The main use case for Cisco Duo is authentication.
Cisco Duo - Essentials Edition
Cisco Systems, Inc.External reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Mobile authentication enhances security and access efficiency
What is our primary use case?
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.
User-friendly multi-factor authentication streamlines access and minimizes risk
What is our primary use case?
We use Cisco Duo for our single sign-on. We have it tied to our Okta, so users must first log in to Duo before accessing Okta.
How has it helped my organization?
Cisco Duo helps minimize the risk of attack vectors and prevents unauthorized access to our data since it's tied with multi-factor authentication, which helps block threats.
What is most valuable?
I appreciate the simple login feature of Cisco Duo; being able to log into your actual page and then having all your apps there is convenient.
My experience with Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system has been easier.
It's easier to log in. Cisco Duo is user-friendly; users simply put in their email address and are redirected to their Okta page, making it straightforward to use. It's hard to screw up.
Cisco Duo's Identity Intelligence capability to detect and respond to identity-based risks is good. While I don't necessarily use it directly, I'm sure we implement it, though it might not be noticeable unless specifically pointed out.
What needs improvement?
I'm not aware of any new features or functionalities of Cisco Duo that we have started using recently. I don't know if we utilize the Advanced Identity Threat Detection and Response feature. I have not used Cisco Duo's conversational AI interface for admin tasks.
I'd be interested in exploring the AI portion of Cisco Duo as that would make it more interesting, though it's already straightforward and user-friendly. General announcements when new features come out with Cisco Duo should be broadcasted to customers who are using it, which might bring more accessibility to their documents so users can be more in tune with updates.
For how long have I used the solution?
We implemented Cisco Duo just over four years ago.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Cisco Duo is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Cisco Duo is easily scalable; you can adjust the size quickly and easily. From a licensing standpoint, we have the true-up which makes it easier to increase licenses when needed.
How are customer service and support?
I've never had to reach out to customer service and technical support, so I cannot speak to that aspect. The fact that I've never had to contact support since Cisco Duo has been in place indicates it's a stable, robust product.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were put in a position where we needed Cisco Duo, so we adopted it.
How was the initial setup?
I wasn't part of the deployment team. That said, from what I've heard, it wasn't that complicated.
What was our ROI?
The biggest return on investment when using Cisco Duo is what it protects you from overall. It keeps you safe, and that protection demonstrates its worth.
What other advice do I have?
We don't have a complete passwordless environment in our company yet; we've implemented long passwords, however, we haven't eliminated passwords entirely.
I would rate Cisco Duo a ten out of ten.
Ensures secure access for remote users with strong authentication
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Cisco Duo is to handle remote users.
How has it helped my organization?
As a healthcare association, Cisco Duo helps keep our patients' data secure since we can authenticate the users who are supposed to be accessing our network.
What is most valuable?
The feature I like the most about Cisco Duo is that it allows us to authenticate users before they can connect to our network from outside of our company.
The solution is pretty secure.
What needs improvement?
My experience with Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system is that sometimes there are difficulties, and sometimes users just won't be able to log in. We have to reset their password so they can use Duo.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco Duo for a year and a half.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I assess the stability and reliability of Cisco Duo as very reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution scales very well with the growing aspects of our organization.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support has been very helpful.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not use any other solution before using Duo.
How was the initial setup?
I wasn't part of the initial setup.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don't handle the licensing aspect of the solution.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not consider any other solutions before selecting Cisco Duo.
What other advice do I have?
We did not purchase Dueo on AWS Marketplace.
My advice for other organizations considering Cisco Duo is to maintain the security and integrity of your network by considering using two-factor authentication for all users who have access to it.
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Cisco Duo overall as a ten.
The integration of quick notifications and seamless user experience boosts security measures
What is our primary use case?
Our main use case for Cisco Duo is multi-factor authentication, specifically setting up Zero Trust for different users within our organization.
How has it helped my organization?
Duo features have specifically benefited our organization by allowing us to add security measures. Whenever you add something security-wise, it can add either more complexity or slow down access. Anything that we could quickly use simply and not have any interruption while trying to access a website has been beneficial.
