Cisco Duo Reviews

Our web developers use Duo Security as a WordPress plugin to provide security for our websites.

Duo offers dual-factor authentication for our logins. I put in my credentials and hit go. Then I get an alert on my Apple watch, and I approve it. That part is just phenomenal. 

Duo has some issues that we're trying to work through. For example, if I install it on a WordPress site and another admin needs to log in, they can't because Duo hasn't been set up for them. It doesn't appear that I can add permissions on a user-by-user basis. It's not obvious.  

I would also like to see password-free login. There used to be a password-free product where you used your phone and looked at the screen. I can't remember what it's called now, but it was great. It used blue wavy lines that constantly changed, so nobody could ever screen capture and use them to log in. That was by far the best solution. 

Duo bought them out and did away with them. They probably saw it as a threat because it was a better solution. And a couple of companies have tried to mimic that, but they have never come close. If Duo were to go back to something like that, I would be ecstatic. Passwords are supposed to be a thing of the past.

I've used Duo Security for about two years.

Duo Security is stable.

I don't know how Duo would scale. If I've got a hundred websites and I install it on several of them, scalability just means adding it to a new website. It would be as easy as adding it to the first. 

That's not an issue, but I  still haven't figured out how to add new users to a site that already has it installed. I checked their online documentation and haven't found an answer yet,  so we temporarily took it off on that particular site.

We tried several authentication solutions before, but I liked the way Duo works better. 

I rate Duo Security eight out of 10 for ease of deployment. It takes a minute or two to download and install the plugin. 

Duo Security is free.

I rate Duo Security nine out of 10. Duo is a solid solution, but it still has some minor issues with adding users. 

We use Duo Security for two different parts. One is for access to one of the servers, and the other one is for accessing the VPN connection.

It helped free up the time of IT staff. It helped them to manage the control within the users. They can control who gets access to which part of the system. For example, if there is a group of people who need a certain type of permissions, they can set them up easily. They can gather them in groups and give specific permissions. They can also give specific permissions to only one person.

It has been very useful in detecting or fixing threats that come into the organization.

It's a good thing for the authentication of your credentials. It's easy to use for the security part, and it helps to improve our security posture.

They can make authentication easier. It should be done in a shorter time. Sometimes, it can take a bit more time to get the answer on your phone. You have to wait a bit longer to get the SMS code and other things. There can be some internet or connection issues. They should make it faster because sometimes, it's urgent, and you need to access something as soon as possible.

I have been using this solution for about two years.

In general, all Cisco products, not just the Duo product, have a lot of stability.

Their tech support is pretty good, but there are some disadvantages. Sometimes, they take a long time to answer. I understand that some of the issues are not very easy, and it takes time to research them. I'd rate them an eight out of ten.

Positive

We didn't use any non-Cisco products. We were only using Cisco products. The IT part of our organization is using the Duo authentication system, and we are using another part of the server for authentication.

It's not very hard. It doesn't take long. The IT gives us an access code for it. 

I just downloaded the app, and after that, just got the security code from that department. I entered that, and it was done. That's it. If you are changing your device and they're just resetting your data, it can take two or three minutes maximum for a new device.

I'd rate Duo Security an eight out of ten.

We use it for security in general. We were looking for something that would integrate with what we already had and that would give us an extra layer of security on top of what we were doing. Since a lot of people were starting to use a lot of handheld devices and equipment at home, we wanted another layer in there.

It hasn't done as much in terms of remediation as it has just flat-out in prevention. Duo has done a very good job in making sure that a problem doesn't become a bigger problem. It's done that very well.

We like the different ways that it allows you to push notifications to people. It can do text, a phone call, and email. We liked the versatility for all of our different end-users, regardless of their level of understanding of the technology.

It does a very good job of helping workers feel safe and secure and supported. Some people view it as just another layer of things that they have to go through, but the simplicity of use, such as being able to call in if they need to, or receive a text, takes into account all levels of end-users and what it takes to get that authentication from them.

It is also important that the solution considers all resources to be external. When you already have certain pieces of security in place, it's really difficult to just rip everything out and replace them. You need something that can start as a standalone solution and then slowly work its way into the rest of your corporate network. When we changed buildings, we had a lot of people working at home for the first time and suddenly using different devices to do their day-to-day jobs, so that aspect became very important.

