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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.

Positive

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.

We are using Cisco Duo in our company. Our primary use cases for Cisco Duo are mainly for our VPN connectivity for multi-factor authentication, and we are looking at extending it to other areas within our infrastructure for MFA deployment as well.

Before implementing Cisco Duo, we were concerned about phishing or credential-based attacks, especially since we experienced a ransomware attack, so we needed to ensure that we put in additional authentication for our platform. We started with that for our VPN connectivity where it will no longer be just a matter of username and password, but then we needed to step up with another layer of security.

When evaluating our identity strategy, we initially were looking for a standalone MFA tool, but then we wanted to extend Cisco Duo to our other environments because, for instance, our ERP system, we want to extend that authentication aspect to that area and then also other areas within our infrastructure. It is going to be a comprehensive solution for us, but we are still in the deployment stage. The first thing that we started with was the VPN aspect, but then we are extending it to other areas as well.

Cisco Duo's visibility into identity-based risks has improved our ability to manage security very well. Over the past four or five months that we started using it, we have noticed that it is really helping us.

Cisco Duo has helped us manage the security of both human users and non-human identities across our environment very well.

Cisco Duo has improved our operational efficiency, because we had attacks and were looking at getting another layer of security in terms of our infrastructure. Earlier on, you would only need to have your username and password to be able to connect to our VPN. But with another layer of Cisco Duo, it is helping us in terms of securing our users. Our users are now more comfortable after the attack in terms of being able to use that connectivity access, which is a key thing for us. It has really been very helpful.

I do not have a straight answer for how Cisco Duo can be improved at this time.

With the implementation that we are going through right now, I was asking a question about how we can use Cisco Duo on an application that is using its own internal authentication. I think it is more or less about us making sure that that kind of application is using perhaps our AD for the authentication, and that is where we would be able to implement Cisco Duo. I was just looking to find out whether it is possible to use it on a third-party application that is using its own internal authentication.

Cisco Duo has been in use for less than a year. I would estimate approximately four to five months, which is not very long.

Cisco Duo is a stable product.

Cisco Duo is scalable enough for our needs.

Currently, the number of people using Cisco Duo in our company is about fifteen, consisting of our management team and our executive team.

Regarding the technical support by Cisco, I would say their products are very good. We have been using Cisco products for so many years, so we do not really have any issue with using Cisco products. They have been very secure, and in terms of performance, everything is very good for us.

I would rate their technical support a nine.

For response time, there may be a little bit of improvement needed because sometimes you have to wait a little bit, not too long, but sometimes you really want a quick response, and it is not always like that. There are also times when you need to understand some of these things.

Before Cisco Duo, we were not using anything at all for MFA.

The deployment process for Cisco Duo is straightforward for us and is not a difficult thing. It is not an issue.

I would not be able to talk much about cost reduction concerning Cisco Duo because since we deployed it, we have not engaged in any additional cost or anything like that, so I would not say that it has really helped us in terms of reduction of cost or an increase in expenditure. However, it is a product that is really helping us, so I think the cost-benefit of having it is something that we really appreciate.

Regarding the pricing, what actually happened was that we got the product purchased through our HQ, so the costing aspect and all those things sit with our HQ. I do not have much information in terms of the costing when it comes to the procurement of it.

Before choosing Cisco Duo, all those evaluations were done from our HQ, so we were given the product to integrate into our system.

Overall, I would give Cisco Duo a rating of nine out of ten.