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Cisco Duo - Essentials Edition

Cisco Systems, Inc.

Reviews from AWS customer

7 AWS reviews

External reviews

492 reviews
from and

External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.


4-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    Mohammed Abdul Hafeez Qureshi

Centralized access has simplified secure logins and still needs richer dynamic identity features

  • January 07, 2026
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

I have been working with Cisco Duo for close to three years now. As an administrator and IAM consultant, I use Cisco Duo primarily for Single Sign-On, MFA, or integrating applications with different security protocols. The whole point of having Cisco Duo is to ensure that you have a centralized point of managing where all devices, users, and identities are in your system or infrastructure.

It helps in securing the applications.

What is most valuable?

I think Cisco Duo's identity intelligence capabilities are effective as long as you give the right policies to them. Defining your own set of policies is crucial to successfully utilizing the product's advanced features.

The thing that I appreciate the most about Cisco Duo is the ease of setup. The implementation team does not have to spend more time on implementing or integrating the product. Their responsiveness is commendable, and they are easy to adapt to new trends in the market, which suits our business needs. The pricing of Cisco Duo is also quite reasonable compared to other products.

The Advanced Identity Threat Detection and Response feature is similar to what I explained regarding AI and identifying threats.

Windows Hello is a new feature Cisco Duo has started using recently. It allows a user to connect to the VPN and get access to applications without needing to re-enter passwords. Once a user is authenticated against the VPN in Cisco Duo, the Windows Hello feature allows immediate access to applications without requiring another password entry.

What needs improvement?

Conversational AI in Cisco Duo is limited in its current application. AI might help identify trends or user behavior as a threat, but its implementation needs to be directed.

So far, I have not seen much need for improvement in Cisco Duo. It is user-friendly and reasonably priced, but it lacks some dynamic identity management features compared to other products such as SailPoint.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

From a stability perspective, I find Cisco Duo reliable as both products are hosted through AWS, contributing to a good security posture.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I think Cisco Duo scales effectively with the growing needs of my organization. They are understanding our expectations regarding changes and feature add-ons.

How are customer service and support?

I have raised many queries with Cisco Duo's technical support, and they have provided prompt responses. If I need further explanation, they get on a call with me.

How would you rate customer service and support?

How was the initial setup?

The deployment of Cisco Duo is quite easy.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation team does not have to spend more time on implementing or integrating the product.

What was our ROI?

Regarding the ROI with Cisco Duo, resource saving is significant. When we use Cisco Duo for Single Sign-On, employees only need to remember a single set of credentials instead of multiple passwords. The ease in password resets for admins further enhances their business efficiency.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing of Cisco Duo is quite reasonable compared to other products.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I am currently working with ForgeRock and Okta as well as Cisco Duo.

What other advice do I have?

Cisco Duo has been purchased by the enterprise or the employer who is actually using it from the vendor. They would help you with all the initial setup, and later on, as your team expands or the infrastructure mingles with other vendors or partners, you would also need the product to have some sort of customization for the business needs.

It is easy with Cisco Duo. I have seen one of the products which is quite easier. The branding makes it easier for the customer to trust that this is a product coming from a safe zone. The interface of Cisco Duo from the administration console point of view is quite decent.

I endorse Cisco Duo and say that you should go for it. It is quite a good product and quite easy to get used to. My review rating for this product is seven out of ten.

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?


    Patrick Stevenson

Centralized authentication simplifies logins and saves time

  • June 11, 2025
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

Our main use cases for Cisco Duo are that we use it for all MFA with ISE for all of our service provider devices, all the servers, and related equipment.

How has it helped my organization?

Duo with ISE features benefit my company by making logins more secure and simpler. Everything is in one box, so we don't have multiple servers or multiple account on those servers for different device types.

What is most valuable?

The feature of Cisco Duo that I prefer the most is centralized authentication for both TACACS and RADIUS.

My ability to decrease time while using Cisco Duo varies. We don't change up people frequently, but one person would take me up to an hour out of my day to onboard or offboard. If we onboard 10 people I could spend my entire day giving access.

What needs improvement?

Possible an integration with ISE where the DUIO proxy and DUO configuration can be done on ISE instead of separate portals.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cisco Duo for five years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Regarding the stability and reliability of the platform, there have been issues. Cisco Duo has their issues, and they are effective about notifications saying they're having login issues or push notification issues; none of it has really affected me. They have backups, and I haven't noticed any issues with them.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Regarding its scalability, I haven't hit any limits yet, and I've got 1,000 users in there with no issues. I just go to my sales partner and request more licenses, and that's it. Since it's a cloud solution, I don't have to worry about it.