When it comes to supporting an organization across a distributed network it becomes very important, again, because the traditional method of backhauling security solutions to a central point gets very dicey. It starts to generate a lot of traffic across a wide area. And what happens if some of that can't get back to you? Or what happens if you're dealing with low bandwidth or other scenarios? Plus, depending on where you're at, they may view that as some kind of encrypted back tunnel and not let that happen. Whereas Duo, because it's more distributed and it's trusted out there, allows you to drop something in on a footprint on a very large scale. Before, it would've been a nightmare to get all that configured properly and working.

In addition, the single pane of glass management is very important because security is an extremely complex issue. If you have all these different windows to look at, you're not sure if somebody was looking at this window at this particular time, or if they were over there at that window and missed something. The single pane of glass is very important because the biggest enemy of security is complexity. If you miss something because somebody is not watching the right dashboard, it can blow right by you.

The single pane of glass management does a pretty good job of helping to optimize the user experience, in my particular role. And from what I hear from my team, they're very happy with it. They feel it does a good job for the clients and they love the simplicity.

There could be improvements made to the dashboards and more integration with the rest of the Cisco ecosystem. Duo was clearly purchased, and Cisco has a lot of other panels for their Firepower products, et cetera. They need to continue bringing it, Umbrella, and the endpoint pieces even more together and make the integration a little more seamless among all of them.

Our company has been using Duo Security for about two years.

It's very stable. I don't think we would have gotten it if it wasn't stable. It obviously had set quite a reputation before Cisco acquired it, and that has continued.

The scalability has worked great for us. We've not had any issues with it.

My team gives demonstrations of Duo regularly. The number-one piece of feedback that we get from people is that they like the simplicity. They like the windows, that it's easy to set up, and the features. There are different features and you don't have to turn them all on right away. You can turn on the basic features and get the authentication piece. They like the ability to then drill down and turn on some of those extra features because they don't have to ramp up straight away. They can turn on the basics and be in good shape. Then, if they want to keep tweaking it and turn on all the other pieces, it scales really nicely that way.

End user-wise, we're probably up to about 600 to 700. Our central office is out of Harrisburg, PA and we have a couple of warehouses across the U.S. where I believe they use it too. It's a bit of a distributed model, but it's not a massive distributed model.

I have not personally had to deal with tech support, but my engineers who have had to deal with them have said that they've been very on the ball with quick responses. There have been no major issues.

We did not use a solution for authentication.

It was a little interesting in the beginning when we first put Duo out there because everybody was concerned about text messages on their personal cell phones, and use of their cell phones, and who actually owns their cell phones. We dealt with a lot of what was more along the lines of company policy issues, back and forth.

But after we got past the initial rollout, everybody seemed to calm right down and we don't get any complaints or negativity about it now. It's just part of normal life. Before Duo was pushed out, there were a lot of other companies that were starting to do the same type of thing. That helped ease the release of the Duo product in our organization because people were already starting to get somewhat used to having that kind of stuff happening.

Licensing and pricing are a little bit out of the area that I play in, but I think the pricing is in pretty good shape. 

One of the issues that we used to have is that Umbrella, Duo, and Cisco Secure Endpoint all had different license quantities that you had to buy. That made it really difficult to buy a complete solution with all the other pieces. I had to buy 25 of this one at a time, and 10 of that at a time, and 15 of another one at a time. They seem to have fixed that and the number of seats that you buy now matches across all the different products.

We shopped around for other layers of security but I don't think we specifically shopped around for the authentication piece. When we looked at everything, and the dust settled, this was the easiest piece to put on top of what we had and to give us another layer of security.

Duo hasn't eliminated trust, but it has certainly been a piece of what has helped build our whole hierarchy. We're moving forward and starting to put other pieces in place too on top of that, things that sync a little better with it.

Duo is beneficial to the overall connectivity. It doesn't cause any issues. It doesn't cause an excessive amount of delay, from what we have seen. The nice thing about it is that it just sits on top of whatever else is already in place and it doesn't cause disruption to whatever else you're using.

I rate it highly because it's something that can grow with you, whether you have very little security or a lot of security, whether it's already Cisco or not, and whether you have a mixed mess that you're trying to put into some kind of order. It will go in any direction with you and grow. It will get better as you improve the stuff around it and it will start to integrate with Cisco solutions. It's one of the best products because you have the ability to go with or without Cisco, and it gets better as you add more.

