My main use case with Cisco Duo is for two-factor authentication. I need Cisco Duo authentication in my company because I have no different option to use a different solution not related to Cisco due to a limitation of a product like Cisco ISE that will not be able to use a different mechanism than Cisco Duo authenticator. I have to use Cisco Duo authentication to have two-factor authentication and fulfill security requirements in the company.
Cisco Duo - Advantage Edition
Cisco Systems, Inc.External reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Strong authentication has met strict security needs and protects our organization from phishing
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The feature I like the most about Cisco Duo is two-factor authentication. Cisco Duo helps me to defend against phishing attacks and provides security for my organization.
What needs improvement?
I really have no idea how Cisco Duo can be improved. I do not see any features that I would like to have that are not currently implemented.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco Duo for about half a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not noticed any stability or reliability issues such as downtime or crashes.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I think Cisco Duo will scale with the growing needs of the organization. It will be growing because every company and every regulation requires two-factor authentication, and we have to use it by one vendor or another. I think a solution such as that will be growing in the future.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I mainly used the Microsoft solution because we have merged a lot of products with Microsoft, and using DevOps, Azure, and other services is naturally how we use Microsoft authentication for many things. However, if we cannot do it in some scope, we have to find out how to do it in a specific section.
How was the initial setup?
With the deployment of Cisco Duo, I can do it with instructions. I am not an expert, but I am something between beginner and intermediate.
What was our ROI?
I cannot say that I have seen a return on investment from having Cisco Duo. I have experienced only a security benefit.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with the pricing and licensing and setup costs is that I think it is fair because licensing depends on the user that uses it and consumes those tokens.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I had to reduce a lot of Microsoft Azure Authenticator, but for some reason, it is not supported in some products of Cisco. We have to divide it so that Cisco Duo also covers those needs.
What other advice do I have?
I do not use Cisco Identity Intelligence. I have not noticed any increase in phishing attacks recently, but I work in a financial company where the security is critical. If something can happen one time per 25 years, it is very risky and has to be mitigated somehow. I have implemented Cisco Duo end-to-end phishing resistance with proximity verification for both. I did deploy Cisco Duo Directory to manage the user identity and am using it as a standalone identity provider. I do not think I discovered any new functionalities that I did not think of in the beginning. I did not really face any challenges doing that. I would rate this review a 10 out of 10.
Strong authentication has simplified remote access and identity management for guests and staff
What is our primary use case?
The main use case for Cisco Duo is MFA, which means multifactor authentication using the app and using keys like YubiKeys for various devices, such as RDP and remote access, but I would say remote access is the most prominent use case.
What is most valuable?
Right now, the feature I appreciate most about Cisco Duo is the Duo Directory, which is exciting because it became an IDP.
It is exciting that with Cisco Duo, I can offload guest users and contractors to Duo, so they do not have to exist in the customer environment from their AD, which is a nice way to accommodate guests and contractors needing access to applications.
I express how I appreciate Cisco Identity Intelligence to customers using the Duo Advantage license and always try to push them to at least take a look because it is essentially free with the Duo product.
I have multiple MFA vendors in our portfolio, and I try to position Cisco Duo because I think it is a really good product, but we also try to position other solutions depending on what the customer wants and where they think we can go together.
I deployed Duo Directory to manage user identities, and I think it is great because it is never a standalone provider; it always acts as an additional provider or broker functionality to be the front door and decide to go this way or go to the other IDP.
Once Cisco Duo is set up and running, it just keeps running.
What needs improvement?
I think Cisco Duo can be improved with more YubiKey support with all applications, especially for Windows login.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco Duo for three to four years, since the beginning of 2020.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I did not notice any problem with stability and reliability; it was always available with not much downtime needed.
Sometimes if I have problems, I obviously have to create a TAC case to ask for help, but most of the time, I would say it is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I think Cisco Duo is scalable for organizational growth, as we have some customers using it who then onboarded new users and even bought companies and onboarded them; it is highly flexible and I did not feel any slowdown anywhere.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What was our ROI?
