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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.

My main use case for Okta Platform is for authenticating users, specifically in user authentication.

I use Okta Platform for authenticating users in web applications. I have used it for Naranja X, which is a mobile bank in Argentina that has about 11 million users on our platform, and we are using Okta Platform to authenticate users. Recently, I have also used it for Ernst & Young to authenticate employees to access the internal platform.

I do not have anything unique to add about my main use case with Okta Platform; I have a lot of users to connect to a platform. Normally, it is a simple use case involving authenticating users and two-phase authentication.

The best features Okta Platform offers include an API that is very easy to use for creating new customers, setting up, and customizing for our use cases. I do not see any unique features, but the basic features are well-done.

The API makes my work easier because it is very simple to use for our web and mobile applications to connect them. Our applications are built using Next.js with a back-end in Node.js or Python, and it was very simple to integrate. I have used Cognito and Auth0 before and do not see any big difference, but Okta Platform does the basic things well.

Okta Platform has impacted my organization positively by providing much better security, as it implements the best patterns for security. I do not need to worry about implementing authentication myself, which is very simple and much more efficient as a solution since I just call the API and everything is done. I do not need to have code replication across several services. The user experience for administration is very easy, making it simple to manage the platform, create a client, add or remove customers, and understand the logs of what is happening inside authentication. For end-users, it works and offers a very simple, comprehensive solution for authentication.

I would like to see Okta Platform become simpler for users, as I think that is the most important thing. I am an experienced engineer with 35 years of experience, but it could become simpler for new engineers who are just starting and building applications using LLMs. An IM supervisor integration with Cloud Code could improve integration with agent functions.

I cannot think of any improvements needed for Okta Platform at the moment; I think what it has is very great.

I have been working in my current field for about 35 years.

In my experience, Okta Platform is stable; I have had no downtime with the platform in our use case.

I have not conducted any specific evaluation for performance or availability with Okta Platform, but the performance is good, and everything is fast. You do not need to think about performance with Okta Platform; it just works.

Okta Platform's scalability seems good; I have 11 million users on the platform, with about 500,000 online at the same time, and everything works well without any issues regarding scalability.

I have not needed to contact customer support for Okta Platform because everything works for me. When there are issues, it has been another team handling the situation, and as far as I know, everything works fine without issues.

Before using Okta Platform, we previously utilized Auth0, and we switched from Auth0 to Okta Platform due to pricing reasons.

Before choosing Okta Platform, I evaluated other options including Auth0, Cognito, and Google Cloud IAM, as well as considering creating our own internal platform for authentication. After assessing the best options, I selected Auth0 and Okta Platform, and eventually switched to Okta Platform after their commercial team proposed a better price for our company.

I do not have metrics on the return on investment from Okta Platform, but I know that it works because everyone is happy with the solution implemented, even though I do not focus on the numbers for my organization.

Regarding Okta Platform's AI capabilities, you have an expectation of 100 percent accuracy and reliability. I think that is relatively easy if you have an IMCP for Okta Platform that guarantees everything is working. It is another aspect that should not require thought; it should just work seamlessly for authentication implementations.

Okta Platform helps secure access to APIs, containers, and Kubernetes in our architecture. However, I do not have any AI services in our production environment yet.

My advice for others looking into using Okta Platform is that it is a great solution that works well, but they should pay attention to the cost. With a lot of users on the platform, it could get expensive, so they should do the math to see if it works for their specific use case. Overall, for features, I think Okta Platform is satisfactory and usable without problems. I would rate this review a 9 out of 10.