confirm that you're who you are on your phone."
"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 product is reliable and easy to use."
"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."
"All features of the solution are effective, particularly those involved in identifying vulnerabilities and updates."
"What I appreciate most about Venafi is that it is very easy to use, easy to implement, and easy to navigate, which simplifies the certification-creation process."
"The most valuable feature of Venafi is the automation that helps save time and reduce human error."
"It's definitely worth the money to have Venafi as a tool; it's definitely miles away from the competition, in my opinion."
"Venafi's automation capabilities were significant, as they allowed us to automate certificate rotation and deployment effectively."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is their certificate discovery."
"We have reduced 80% to 90% of our outages with Venafi, which impacts the revenue substantially."
"We use Venafi for PKI certificates."
"What I appreciate most about Venafi is that it is very easy to use, easy to implement, and easy to navigate, which simplifies the certification-creation process."
 

Cons

"The product price needs improvement."
"The only time I really had some negative feedback for them was about the UI of their mobile app, but they improved it in the last version. It is good on the functionality side, but their pricing model is a little bit weird. Currently, there is no price advantage in signing up for yearly contracts. If you are on a monthly term or a yearly contract, you basically pay the same price, and that is very unusual. Normally, there is a discount when someone signs up for the 12-month system."
"I would like to see Duo Security increase the time that the users have to log into the devices. The maximum time interval is 50 minutes at the moment, and I would like it to be 60 minutes. When you try to log into a device and have to authenticate yourself, sometimes it's not very pleasant. It's not the best thing particularly if you have to do this every 50 minutes, which is the maximum time that Duo gives. This makes it difficult to use and does not save time."
"Reducing or eliminating the "telephony credits" system used by Duo would be great."
"There might be a little slowness, but that could be my connection."
"We have a 24 hour timer for our Duo cookie and we would like to reduce this to a shorter time when using Duo."
"From an administrative standpoint, I'd love to see it be a little better at remembering a device and location so that I don't have to continually authenticate. That's pretty much it."
"We were considering purchasing other products, like AMP for Endpoints, and it was not properly integrated with the firewall function. It might be better now with SecureX."
"Currently lacks the capability to automatically download certificates in JKS."
"Venafi could enhance its offerings by providing more automation features."
"Venafi can improve on API automated code signing; the process should be more straightforward."
"There are quite a few different technical aspects of Venafi that I feel they just missed out on; I'd have to look at my notes for the specifics."
"The product was really good when it was a Venafi product. However, since its acquisition by CyberArk, there has been a lack of significant innovations. They are pushing for cloud adoption, but we prefer on-premises solutions due to regulatory concerns."
"I would like to see included in the next release of Venafi integration with the cloud HSM's, Hardware Security Module. Additionally, I would say other cloud services, because it's not only cloud that's essential. If you have a customer that has a lot of their IT moved into cloud, integration with different cloud services is always an area to improve."
"Venafi's overall installation could be made easier."
"Venafi excels in automating certificate rotation and deployment but could enhance its offering by improving support for hardware security modules like Fortanix and providing more advanced, out-of-the-box integrations with public certificate authorities for DNS re-verification."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Price wise, it's not cheap, but it's not expensive at all either. It's in the middle."
"Duo Security's pricing is good, fair, and very comparable to today's market."
"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"You pay per user when using this solution and the pricing is fair."
"Its price is reasonable. It is not highly expensive."
"I only need the solution for IT staff, which makes it relatively cheap. If I deployed it for the whole company, it would be costly, so it depends on the number of users. Duo Security is affordable compared to other products in the segment."
"It was very reasonable."
"Venafi's pricing appears to be competitive within the market."
"The pricing model is complex, considering factors beyond the number of certificates. This complexity can make our payments to Venafi challenging if costs continue to rise. It is good but more expensive than the competitors."
"The pricing of Venafi is really good, and that was a key reason we chose it. The pricing is very competitive compared to other solutions."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Authentication Systems solutions are best for your needs.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about Venafi?
We use Venafi for PKI certificates.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Venafi?
The pricing has increased for us, impacting our organization due to its operational expenditure (OPEX). The pricing model is complex, considering factors beyond the number of certificates. This com...
What needs improvement with Venafi?
The product was really good when it was a Venafi product. However, since its acquisition by CyberArk, there has been a lack of significant innovations. They are pushing for cloud adoption, but we p...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Duo Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Surescripts, CME Group, TD Bank Group, Aetna, MoneyGram, Zions Bancorp, Cisco
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. Venafi and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.