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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.

I have worked on all components of Okta Platform starting from Access Gateway to Identity Governance to Okta PAM solution to Okta Workflow. I have worked end-to-end on these components, including requirements gathering, drawing the architecture out, building it out, testing it, deploying to production, and hypercare. I deal with the end-to-end process independently.

For securing access to cloud infrastructure, Okta Platform helps by using an authorization server so we can utilize modern protocols such as SAML or OAuth to have those chains generated, client credential flow or authorization code flows to secure the application. When it comes to AI agents, we can onboard them to Okta Platform. We can run certification campaigns around these AI agents so that these agents are not over-privileged. We have MCP gateways which we can leverage to act as a gateway between the application and MCP gateway. We can secure which particular application or agent is allowed to call which particular MCP gateway and the tools inside it. That is how Okta Platform secures it on a high level.

Okta Platform can help to secure access to non-human identities in my environment, such as service accounts, machine-to-machine access, or AI agents.

Regarding use cases where Okta Platform helps protect non-human identities, when it comes to agent onboarding, that is what it does for non-human identities. It takes in the non-human identities in the form of agents. The XA protocol also plays a key role inside it. Currently, Okta Platform also has the OAuth OBO token which works in case of non-human identities. I have built POCs and also worked in some applications that consume it. I have experienced building solutions regarding non-human identities with Okta Platform.

Regarding the specific industry or regulatory requirements, currently the projects that I am working on include one in the healthcare industry and another in the entertainment industry. They are leaders in their respective industries. Okta Platform is being implemented there.

Regarding AWS services that are integrated or secured through Okta Platform, it is not direct. We are not securing Lambda directly from my current project. We are using Okta Platform to transform the logs to a SIEM platform using Lambda and AWS Gateway.

I have noticed measurable security and operational improvements in my cloud-based workloads since implementing Okta Platform. Previously when it was being handled by some other configuration logic or tool, it was not able to perform up to the mark. Sometimes the configuration was difficult for it to handle. With onboarding to Okta Platform, it became easier to handle those scenarios. The security rails and the logs around Okta Platform are very good. It has detailed information, so everything becomes easier with Okta Platform.

What I appreciate about Okta Platform is that it is currently moving towards agents. Agent Gateways are something that Okta Platform is moving forward with. Okta Platform has come up with an XA solution that is modernly used for agent communication and it is leading in the market. There are other technologies that are following, but Okta Platform is currently leading that space.

The key benefits that I have seen from using Okta Platform are that it is easy to configure. There are a lot of customizations that are available. When it comes to orchestration tools, using them we can do many use cases which might not be possible out of the box. It has a lot of flexibility towards it.

Okta Platform is moving towards AI, which is good, but that space is very new. Okta Platform can understand the use case better and move faster in that field because the AI agent has many gaps. The non-human identity part has many gaps which Okta Platform can fulfill.

Apart from the AI aspect, there are missing features in Okta Platform that I would like to see included in the future or enhanced. The MCP gateway onboarding for agents can be made smoother. Agents already have the capabilities to link with Okta Privilege Access for key management. If it could be made easier to map those out, it would be easier to adopt.

I have been working with Okta Platform for three years.

Regarding the performance and scalability aspect of Okta Platform, it performs very well. It has a very good runtime. Okta Platform has committed to 99.99% uptime that it will be online. When it comes to Okta Workflow, when there are too many flows running at once, those get delayed. Sometimes some of the values in the workflows are not populated correctly. I have opened a ticket with Okta Platform regarding this. It is some system bugs that they cannot fix.

On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the best, I would recommend the technical support of Okta Platform a solid 9.5. The response is very active. Even if the person who is assigned is not able to help, they take help from their subject matter experts of those products to help us out. The technical support of Okta Platform is very good.

Apart from Okta Platform, I have worked with Auth0, which is a product of Okta itself. I have also worked with Ping and ForgeRock.

Regarding the deployment aspect, it is not that difficult with Okta Platform. The reason being Okta Platform is a cloud solution and it is not on-premises. Because it is on the cloud, it is very easy to deploy it.

I have not seen any ROI with Okta Platform.

My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing part of Okta Platform is that from the licensing perspective, from what I am aware, it is competitive. Some of the tools are more expensive and the pricing is okay. It is not too great, it is not too bad from what I know.

The key differences, both pros and cons of Okta Platform in comparison to Ping technologies or ForgeRock that I used are that Ping has more customizable options in regard to journeys. Okta Platform does not provide those customizable journeys. Ping has more towards it. Ping can do identity verification, which Okta Platform lacks. Okta Platform cannot do ID verification built-in and they have to rely on other third-party vendors such as Persona to do identity verification. There are some areas which Okta Platform can still improve with respect to identity verification.

I work with Okta Platform as an AWS version. I have worked on the AWS hosted version of it, not Azure.

For the procurement of Okta Platform, I work for the client and they purchased it from Okta Platform. The way they were reached out is that they have been using Okta Platform for almost five to six years now. They have a strong relationship with Okta Platform and that is how they got it.

Given my varied experience with Okta Platform technologies, one of the key areas that organizations lack currently is security. Many organizations take it lightly because it does not affect their features in a way. But security is one of the key factors. Okta Platform is a better approach to implementing Identity Access Management. As they do not have to rely on versioning, you can directly integrate with Okta Platform and it will help you manage the users, groups, and everything at a central place. Because it is being managed by a separate team, there are less chances of having bugs and it is easier to maintain those.