Duo specifically offers good MFA functionality. We needed support for our VPN and used GlobalProtect as well as Duo for additional security.

Duo has allowed us to add an additional layer of security to our organization. It prevents people from gaining access unless they have your credentials as well as a device. It has allowed us to establish trust for every access request and secures our environment. We are confident and comfortable with the way the solution handles this. We have tried other solutions but they've not met our expectations.  

Duo Security does a good job of helping to support our organization across a distributed network. It does a fantastic job at securing access to applications and networks. It is streamlined and straightforward.

Duo Security provides single-pane-of-glass management.

This solution has been most valuable for locking up our VPN solution and providing secure web protection. 

We have a 24 hour timer for our Duo cookie and we would like to reduce this to a shorter time when using Duo. We use Duo together with GlobalProtect and I am not sure which solution would be responsible for this improvement. 

I have been using Duo Security for the entire time I've been employed at my company.

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. We have 20,000 users covered by this solution. 

We have not needed much help from the Duo support team. Using this solution has been surprisingly easy for us. 

We were running a different solution on a test gateway we had and it didn't meet our expectations so we moved to Duo. We have previously tested XAML. 

You pay per user when using this solution and the pricing is fair.

We have never had an issue in maintaining network connectivity across all workplaces. Duo Security has helped remediate threats more quickly and offers security end to end. Cybersecurity resilience is probably one of the most significant elements of organization because we work in the healthcare industry.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten. This is because we have not had any vulnerability that has been exposed to or any other issues that we've had to deal with.

We mostly use it for multi-factor authentication with email platforms like Office 365 as well as other apps.

We were looking to deal with email phishing attacks and brute force attacks, and the like, and Duo has helped a lot. We're more secure with multi-factor and have seen the number of phishing attacks and brute force attacks go down.

Logging in with Duo is baked into anything that we log into, including any applications, email, and web apps. We integrate it with a product called Jump Cloud, which is our cloud-based identity management system. We have also integrated it into WebEx and Box. Duo runs all of our security and MFA, and it's worked out well.

It's helped a lot of our customers with multi-factor in their identity management systems, on-prem and in the cloud. That way, when users log in, they get the MFAs to be able to log in to any resource on the network.

And because everybody is working remotely now, Duo checks all the boxes for hybrid work.

When it comes to remediating threats, it has helped us do so quickly. We don't even see a lot of the threats anymore because it's working behind the scenes. It has definitely decreased the number of threats in the last year compared to what we used to see.

The ease of use and the ease of management of all the users have been key for us. The setting up of devices in Duo has been really easy as well. It's better than all the other ones I've worked with.

Another important feature is that Duo considers all resources to be external because even the internal ones look like external ones, and people click on stuff and get caught. It's very important to be more cautious than ever.

Also, the single pane of glass management works very well. That feature is very important because we have a lot of admins who have to manage Duo, and it's much easier when it's a single pane of glass. That single pane is also great because it's easy to enroll new devices.

One area that might be improved is that setting up SMS texting is not as easy as using the app, even though it does support it.

Also, a faster management user interface would help. It tends to lag a little bit.

I've been using Duo Security for three or four years.

It has been stable. We haven't really had many issues with it. It maintains network connectivity across all workplaces and works great. I don't have any complaints.

It can scale to as many employees as you have. It can go from five employees to 1,000 employees. I don't see any issues with the scalability.

Their technical support is great.

Positive

We did not have a previous solution.

The initial deployment was pretty straightforward. We had a small number of challenges, but nothing we couldn't get by. It was pretty smooth, overall. Setting it up and enrolling new devices into the environment was a breeze. That was the easiest thing.

We do it ourselves.

We see ROI in that users feel more secure and their morale goes up. You get to keep those employees a lot longer if they feel better working for an organization that's investing in security. A big benefit is keeping your employees.

Everybody loves it. They feel a sense of security when they get that prompt to send them a text, or an email. It makes them feel like they're working for a company that is really taking the time to secure the environment. It gives them a good feeling when they get a second form of authorization.

The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it. We don't have customers that haven't used it because of the price.

We evaluated Microsoft Authenticator and Google Authenticator. With those solutions, you don't have the granularity of management of the MFA environment that Duo offers.

Our Duo is all cloud-based, there's nothing on-prem. We typically integrate it with our cloud apps.