I think Cisco Duo helped reduce the overall authentication-related cost for the company indirectly, as there is less work to do for the admins, because once it is set up, users understand the app, know how to use it, and rarely have problems, so if new devices need registering, they can do it themselves, depending on the setup.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing for Cisco Duo is kind of okay, but most of the time, your competitor is someone like Microsoft who gives it out for free with their offering, making it tough to argue with customers why they should spend additional dollars to also get Duo to improve their setup, but I think the pricing is fair.
What other advice do I have?
I am mostly part of the deployment and with the customers; I am not on the operational side of things, so I cannot really share about phishing attacks, but I mean, Cisco Duo allows phishing-resistant MFA, which is why I try to push my customers to use it, so I would argue, hopefully not.
That is why I try to push my customers to actually use proximity verification and use passkeys to strengthen security, which was mentioned in my previous answer.
I think there is a return on investment for the support team, where they can help validate customer requests and also through self-service portals, but I do not have any numbers regarding return on investment.
I would give Cisco Duo as a solution a rating of 10 because it is great.
Security has improved and remote access works smoothly for all employees
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
What I appreciate most about Cisco Duo is how simple it is to use; you connect it to the email address and phone number, and you are able to push everything to the client. You can watch the log for a quick response to see if it's working or not, and check what went wrong in the log during the morning or something, and even push something to everyone if needed, so there are many valuable aspects which is very good.
The benefits of Cisco Duo for my company include how easy and simple it is to use; Cisco Duo is so easy to maintain and everything grows quickly with the number of users you add into it. You can even add new applications for verification, and it's policy in our company to have two-factor authentication, which we use in combination with that.
What needs improvement?
I cannot think of a specific feature that should be focused on for improvement, but perhaps addressing the trouble we have when people are changing phones would help. When a new phone is obtained, and Cisco Duo needs to be installed, it is easy to go into Cisco Duo and find the user to push verification, so perhaps doing this through Active Directory could make it easier, but that also raises questions about security.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco Duo for approximately four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would describe the stability and reliability of Cisco Duo as excellent because we almost never have troubles with it; the issues we face are with other systems, not Cisco Duo.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Cisco Duo scales very well with the growing needs of my company; during COVID, when we had a higher number of users, there were no problems at all.
How are customer service and support?
I would describe my experience with the customer service and technical support of Cisco Duo as excellent service, and I could totally recommend using Cisco Duo, so it's 100%.
I would rate the customer service and technical support of Cisco Duo a 10, for sure.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before choosing Cisco Duo, we considered Authenticator, which is similar, but I found Cisco Duo easier to implement because we have everything from Cisco, including firewalls and other essential technologies, making it the best choice for our environment.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment process for Cisco Duo is easygoing; I would say it's very easygoing.
I think it took about two days to implement Cisco Duo; as I mentioned, if you connect it to Active Directory, it's straightforward, especially the first time, as you pick everything up from Active Directory and only need to go into Cisco Duo later when people change phones or something similar, requiring verification to see how many users are pending or have not used it.
What was our ROI?
The biggest return on investment for me when using Cisco Duo is security; that's the main point.
Cisco Duo has helped my company reduce its overall authentication-related costs.
I cannot provide an approximate percentage of how much it has helped reduce because, as I mentioned, if people don't use it, they don't get access.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I think the pricing of Cisco Duo is fair because we hired a number of users during COVID when we had many people working remotely, and the costs increased; if I remember correctly, Cisco offered something during COVID that gave us a lower price, so I find the pricing fair.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We thought about Authenticator, and our choice ultimately was Cisco Duo.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to other companies considering Cisco Duo is not to wait; start using it and implementing it. I would rate this review a 10.
Strong authentication has improved partner access and has simplified secure logins for everyone
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The feature I like the most about Cisco Duo is push notifications.
I find push notifications beneficial because they are easy, quick, and simple.
An example of how this feature benefits my organization is when last year, Cisco released an announcement that all distributors and partners need to use two-factor authentication for logging into CCW. We were setting up two-factor authentication, and we had two options. Cisco was giving us two options: Cisco Duo or Microsoft MFA. We chose Cisco Duo as a distributor. Everyone started to use Cisco Duo when they were logging in to CCW, and they liked it. After a while, Cisco released another announcement to extend the obligation of Cisco Duo usage for logging in, but most of the people did not stop using it. They liked it and they are still using it.
What needs improvement?