How are customer service and support?

I never had a chance to experience anything with their customer service and technical support bsince I never had to reach out to them for anything.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use or consider other solutions that do the same that Cisco Duo does. We went straight to Duo since we used it in conjunction with ISE.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment of Cisco Duo is very simple. It's not hard at all. You just point your device to it, go into the portal and register, and you're done. There's nothing complex about it.

What was our ROI?

For me, the biggest return on investment when using Cisco Duo is my time. With multiple servers and different types of servers, if someone is onboarded or offboarded or they forget their password, I would have to change it in ten different places or more. Now I don't have to do that; I just do it in one place, and I'm done, so that helps.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

My experience with the pricing, the setup costs, and the licensing of the solution is that it's cheap compared to running multiple other servers to do the same job.

What other advice do I have?

There aren't any new features or functionalities in Cisco Duo that my company has started using recently; we use it primarily for the authentication portion. There are other features we can use, yet we haven't turned those options on yet, so that's more a matter of time than anything.

We have many different vendors and types of devices that we require MFA for login. That said, Duo helps bring all of those accounts into one system, in conjunction with ISE, you have one username, one password, and you access all the devices instead of having every device have its own credentials. It lowers the number of passwords you need to have.

Cisco Duo is on the right track for improvement. A lot of their devices already integrate with it now. They keep adding features for more devices that interact natively with it, instead of having to have a third-party server to reach out to Duo.

I would rate Cisco Duo overall about an eight out of ten; it's a strong product.


    reviewer2721267

Mobile authentication enhances security and access efficiency

  • June 11, 2025
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

The main use case for Cisco Duo is authentication.

What is most valuable?

I appreciate the mobile authentication feature of Cisco Duo; it's quite good. The features of Cisco Duo have benefited my organization because it's secure, provides a way of accessing the workspace, and it's easy to operate from mobile.

My experience with Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system has been easy; logging in is straightforward.

What needs improvement?

I do not think about how Cisco Duo can be improved right now, including additional features or enhancements.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cisco Duo for about six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would assess the stability and reliability of Cisco Duo as pretty stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Cisco Duo scales with the growing needs of my organization; we haven't seen any complexity or issues so far.

How are customer service and support?

I evaluate customer service and technical support as quite good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before adopting Cisco Duo, I was using a homegrown solution to address similar needs. I transitioned from our homegrown solution to Cisco Duo because it's Cisco; we've been using Cisco products for some time.

What was our ROI?

I have definitely seen ROI by using Cisco Duo because we used to have our own homegrown solution, and this is far better than that.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

My experience with pricing, setup, costs, and licensing is that I do not get into pricing much; I leave it to procurement, but I think it's very competitive.

We use other Cisco products such as firewalls, and I find them competitively positioned, although I need to watch out for companies such as Palo Alto, as prices vary across different companies.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have not considered any specific products to use instead of Cisco Duo.

What other advice do I have?

We have a few employees using the traditional way of accessing and securing, which had some challenges; before the solution, people put a lot of effort in, and that's one advantage we have using Cisco Duo.

The flexibility and integration of Cisco Duo were a big advantage when selecting it over other solutions, and specifically, we can introduce user-level security for specific databases.

My experience with performance, cost, support, and scalability is that performance is quite good, and I do not see any issues with scalability. My experience with deploying Cisco Duo is positive; we got good support from Cisco. I would definitely recommend it to other organizations considering Cisco Duo.

I would rate Cisco Duo overall a nine.


    reviewer2718396

Phone notifications and easy onboarding are very helpful

  • June 09, 2025
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

Cisco Duo started primarily for compliance reasons but has evolved to address brute force attacks, and terminal servers and computer sign-ins, depending on the client.

What is most valuable?

The most appealing feature of Cisco Duo is the phone notification system that simply pops up on your phone. This has proven particularly beneficial for older users who historically struggled with other MFA solutions. Cisco Duo benefits the organization by fundamentally enhancing security.

What needs improvement?

It is easy to use when logging in, but at times, there's a delay in getting the pop-up on a phone, requiring users to occasionally retry authentication depending on backend services. I guess that depends on the backend or something like that. It doesn't happen all the time. Cisco Duo could be improved by making it faster.

Maintaining ease of use while increasing security remains crucial. What used to be sufficient with just a password is no longer adequate, and even a phone pop-up might not be enough in the future.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cisco Duo for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Most of the time, Cisco Duo's stability and reliability are fine, but occasional issues occur. Intermittent downtime happens infrequently, but when it does, many users call because they cannot access their systems.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Cisco Duo scales effectively with the growing needs of the organization. The expansion of Cisco Duo's usage was smooth, and we continued using it because of its good performance.