Resilience in cyber security is a game-changer. We have the same challenges that every organization goes through with security: phishing attacks, ransomware attacks, et cetera. I wouldn't say it has eliminated 100 percent of them, but it definitely cuts a lot of that stuff out. Every organization should have something like Duo, or MFA in general. But if they're going to do it, they should do it with Duo just because it's so easy to manage and it is resilient.

For management that wants to build more resilience within their organization, they have to implement multi-factor authentication across that organization for everything. It shouldn't just be for email but everything internally as well. 

A lot of our use cases were for customers to get their cyber insurance renewed. It was a requirement and they had to scramble to figure out a way to get multi-factor authentication in place.

It's made things easier for our customers with all the different ways to sign in. It's pretty painless once they get used to it. Once customers understand it, it checks all the boxes for them. It's easy for them to use. It also works with a lot of Cisco's other products.

• The easiest feature is the token or the app on your phone that gives you the code to log in.
• It provides a single pane of glass for management and that helps optimize the user experience.
  
• We get fewer threats to remediate due to the two-factor authentication, which does not allow as many threats through.
• It does a good job of establishing trust for every access request. It checks all the boxes I need and, as a reseller, it makes it easy for me to sell. I'm happy with it.

Sometimes, it's a little harder for customers to adopt.

Also, when it comes to the single pane of glass for management, there are some mixed reviews and opinions that say there could be some other options. But those are very unique cases.

The majority of my customers are really good with just the two-factor authentication and don't really take advantage of a lot of the extra bells and whistles that it has. Getting them to adopt more of those features, versus asking for anything new, would probably be where my first step would be.

I have been using Duo Security for about a year and a half.

The stability is good. I've never had an issue with it crashing or having bugs.

I've never had anything outgrow it. That's for sure. You just add licenses.

Tech support has been great. I've only had to open two cases and they've been very helpful and made it straightforward.

Positive

I've been involved in the deployment of Duo Security a few times and the documentation makes it straightforward.

Overall, the pricing is fair. Customers can wrap it into their Enterprise Agreement, making it easier for them to solve their issues.

We're a Cisco partner, so once the two-factor requirement kicked in and became mandatory for our customers' cyber insurance, we just gravitated right to the Cisco solution.

The proofs of value that we've done are really what sells it. You put it in, get them using it, and then you just buy the license and you don't have to go back.

Employees start off saying, "This is another thing we have to do," but once they get it set up the way they like it, it's very easy. And if anybody gets locked out, we get an email and it's easy to unlock. If the unions were able to adopt it, anybody can.

Overall, it meets all my needs, including price point, and I've been very happy with it.

With Duo, MFA allows the network to have an authenticated user sign-on seamlessly. If someone's entering a password and their user credentials and they want to get access to the network, the Duo app will have a code that the end-user has to input, which then authenticates them. It's a second layer of security before they can access the network. Even if a third party gets your username and password, without that Duo access, they won't be able to access your network.

We don't have to worry so much about the end-user that's logging in.

Multifactor authentication is the most valuable feature.

As for establishing trust for every access request, that's exactly what this solution does. Outside of having a username and password, you have to get authentication from Duo as well.

You can never eliminate trust, but what Duo Security does do is add an extra layer of security. When it comes to the internet, networks, inbound traffic, and outbound traffic, you're always subject to a potential threat. Duo Security just adds another layer.

It's a great addition to the security of any network infrastructure.

In terms of helping workers feel safe, everyone knows that the information within the enterprise is safe because the people that are logging in have been authenticated in more than one way.

It's pretty easy to maintain network connectivity once it's set up; the end-user uses it to log in. It's not something that you have to constantly manage and deal with apart from pushing updates. It's pretty much self-managed.

In terms of consistency across workspaces, it works all the time, except for when a forced update is needed.

It helped us remediate threats more quickly. For instance, if someone accesses your credentials or you leave your laptop open and someone gains access when it times out, you still need the Duo code that is sent. A new code is always needed to be able to access that laptop or even that phone. Then, from there you're able to safeguard the information that your company has.

Nowadays, data is the number one commodity, so protecting that at all costs is really important. Duo helps with that with end-users. The thing about end-users is that they are volatile. You can't really control what someone does. So, Duo security helps with managing that by having them implement a new time code that's always sensitive.

Technical support could be improved. I don't think all support should have to go through an agreement.