I think Cisco Duo can be improved by following the competition more closely because there are many vendors who claim they also have an MFA solution and phishing attack solutions. I know Cisco well, but I am not an expert on the other vendors. When we try to sell Cisco Duo for any license, sometimes customers approach us and say that Cisco Duo is expensive compared to competitors or that the features are not as good. Closer competition follow-up would be beneficial.
I would appreciate an additional technical feature for Cisco Duo. I think Cisco has more than 15 security solutions. Sometimes they do combinations and integrations among all of them. Cisco Duo might be able to be integrated into more Cisco solutions. For example, Cisco Duo and Umbrella are kind of sister products. That number of integrations could be increased with other solutions.
From my perspective, the pricing and licensing cost for Cisco Duo is worth it, especially if you are using Advantage or Premier. You will see the difference among all. However, from a customer perspective, most cases are just a need for MFA. They do not know the full capabilities or full features of this kind of solution, so they are just using basic MFA features or push notifications. In that case, Cisco Duo pricing is expensive compared to other simple solutions.
I think you can decrease the essential price for basic scenarios and basic cases.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco Duo for more than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not personally used Cisco Identity Intelligence, but my team is managing Cisco Duo. I have not noticed an increase in phishing attacks in my organization recently, but sometimes it happens. People try to do it, like classic spam or something.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would say this solution is scalable for the growing needs of an organization because if you know how to use the dashboard and how to monitor it, that is definitely scalable.
How are customer service and support?
For us, I have not used customer service for technical issues very often. There were really rare times when we were struggling with a couple of issues for Cisco Duo, and we opened a case with Cisco.
I remember one time the management tool crashed and kind of froze. We opened the case and they said it was a glitch and it would be resolved. It was good after about 10 or 15 minutes. Another time we could not find how to enable a feature in Cisco Duo dashboard. We asked, and they helped us.
I would rate their customer support as five out of five, or 10 out of 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have not used another solution before Cisco Duo for this kind of thing.
Actually, the company has a rule for Microsoft Authenticator, but it is just an authenticator. You type the number and you log in. I cannot say it is like Cisco Duo.
How was the initial setup?
I would describe the experience of deploying Cisco Duo as easy because it does not require too much from the customer's side. You do not have to do many things. You do not have to allow many functions or rules. It is not too hard, and it does not take too long.
What about the implementation team?
We have not implemented Cisco Duo end-to-end phishing resistance with capabilities such as proximity verification for our company, but we did for partner environments. My technical team completed that. After that, we did not get any negative feedback, and as far as I know, they are still using it.
What was our ROI?
I am not sure about the overall return on investment. When we sell Cisco Duo to a customer, it is a subscription model, so they need to renew it, but they are not exactly measuring how many attacks or how many dangers they recover from for their organization. I cannot say if the exact ROI is good or bad because most people are not measuring it. From my perspective, it is definitely worth it.
Cisco Duo has helped reduce my organization's overall authentication-related cost.
I think it saves you at least 20 or 30 percent of your time after you get used to using it.
Looking back at my initial investment in Cisco Duo versus the total value it has delivered over time, I find that we pushed my company to buy it for internal usage. After that, people apart from the Cisco team—we are the Cisco team in Ingram Micro—but apart from our team, the employees in other teams also liked to use Cisco Duo.
Other teams are not different companies. Inside the company, there are some vendor teams, vendor-dedicated teams. We are in the Cisco team. For example, there is an HP team, a Microsoft team, and another team, and they were also using Cisco Duo because of our NFR license, but they liked it.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
From my perspective, the pricing and licensing cost for Cisco Duo is worth it, especially if you are using Advantage or Premier.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
An example of how this feature benefits my organization is when last year, Cisco released an announcement that all distributors and partners need to use two-factor authentication for logging into CCW. We were setting up two-factor authentication, and we had two options. Cisco was giving us two options: Cisco Duo or Microsoft MFA. We chose Cisco Duo as a distributor. Everyone started to use Cisco Duo when they were logging in to CCW, and they liked it. After a while, Cisco released another announcement to extend the obligation of Cisco Duo usage for logging in, but most of the people did not stop using it. They liked it and they are still using it.
What other advice do I have?
Cisco Duo has strengthened the ability to defend against both phishing and identity-based attacks. I would rate this product a 10 out of 10.