What is most valuable?
The features of Cisco Duo that I prefer the most include the one-time passcodes and the push notifications, which are much quicker with Duo for some reason, making it my favorite aspect from a user experience standpoint.
What needs improvement?
To improve Cisco Duo, the biggest consideration is the licensing standpoint; the most common issue I've found is customers not setting up the Active Directory sync properly, leading to inflated licensing usage when they try to delete inactive users that are still being charged. An additional feature that should be included in the next release of Cisco Duo is a password manager.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used hte solution for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There has been no downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Cisco Duo.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Cisco Duo scales with the growing needs of our organization by making it easy to acquire more licensing, especially with an enterprise agreement, which allows built-in growth and minimizes worries about licensing as we expand.
We have expanded usage of Cisco Duo; it has been smooth, and I have no complaints there, but to be fair, we are very familiar with Cisco ordering processes.
How are customer service and support?
Compared to Cisco, the general support I experience is fantastic; I have no complaints about it.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to adopting Cisco Duo, I was using Okta to address similar needs.
What stood out to me in the evaluation process when comparing solutions was Cisco Duo's simple integration with the Cisco ecosystem and the helpful documentation and learning resources available for our managed service team, especially a dropdown menu in the Duo dashboard that provides useful learning material.
How was the initial setup?
The Active Directly sync is a bit difficult during implementation. Other than that, the deployment is smooth.
What was our ROI?
I can say that I have seen negative ROI with Cisco Duo since it adds an additional cost for customers who may find alternatives through Microsoft Defender; however, existing users of Duo remain happy with it and the integration with the rest of Cisco.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been complaint-free, although the biggest threat to Duo is Microsoft's EA, where their version of Duo is integrated, causing many friends to feel forced to stay within that ecosystem due to the reliance on calling, email, and Office.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before selecting Cisco Duo, I considered Okta, which I found to be more expensive; they do have great features regarding identity and the app dashboard. However, in the end, mostly we have feature parity.
Also, the way Microsoft integrates their enterprise agreement obligates users to stay with it rather than paying for additional products.
What other advice do I have?
I did not purchase the product on AWS Marketplace.
Regarding new features or functionalities in Cisco Duo, we have not adopted anything recently from the end customer standpoint; we've had that setup from day one.
I evaluate the benefit of having a complete passwordless environment in our organization by acknowledging that we have not gone passwordless yet.That will be a next step, although we want to learn more about it before implementation. My hesitation to going passwordless is due to a lack of knowledge and time to learn about it and implement a process to convert everybody over. Many of our internal employees aren't even using password managers, which is concerning, so transitioning them straight to passwordless is a challenge.
We do not utilize the Advanced Identity Threat Detection and Response in Cisco Duo. We're primarily using Cisco Duo for multi-factor authentication, setting up different security levels for our IT team and different groups for access to various internal resources, however, we haven't implemented anything advanced with detection or response.
I have not used Duo's conversational AI interface for admin tasks.
My advice to other organizations considering Cisco Duo is to get the provisioning dialed in before deployment to avoid being hit with overages, as this has been the main struggle we've encountered, which I've seen in other organizations as well.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate Cisco Duo a nine.
Phone notifications and easy onboarding are very helpful
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.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Managing security policies effectively with seamless authentication
What is our primary use case?
My main use case when using Cisco Duo is MFA into everything: email, making teachers MFA, and mostly email. We are rolling it out to other on-site resources that we have as well.
How has it helped my organization?
It has helped us significantly since we have many different applications and things of that nature to protect. Cisco Duo provides protection as we don't have a full cybersecurity team.
What is most valuable?
The feature of Cisco Duo that I prefer the most is the policies, being able to control what we need to within the policies. You can get pretty granular.
There isn't a lot of training that goes on in school districts. Email is an easy way where many people give out their credentials, so the level of protection is something that we definitely need in a school district.
Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system has been easy when logging in, although the teachers don't appreciate it as much. We have it configured so users essentially just hit accept. If it sees any sort of built-in risk, then it steps up authentication. It's pretty easy. I appreciate it.
