Cisco Duo - Essentials Edition

I am an IT system support person, and my use cases with Cisco Duo  started out with helping clients at my firm and the firms my contracting agencies had by teaching them how to set up Cisco Duo  and understand how to use it. Eventually, some of the systems I have access to on my own, usually the corporate systems and employee portals, were Cisco Duo-protected. It has been a split between using Cisco Duo and Microsoft Authenticator , depending on how the MFA has been set up. I started out as IT support, helping people install Cisco Duo on their Android and Apple devices, and I believe they actually had a computer client. Eventually, I had to use it in my own work to authenticate and gain access to the systems I support. Moreover, I have seen a lot of it used to access employee portals, either by end-user employees or my own employee portals.

My last access to Cisco Duo involved helping people either activate their Cisco Duo accounts on their individual Apple or Android devices, or if they were locked out, unlock their accounts or move them over to a new device.

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.

As support, I do not find it an issue with Cisco Duo product itself; it is more an issue of organization administration. Often, people do not receive expiration messages, and sometimes, for security reasons, accounts get disabled without notifying the end user, so they mistakenly think something has gone wrong when it really just needs to be re-enabled on the external system. It is primarily an issue on the administrative side of the firm I am working for.

I am familiar with Cisco Duo and have probably been using it since around 2020.

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. The administrative site was also very easy to navigate for locating people and devices. I also have a background in computer asset management, so I have the skill set to locate device records easily.

In terms of quality and speed of support for Cisco Duo, I find it just as fine as any other Cisco product. It is simpler at the endpoint; there is much less involved in calling technical support to resolve issues compared to other Cisco products. I have also dealt with firewalls and VPNs, and I can say that Cisco Duo administration is much less involved than other Cisco areas. I would rate support for Cisco Duo a 10, as I have never had a negative experience.

My experience with MFA is primarily Cisco Duo and Microsoft Authenticator , and I have used them both similarly, either as pushes for allow or deny or as stronger MFA requirements such as exchanging passcodes. From my experience, Cisco Duo seems a lot easier to install and operate. In helping add accounts to either my devices or to the devices of the people I am supporting, both systems work well. I can get passcodes or utilize QR codes. One thing I noticed about my current firm is their initial hesitation to consider QR code exchange secure, but eventually, it was re-enabled to reduce support times. As an administrator, I have done both, pushing activation to pre-installed devices already registered to a system or actually sending people a QR code to their email, and both methods worked fine with personal and corporate email.

The setup of Cisco Duo is easy. Most of the time, the setup took me walking the end user through the installation over the phone, but if they understood how to get to their App Store or Play Store, it takes probably under two minutes. Most of it depends on wide area network or internet speed; activating directly on a client device versus sending an activation email makes a difference. If it is all set up and requires only sending an activation code message, it is about a minute. Cisco Duo installs very quickly on Android and Apple devices, provided the Wi-Fi connection is good.

From what I was involved in with Cisco Duo, we actually conducted Cisco Duo pushes through the management systems, enabling that through MDMs, the Bomgar. I found it pretty easy to grab the latest version of the Cisco Duo installer to update the packages on our management systems. I do not remember having any problems; it is one of the easier applets to package or to already find packaged.

I am currently between jobs or contracts, but I believe for the MFA administrator, it would help if they set up the filters for gathering the data. 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. The administrative site was also very easy to navigate for locating people and devices. I also have a background in computer asset management, so I have the skill set to locate device records easily. I have given this review an overall rating of 10.

I implemented Cisco Duo  for my customer approximately one year ago. For the use case, we are using Cisco Duo  with VPN connection. When the customer VPNs to their environment, before they can access the VPN, they need to do the MFA of Cisco Duo.

I find the MFA, multifactor authentication, and Universal Prompt most useful in Cisco Duo. This is a SAML connection. The trusted endpoint and Windows Logon, MFA with Windows Logon, and RDP connection are valuable features. Cisco Duo can be integrated with many third-party vendors and third-party applications.

The main reason my customers started using Cisco Duo is because they need to have a multifactor authentication application to secure their application.

The biggest benefit of Cisco Duo for my customers is the license because they count licenses for the user. One user can use any application. If we buy a 100 or 200 user license, one user can use many applications integrated with Cisco Duo.

Passwordless is a good feature for customers to use Cisco Duo without prompting for the password. They can type the email address, and they can access their application continually and faster than before.

The return on investment my customers see with Cisco Duo includes having the inventory of their mobile and computer. They have Cisco Duo to do the inventory for them, and the MFA helps protect their application.

There are no major issues to improve in Cisco Duo because it improves continuously. Cisco Duo has many features separated by license tiers: Essential, Advantage, and Premium. They could consider moving some features from the next license tier to the Essential license tier, such as the health check of endpoint feature.

I have been working in my field for about six years.

Cisco Duo is stable, but occasionally there are emails about incidents that affect some services temporarily. The downtime and issues typically occur during maintenance windows at night. When incidents occur, they are not critical issues and do not affect users' ability to use the system.

Cisco Duo scales easily with the growing needs of the organization. It integrates with their Active Directory, so when they have a new employee, Cisco Duo will automatically synchronize the user. The customer simply needs to buy more licenses to expand to 1,000 or 2,000 users.

The support for Cisco Duo is excellent. I have opened one case, and they provide good support. I would rate their support 10 out of 10.

The price for Cisco Duo is reasonable. Their website lists $3 per month per user for the Essential license. For company or enterprise usage, the cost decreases below the website price.

They tested Cisco Duo with SafeNet for comparison.

I would rate Cisco Duo 10 out of 10. Using Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system is straightforward to configure and use.

Advanced Identity is in the next license tier. I am testing it in my company environment but not using it with any customers.

I am currently testing Cisco Identity Intelligence capability to detect and respond to identity-based risks.

Deploying Cisco Duo is not challenging. For the administrator, the deployment takes approximately one to two days. For customer employees to install the Duo desktop application on their computers, the time varies depending on the number of users. For 500 users, it takes approximately one month.

I recommend Cisco Duo because the MFA can integrate with many applications. When customers purchase it, they can integrate it with many of their applications, making it valuable.