I've been using this solution for seven years.

It's very stable. There aren't many issues with Duo.

The scalability is just fine. If you scale a certain amount, you have to upgrade and update your license. Outside of that, it's fine.

We are a large organization that deals with a lot of high transactional payments, and we have a large number of users, maybe 100,000 a day, and inbound user traffic.

If you open up a TAC case and they get to you quickly, it's fine. If you have a service agreement that says that they will get back to you within one to two hours, that's fine because you can resolve an issue. Now, if you don't have that agreement and are just a regular user, they take 48 hours to get back to you, and if you and the network team or the security team can't figure out the issue, a lot of money could be lost in two days.

Because there's always room for improvement and because I don't think all support should have to go through an agreement, I would rate technical support at eight on a scale from one to ten.

Positive

Anytime your network is secure and it's not breached or there's no downtime or infiltration of your perimeter, there's always an ROI.

With regard to pricing, for a small business buying a one-off, it's pretty expensive. If it's an enterprise that has thousands of employees, however, it's really nothing to protect your data because if your network goes down or it's breached, you're losing millions of dollars every minute. When it comes to a large enterprise, it's priced where it should be because you're talking business to business. You're not talking business to consumer.

To leaders who want to build more resilience within their organization's security, I would say that you can't go wrong with Cisco products when it comes to security. You can start with Cisco Umbrella, then go down to their firewalls, and then the next-generation firewalls. Then, you can move down to their end-user security endpoints.

The whole lineup through their security portfolio is really strong. If you're spending $50,000 on a suite and a $100,000 total contract value, you can enter a 3.0 Enterprise Agreement. Then from there, you can lock in prices for one, three, to five years. So, when it comes to any enterprise, when you're talking about security, if you use all of Cisco's security features, from end-user out to your data centers, you'll be pretty well off.

If you have security concerns, implement Duo for your end-users.

Overall, I would rate Duo Security an eight on a scale from one to ten.

We wanted multi-factor authentication across a variety of platforms.

It's improved security by enforcing strong, reliable multi-factor authentication, and it has reduced intrusions across our organization. It makes sure all the user sessions are at least a little more trustful than if we just had single-factor.

In terms of remediating threats, we are able to pick out unsuccessful login attempts pretty quickly on the Duo platform and we can shut down those accounts. It makes us more proactive. That works well.

The ability for users to authenticate via phone, from any random phone number, has been very helpful for managing a distributed workforce. Using it across a distributed network for securing access to our applications is big for us. It works very well, and we have no major complaints about the integration of any of our third-party applications.

We have a high level of confidence in the platform, especially for identifying potential logins from unexpected geolocations. The data associated with logs is very helpful for helping to make that determination.

It's very important for us that Duo Security considers all resources to be external, especially as we lead up to Zero Trust. It needs to be like that.

End-users find it more annoying than anything else. It's tough to manage user perception of the service, especially when there isn't feature parity between Mac and Windows users. There are some challenges in making that user experience the same between platforms and helping users feel the least amount of burden possible while helping to ensure the organization's security.

Network connectivity depends on where users are located. Internally, on-premises, it's not hard keeping connectivity, but we have users who move throughout the world, and their levels of connectivity change. It can be a challenge, if someone is in Bahrain, to authenticate via Duo.

I have been using Duo Security for two years. 

We've had no issues with the stability of Duo. I consider it to be a stable product.

It has scaled to meet our needs. I don't know how it scales if you have 10,000 or 20,000 users, but for our organization, with fewer than 5,000 users, it's been fine.

The technical support has been adequate. They are responsive regarding support for troubleshooting tickets. We haven't had any issues that required escalation, so we've been happy with it.

Positive

We did have a previous solution. The interoperability has been improved with Duo compared to that solution.

Our physical deployment of the solution is in the continental United States, but our users are worldwide.

I don't place too much value on any single product, since placing too much trust in one thing creates a single point of failure. This is just a single piece in a broader spectrum of security products to accomplish our actual goals.

Building resilience is nice, but there's a point of diminishing returns when it comes to doing that. Part of my job is to help our leaders understand where that diminishing return is.

The single pane of glass management is desirable, but it's like a unicorn. No single pane of glass is ever really a single pane of glass. That's something that would be nice, but it's not something I expect.

Duo is a very consistent product and flexible in how it can be deployed and has good support. It's a product we're very happy with.