I've encountered advantages with Cisco Duo in that it has stopped significant pushback from teachers. It has prevented credential sharing and unauthorized access. We've seen a huge decrease since we've rolled it out across the entire district.
What needs improvement?
Improving Cisco Duo might involve alerting us about telephony credits when people receive texts. We hit zero at one point, and we were running around in circles without any idea until I discovered it. That's my only complaint. Other than that, I appreciate Duo significantly.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have had Cisco Duo for a couple of years. That said, we just got it rolled out in our school district this past year. I have been more involved with it in this past year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability and reliability of Cisco Duo are good. I haven't seen too many issues. Occasionally, a server will go down, but they send an email. They tell you who's having issues and that they're working on it. It has only happened once or twice over the couple of years that we've had it. It is very reliable, easy to use, and I don't have too many issues with it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Cisco Duo scales very easily with the growing needs of our company. We have 25,000 students and 5,000 teachers, totaling about 30,000 users, and it's very easy to add when new people come on. Rolling it out was very seamless, as we could do a whole campus at a time.
How are customer service and support?
The customer service and technical support of Cisco Duo is easy. It's really easy on the back end. I have no complaints. Dealing with customer service has been positive. I called them once about telephony credits, and I didn't have to sit through a queue. Someone answered the phone immediately and was very helpful. I would rate them a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did consider other solutions before choosing Cisco Duo as a school district. It has been so long that I'm not sure which ones, however, as a school district, we have to consider multiple options. We always evaluate all possibilities to see what's most advantageous to our system.
Cisco Duo fits the role since we're a Cisco shop. We typically lean toward Cisco solutions.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment of Cisco Duo is simple and straightforward. It's actually very easy. We tied everything to AD groups and would do one site at a time. We didn't mass roll out. I would move a group over, sync with Duo, and it would automatically send them an email. It's pretty seamless.
What was our ROI?
The biggest return on investment when using Cisco Duo is protection and 2FA into anything that we need. As a school district, people are always trying to get teachers' credentials and student information. It's very important to protect PII.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco Duo is honestly above my pay grade. I don't know any of that.
What other advice do I have?
We haven't started using any new features or functionalities in Cisco Duo recently as we just rolled it out. We are currently using basic features. We're looking to do more with it as part of the process. Having a complete passwordless environment in our company would lead to less pushback from people who don't necessarily want MFA. It makes it simpler for them and smooth.
I do not utilize the feature called Advanced Identity Threat Detection and Response.
I don't know enough about Cisco Identity Intelligence capability to detect and respond to identity-based risks effectively.
I have seen yet not used Duo's conversational AI interface for admin tasks.
I would rate Cisco Duo overall at a nine out of ten. It's hard to be a ten, however, I don't have anything at the moment that they could improve.
Elevated security and seamless deployment enhance user and device safety
What is our primary use case?
We use Cisco Duo for MFA on all of our devices. We're exploring single sign-on right now, but haven't implemented that yet.
How has it helped my organization?
Cisco Duo has made us more secure. We've managed to stop some threats with it and keep our users and devices safe.
The benefits of a passwordless environment are pretty high. The biggest challenge that made us want to implement it was just the number of password resets that we have had to do. We had to send people to third-party vendors, and there were a lot of complaints. Being able to handle one password or one section makes our life a lot easier as IT, and their life a lot easier knowing exactly who to go to.
What is most valuable?
The UI of Cisco Duo is easy to use, especially the web backend, and it's really intuitive and easy to set up. The experience with Duo's strong security authentication system has been easy when logging in.
What needs improvement?
Cisco Duo can be improved with better ways to set users up. Currently, we might not be doing it perfectly as we're having them email in phone numbers to get them set up with Duo Mobile. I wish there was more of a self-service option than there is currently, at least to my understanding of Duo.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Cisco Duo for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's pretty good. There was one outage, and they emailed us right away, so we were informed.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Cisco Duo scales really well with the growing needs of our organization. Other than the licensing thing I talked about, we're able to add as many as we want, and we're at a little over a thousand with no issues.
