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AWS IAM Identity Center vs Cisco Duo comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.9
AWS IAM Identity Center boosts ROI by enhancing efficiency, security, cost management, and user experience through improved access control and auditing.
Sentiment score
7.7
Cisco Duo enhances security and adaptability, reducing costs and downtime, benefiting remote work and boosting employee morale.
The return on investment includes operational efficiency gains, security risk reduction, compliance with regulations, improved user experience, productivity benefits, reduced overhead, and better security posture.
We have achieved significant time efficiencies with AWS IAM Identity Center.
I think Cisco Duo offers a good return on investment for startups, newer organizations, or those utilizing cloud-based applications.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
AWS IAM Identity Center offers effective, prompt support with comprehensive documentation, though a live chat option is desired.
Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Duo's support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge but critiqued for delays without service agreements and contact difficulties.
AWS provides immediate solutions and assistance whenever needed, especially if issues arise that cannot be handled internally.
They are prompt, keep you updated, and provide excellent assistance.
AWS offers better assistance plans for their services.
However, the response time could be faster.
I find Cisco's technical support to be good but not excellent.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
AWS IAM Identity Center efficiently manages large user bases and permissions, supporting organizational growth and integrating with AWS Organizations.
Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco Duo's cloud-based design enables seamless scalability and integration, making it ideal for various organizational sizes and requirements.
AWS Identity Center successfully supports scalable deployments, allowing additional resources as the company grows.
The scalability of AWS IAM Identity Center is excellent.
It can handle both a small number of users and a bigger number of users efficiently.
I believe Cisco Duo is very scalable because it is cloud-based.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.7
AWS IAM Identity Center is praised for its reliability and efficiency, with consistent performance and 99.96% uptime.
Sentiment score
8.5
Cisco Duo is praised for stability, seamless integration, proactive support, with most users rating its reliability highly.
There can be issues if there is an outage on AWS's side, which could prevent logging in because your region might be down, affecting the Identity Center's availability.
It offers 99.96% uptime.
Stability-wise, it is functioning well without any outages or crashes.
 

Room For Improvement

AWS IAM Identity Center needs enhancements in user interface, integration, flexibility, security, automation, and comprehensive documentation.
Cisco Duo users seek improvements in telephony, integration, user experience, device management, customization, pricing, licensing, and technical support.
Having a lot of users on one instance is hard to configure, so I hope for more flexibility and ease in configuration.
Enhancements could include automation tools or a centralized dashboard for managing roles and policies across multiple accounts, simplifying the process.
When configuring it with third-party tools, like Active Directory, the naming convention of permission sets requires careful attention, which can be confusing.
Cisco should allow easier integration with third-party equipment because Cisco's own equipment is expensive.
Cisco Duo is a modern product that does not support older applications, lacking backward compatibility.
 

Setup Cost

AWS IAM Identity Center is cost-effective, offering free basic features, while advanced features may require budget planning.
Cisco Duo provides flexible, user-based pricing suitable for any business, with additional costs for premium support and benefits from initial free trials.
AWS IAM Identity Center is available as a free service by default.
It is not that expensive, rated at three out of ten for costs.
Pricing for AWS IAM Identity Center is very affordable, rated at two out of ten with one being cheap.
The approximate cost is around eighty dollars per user.
The setup cost is reasonable, estimated at around six euros per month.
I find the pricing of Cisco Duo to be reasonable.
 