How are customer service and support?

The customer service and technical support have been good, having used them twice. I would rate it an eight out of ten. It has been pretty good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I was not using another solution prior to using Cisco Duo.

How was the initial setup?

Deploying Cisco Duo is easy. For example, we have automated setting up the terminal servers, where as soon as we make a new user, we make sure we put their email address in, and then it automatically sends them an email. They put in their information and pretty much set up the phone on their own. 95% of the people are able to do it without anyone even talking to them.

What was our ROI?

We have not seen an ROI with Cisco Duo as it is primarily used for security.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We experimented with Microsoft's MFA, which only works with Microsoft products. Cisco Duo proved more flexible. Flexibility emerged as one of the key positives during the evaluation process of Cisco Duo.

Cisco Duo is easy to use. Setting it up is a breeze. So far, support is reachable. Hopefully, that doesn't change. On rare occasions or once in a while, it gets slow.

What other advice do I have?

My advice to other organizations considering Cisco Duo is to implement it. It is easy to deploy, and the company currently has 30 clients using it. The entire onboarding process takes less than a week, though end-user adoption may extend this timeline.

I would rate Cisco Duo an eight out of ten.


    reviewer2718303

Offers strong security and ease of use

  • June 09, 2025
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

The main use cases for Cisco Duo are for multi-factor authentication and being able to bring your own devices securely.

We don't use Cisco Duo in our organization. We sell the product to our customers.

What is most valuable?

It is very easy. Having just wrapped up my tenure at Cisco, it was used day in and day out for security. It was always easy to log in and not have to worry about logging in multiple times.

As a former employee, I think it's top-notch when it comes to protecting internal and external threats and preventing unauthorized access to the network.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been working with Cisco Duo for at least four or five years.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate their technical support a seven out of ten based on how they respond to issues.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

What was our ROI?

There is certainly ROI with Cisco Duo, assuming that you can get the other MFA type products uninstalled, and customers truly understand why they purchased Cisco Duo in the first place.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not consider many other solutions before Cisco Duo. I am biased towards Cisco because I came from Cisco, so I am more familiar with it.

What other advice do I have?

The benefit of having a complete passwordless environment is more of a conversation that we have with our clients. There is ease of use. We focus on what outcomes they are trying to achieve with the different personas they're using and the security protection in their workplace. There aren't any disadvantages to the passwordless environment, but it all boils down to what our customers are saying about the product that we sell to them. I haven't heard anything negative about Cisco Duo.

I would rate Cisco Duo overall an eight out of ten.


    AndyChen7

A reliable and easy-to-use solution that is reasonably priced

  • June 15, 2023
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

We use Duo Security for multi-factor authentication.

How has it helped my organization?

The product makes our organization more secure.

What is most valuable?

Duo is reliable and easy to use. I’m pretty happy with all of the features. The user experience is pretty good. People without any technical background can run the applications without any issues.

What needs improvement?

The technical engineers in the first line of support should improve their knowledge. We often have to bounce all the cases to different levels.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Duo Security for more than ten years.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is pretty responsive. When there was an issue, support was able to provide a solution.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

From the security team’s perspective, the solution is pretty easy to deploy. From an end user’s perspective, it is very easy to download it and add the device to the profiles.

What about the implementation team?

We deploy the solution in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing is reasonable.

What other advice do I have?

Since I'm not an admin, I don't know how the device gets set up. The product is pretty good at securing our infrastructure. It protects everything and hardly leaves anything open. The infrastructure is secured.

Duo Security cannot do it all when it comes to reducing the risk of breaches. It can probably provide up to 50%, and the rest depends on the user. Things like phishing emails depend on the user. There is nothing that Duo Security can't do. The product does a pretty good job of protecting the infrastructure.

Duo Security’s user authentication and device verification are very good and very reliable. When we get a message to upgrade, we upgrade the tool. I don't have to spend a lot of time to get the device up to date.

The solution is reliable for establishing trust for every access request. It definitely is able to establish trust for the identity to protect the infrastructure. Our organization doesn’t necessarily believe that all resources must be considered external. We try to strike a balance between convenience and security. We don't treat everything as external. We keep certain internal stuff that doesn't have to go through the authentication.

The product increases the awareness of the employees about cybersecurity. Every time I log in, a Duo box pops up saying that I am authenticated and not leaving everything wide open. Try it and get a trial base, and then you will see the difference the tool can make.

Duo is the first platform that we used. My organization did an analysis to see how many potential attacks we'll have and how much money will be lost if we do not deploy Duo. I am not sure about the metrics, though.

Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)


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