We started with just our public safety departments, such as police and fire, but then we moved to the entire city staff. It went very well.
How are customer service and support?
I haven't used them much, but the one time I did, it was pretty seamless. They got back to us quickly, were nice, and gave us what we needed.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to adopting Cisco Duo, I wasn't using another solution.
How was the initial setup?
Deploying Cisco Duo has been easy. The biggest challenge is getting all the end users on board, but in terms of software deployment, it's pretty painless.
What was our ROI?
We've seen ROI with Cisco Duo as it has brought our insurance premium down.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's a bit confusing because we're on a three-year plan with a certain number of licenses, and we've gone over that number. They told us that when we renew, they will add all these licenses. We've expanded quickly, so everyone's kind of scared because no one knows what the bill is with the long pricing cycle. We know what it's going to be-ish, but until we get the bill, it's kind of rough.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We considered Okta and Entra ID from Microsoft before selecting Cisco Duo. Cisco Duo looks modern, which I know is a weird one, but we have to think about the end user and what they see. There is also the ease of use. It seemed to fit seamlessly and had the most features. We already use other Cisco products. So using another Cisco product seemed like a no-brainer for us.
What other advice do I have?
Single sign-on would make things easier. We have a lot of different departments. They all have different needs. They use a lot of different programs. Single sign-on will be helpful for us.
Cisco Identity Intelligence’s capability to detect and respond to identity-based risks effectively is very good. We're exploring using that a little bit more. It's always great to be able to look through and see if people's devices are out of date and things like that, for addressing security concerns.
My advice to other organizations considering Cisco Duo is to do it. It's easy and was the option that fitted our needs the best. It was also painless. What more can we ask for?
I would rate Cisco Duo a nine out of ten.
Secure logins and device updates have boosted our confidence in online access
What is our primary use case?
Our main use cases for Cisco Duo are for our own internal systems and applications that we're using, finance related and sales related.
How has it helped my organization?
Simplicity in doing our secured authentication
What is most valuable?
The feature of Cisco Duo that I value the most is that it's easy to use. It monitors all our devices to ensure everything is updated before we're given access to those applications. Our company benefits from all those features of Cisco Duo with confidence, and we feel very secure with it in terms of authentication of our logins.
What needs improvement?
As for improving Cisco Duo, we're quite happy with it, so there isn't much negative feedback. I would mention that there's nothing specific I would want to see enhanced in Cisco Duo. We're very satisfied with it, and there haven't been any requests from the team for enhancements or future features. Everyone has been very happy with it.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco Duo for 5 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
As for the stability and reliability of the solution, we have never had any issues. We have never experienced any downtime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Cisco Duo scales very with the growing needs of our company; it's very easy for us to upgrade or add licenses or do additional deployments for our new employees or new hires. If there are new devices coming in, it's very easy to implement.
How are customer service and support?
Regarding customer service and technical support for Cisco Duo, we don't have issues with that because we're quite skilled with it.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before choosing Cisco Duo, I didn't consider any other solutions.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment of Cisco Duo is a very simple process for us.
What about the implementation team?
For our strategy for deployment of Cisco Duo, I let our IT work on it, but we were able to roll it out easily, probably in around two or three days, we were done with our deployment.
What was our ROI?
The biggest return on investment for us when using this platform is the reduced time for us to give support, plus the confidence that we have, knowing that all our authentications or logins are secured.
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 quick and easy. There isn't much of an issue there. Even when we resell this to our customers, they're satisfied with it. The pricing is acceptable to them.
What other advice do I have?
My experience with Duo's strong security authentication system has been very easy to use. The process to log into our systems using Cisco Duo is just a two-step process for us, making it much easier to access these systems.
I evaluate the benefit of having a complete passwordless environment in my company through the convenience and ease of use of these devices or Cisco Duo into our devices and applications. I have encountered no challenges with Cisco Duo so far. It gave our IT no issues or problems.