Valuable Features

AWS IAM Identity Center offers centralized access control, enhanced security, and automated role management for efficient and secure cloud operations.
Cisco Duo provides seamless integration, robust security, and ease of use, enhancing operational efficiency and user experience for hybrid environments.
It provides the least privilege-based access control, which limits users to only the operations they need to perform without interfering with unrelated configurations.
These features allow for excellent micro-level control over resources, ensuring specific permissions are granted.
Its valuable features include granular access control, allowing precise control over who can access specific AWS resources and under what conditions using JSON-based policies.
A valuable feature of the solution is its hybrid structure, which involves proxy agents running on-premises while other services are on the cloud.
The client VPN and multi-factor authentication (MFA) features are the most useful.
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS IAM Identity Center
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (7th)
Cisco Duo
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Cisco Security Portfolio (6th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of AWS IAM Identity Center is 1.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Duo is 6.1%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Khaled Saidi - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage cloud security with granular access control and enhanced authentication
Managing IAM in complex environments can be challenging, and there are several areas for improvement. First, incorporating automation tools or a centralized dashboard for managing roles and policies across multiple accounts would simplify administration, especially for large organizations. Additionally, policy debugging and validation could be more streamlined, as troubleshooting misconfigurations can be time-consuming and prone to errors. A more robust error messaging system or a dedicated debugging tool would be beneficial. Another area for improvement is temporary access credentials. AWS documentation should offer more detailed guidance on edge cases and exceptions, along with clearer examples of how to handle various scenarios. Lastly, enhanced session-level policies that are more context-sensitive and based on specific conditions (such as IP address, device, or time) would greatly increase flexibility and allow for more granular control over user sessions.
RyanDeppe - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps reduce the risk of a breach and is easy to deploy and onboard
For our customers, Duo Security is a significant advantage because it provides them with a straightforward method to implement MFA across their entire environment. Moreover, once we delve into the more advanced features of Duo Security, it enables us as a partner to engage in ongoing discussions regarding security strategies with our customers. Initially, we may only introduce them to MFA during the onboarding process. However, as their security strategy evolves, we can leverage Duo to perform additional tasks such as risk-based assessments and deployments, thereby assisting in the development of their security measures. Duo Security helps secure our infrastructure. It serves as our gateway layer of protection, allowing us to understand who is logging in and why. We conduct risk-based assessments on each user to determine whether their actions are appropriate or not. Duo Security is not a comprehensive security solution, but it is undoubtedly a crucial component, a critical layer of security. This aspect resonates with our customers consistently. Their ability to reduce the risk of a breach is of utmost importance. It serves as the primary line of defense. Currently, credential gathering and leaks are widespread in the market. By implementing an MFA solution like Duo Security, we can effectively prevent these issues. When we put a stop to credential harvesting, it becomes much harder for attackers to infiltrate and navigate our network. Therefore, Duo Security acts as an excellent first line of defense. User authentication and device verification are the methods through which we envision our customers navigating in order to prevent identity-based attacks. Initially, when we employ Duo Security, it is a straightforward implementation of multi-factor authentication. As we progress, we enhance security measures by incorporating device risk assessment and potentially even regional assessment. This includes considerations such as whether the login is being attempted from a specific IP address. These gradual enhancements contribute to the establishment of an additional layer of protection. Thus, it is not necessary to implement a completely disruptive strategy right from the start. Instead, it is possible to gradually adopt and integrate this approach, following a crawl, walk, or run methodology. The Duo Security self-service portal helps free up our customers' IT staff time, allowing them to focus on other projects. As a Cisco partner, we have received feedback from our customers that the portal is highly interactive, enabling them to easily navigate and resolve issues. After setting up their Duo environment, we rarely receive callbacks for assistance, as the portal is intuitive and empowers users to handle everything they need on their own. The appealing aspect of Duo Security is its ability to establish trust for every access request, regardless of its origin. It is a cloud-based solution with excellent API integrations. It doesn't matter where or how a user logs in; Duo will be there to protect the user, whether it's through MFA, risk assessment, or similar methods. It is extremely beneficial to our customers that Duo Security considers all resources as external. Our customers frequently inquire about a zero-trust model, and this is a key component of it. Unfortunately, I would love to say that there is a simple solution for zero trust where we can just deploy this solution and be done with it. But that's not the case. It requires a layered approach, and that's what we convey to our customers. Duo Security is definitely a part of that. Duo Security has helped improve our customers' cybersecurity resilience. Internally, it protects our users from accessing sales operations-based environments. Additionally, our customers use it regularly to protect business-critical applications.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
24%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS IAM Identity Center?
The product is easy for beginners to learn and use.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS IAM Identity Center?
AWS provides the lowest pricing among other service providers like Azure, Google, Oracle. It is cost-effective, and they use a pay-as-you-go model.
What needs improvement with AWS IAM Identity Center?
There are new AI features coming to AWS that are easy and simple to use. However, focusing on further allowing customization and flexibility in developing solutions as a solution architect or devel...
How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What do you like most about Duo Security?
They are users who, as mentioned before, utilize RDPAP and MDPAP. It includes functionalities related to finance, specifically in single sign-on.
 

Also Known As

AWS Single Sign On, AWS SSO
Duo Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS IAM Identity Center vs. Cisco Duo and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.