Regarding the feature called Advanced Identity Threat Detection and Response in Cisco Duo, we haven't used it yet. My impression of Cisco Identity and Intelligence capability to detect and respond to identity-based risks effectively is that Cisco has been at the forefront for security. They have lots of data information especially with the network, wherein most of our customers are using Cisco. They get all the intelligence from there.
I have not yet used Duo's Conversational AI Interface for admin tasks. Regarding whether there could be more in the AI area in Cisco Duo, not really at this point. In our use case, we're not yet ready for that.
I would rate Cisco Duo around 8 or 9 out of 10.
Push notifications improve security and convenience for faculty and staff
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Cisco Duo is that we use it for two-factor authentication for all of our faculty and staff. We don't use it for our students, however, we implement it for faculty and staff.
How has it helped my organization?
The features of Cisco Duo improve our company by increasing security since they're relatively simple to use.
What is most valuable?
The feature of Cisco Duo that I appreciate most is the push notifications. They are great. I'm glad that they can be accessed from my watch personally. Many of our staff use the phone calls so they can just answer and press one without needing to pull out their mobile phone and get the code.
From a management perspective, I appreciate that we can enroll or control devices on the back end for people who get a new phone and forget to handle Cisco Duo properly and need to add a new device.
It makes logging in easier than alternatives.
What needs improvement?
Cisco Duo could be improved if there were a way to make two-factor authentication quicker. Sometimes it takes a few seconds to jump from page to page during its login flow.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco Duo since probably 2020. It's hard to determine the exact timing with COVID. That's when everything started.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Regarding the stability and reliability of the Cisco Duo solution, we have experienced some outages over the last few years that are significant because people can't log in.
While we wouldn't want those outages, they haven't been catastrophic or terrible enough to make us consider looking elsewhere.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Cisco Duo scales with the growing needs of my company. While we don't grow significantly as a university compared to some other companies, it scales appropriately for our size.
How are customer service and support?
I haven't had to interact much with customer service and technical support of the solution, so I don't have substantial feedback to provide.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We use two solutions on campus: Cisco Duo for faculty and staff, and Microsoft Authenticator for students. The main difference between the two is that Cisco Duo appears more reliable. Microsoft Authenticator seems to have more friction and breaks down more frequently, meaning users might complete the authentication flow but still not authenticate properly.
Our students use Microsoft Authenticator, and we get more negative feedback from that than we do from Cisco Duo. Cisco Duo works better than Microsoft Authenticator. Not everybody prefers two-factor authentication, however, Cisco Duo has the least friction of the two solutions we use.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment experience of Cisco Duo was relatively easy compared to other similar projects we've rolled out. This implementation seemed straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
We had good support and guidance with the implementation, and we relied heavily on skilled people at Cisco to help us implement it properly.
What was our ROI?
Regarding the return on investment when using Cisco Duo, separate from the financial aspect, I cannot answer that thoroughly.
It seems valuable and performs better than our other solution for faculty and staff, so I would hope it provides a better return on investment. I'm not familiar with the financial details.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We have not considered other solutions while using Cisco Duo in the last five years.
What other advice do I have?
In evaluating the benefit of having a complete passwordless environment in my company, we're not entirely passwordless since we use Cisco Duo for two-factor authentication. We still authenticate with a password before being moved to a Cisco Duo page. If there's a passwordless feature, we're not utilizing it.
Regarding challenges when using Cisco Duo, issues are usually client-side related, such as someone's phone not working correctly.
Regarding Advanced Identity Threat Detection and Response in Cisco Duo, I don't believe we utilize it. I have received inquiries when I've authenticated from new locations, however, I'm not certain if that's part of this feature.
My impression of Cisco Identity Intelligence's capability to detect and respond to identity-based risks is satisfactory.
I have not used Cisco Duo's conversational AI interface for admin tasks.
I would rate Cisco Duo overall as probably an eight out of ten.
Works very well and gives an extra level of security with Verified Duo Push
What is our primary use case?
Cisco Duo is for multi-factor authentication for all of our users and securing our assets off-campus.
How has it helped my organization?
Cisco Duo has benefited our company overall by giving us the ability to have multi-factor authentication. At the time, we didn't have any other in-house options. While going through the process of identifying a vendor, Cisco Duo was by far the cream of the crop, so we went that direction, and we've been there ever since.
What is most valuable?
The Verified Duo Push feature is valuable. It gives an extra level of security beyond just the regular push. Before that came out, we had a few instances of people getting compromised, pushing the button because they thought it was something else they were doing, and it turned out to be an attacker compromising their account. We were able to enable that pretty much as soon as it went into production, which drastically cut down on any issues.
It's been pretty easy. There haven't been too many challenges. It does what it says it does. It's easy. It's straightforward. It's not a hard process to do anything with it. Even though we don't take a lot of advantage of it, there are always new features that are coming out. It shows that Cisco puts time, effort, and development into it.
What needs improvement?
I would appreciate seeing Cisco Duo improved with a tighter integration with Active Directory to secure not just Remote Desktop to a server, but all the remote levels of connection that you can make to a server.
Other than that, there can be a better way to onboard users who don't want to use a phone, but that's stretching it because we can do a token or order Cisco Duo tokens, or do FIDO keys.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco Duo for 10 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The problems we've had with Cisco Duo have been very easy to resolve, and the team has been very helpful in providing solutions. It's not one that we've had a lot of challenges with. A couple of times, our Cisco Duo region might have had an issue, but there was very clear communication, and it was resolved pretty quickly. It's been great, and I don't have a lot to say because there haven't been many problems.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Cisco Duo has scaled great with the growing needs of my company. It scales easily because it is just tied into our identity provider, and it grows along with that. I don't have a lot of specific examples because it's just something that's there. It works, it's reliable, and I don't have to think about it too much.
How are customer service and support?
Their team has been very helpful in providing solutions. I would rate the technical service and customer support of Cisco Duo a ten out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
It was easy. The difficult part was just the culture shift and making people understand why multifactor authentication was important and why we were using Cisco Duo. Even if you're a retired faculty member who doesn't do anything, you still need to protect your account because it's a doorway into our system. We need to make sure it's secured. Once we got through those hurdles and it was adopted, the problems were few and far between.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation involved using Cisco Duo services, specifically the concierge service for onboarding, which was excellent. They provided a lot of information and templates for sending out registrations and notifications of what we were doing. They walked us through any technical challenges, which I don't remember having, so it was all a very smooth and good experience.
What was our ROI?
From my point of view, the biggest return on investment when using Cisco Duo is the security and the ease of setting it up. It's easy to enroll, the email goes out, and the user can just download the app and set it up. We're not having to provision tokens and email them out or make people come to campus and stand in line to register a device.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco Duo has been great. We've been there for 10 years. While we haven't gone through the setup part for a while, licensing is straightforward and convenient for higher education because student populations are included. So, we don't have to pay extra for it. We just pay for our knowledge workers, which has been great, and the cost is reasonable.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
While using Cisco Duo, we have looked at Microsoft Entra ID because it includes MFA and could probably do the bulk of what we do. However, when we look at it, it doesn't do everything fully, so we still have to keep Cisco Duo. It doesn't make sense to have half our users use that and the other people use Cisco Duo, so we just keep it all in one and use Cisco Duo.
Cisco Duo's reliability is definitely better. The app experience is definitely better. Our test users have had a lot of challenges with Entra ID that our Duo users don't have.
What other advice do I have?
Other than the verified push, my company has not really started using any new features or functionalities in Cisco Duo recently, but we are looking at going to a more zero-trust type of setup. We've been looking at how to leverage Cisco Duo better without hugely increasing the expense of our authentication systems. Currently, we have it integrated with Entra ID and our Active Directory environment. We are looking at how we can expand that out and improve our security on campus.
We have been with various vendors for a complete passwordless environment, and we've tried doing it with Entra ID but have run into challenges with some vendors that still require a password in their SAML authentications. I haven't really validated the Cisco Duo portion of it yet, and I'm not sure what all that entails at this point. I know it can be done, but we haven't implemented it yet.
I would rate Cisco Duo a ten out of ten.