Axiad Conductor vs RSA Adaptive Authentication comparison

Axiad and RSA are both solutions in the Authentication Systems category. Axiad is ranked #12 with an average rating of 10.0, while RSA is ranked #27. Axiad holds a 0.5% mindshare in AS, compared to RSA’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Axiad users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 71% of RSA users who would recommend it.

Axiad Conductor

Read 6 Axiad Conductor reviews

658 Views
98 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

RSA Adaptive Authentication

Read 6 RSA Adaptive Authentication reviews

245 Views
146 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

Axiad Conductor

RSA Adaptive Authentication

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 22, 2025

RSA Adaptive Authentication and Axiad Conductor are competing products in the realm of security solutions. Axiad Conductor appears to have the upper hand in feature set robustness and perceived worth despite pricing concerns.

Features: RSA Adaptive Authentication provides advanced risk-based authentication, continuous monitoring, and excels in fraud prevention. Axiad Conductor offers a unified cloud-based solution, integrated credential management, and flexible authentication options. A key difference is Axiad's integration capabilities with third-party applications.

Room for Improvement: RSA's on-premises setup requires complex configurations and may benefit from simplifying these processes. Enhancing integration capabilities could improve its adaptability. Greater flexibility in pricing might make it more competitive. Axiad Conductor could improve by expanding its support for third-party credential types, simplifying its complex validation steps, and offering more in-depth analytics dashboards.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Axiad Conductor offers a quick cloud-based deployment model with responsive customer service, allowing easy global access with minimal infrastructure changes. RSA Adaptive Authentication's on-premises setup involves more complex configurations but is supported by comprehensive customer resources.

Pricing and ROI: RSA Adaptive Authentication has higher upfront costs due to a traditional licensing model, affecting initial ROI. In contrast, Axiad Conductor's competitive subscription model allows for a faster ROI with lower initial expenditures and scalability, appealing to cost-sensitive buyers.

To learn more, read our detailed Axiad Conductor vs. RSA Adaptive Authentication Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Axiad Conductor vs. RSA Adaptive Authentication

June 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Axiad Conductor

Ranking in Authentication Systems

12th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Privileged Access Management (PAM) (17th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (13th), Passwordless Authentication (3rd), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (5th)

RSA Adaptive Authentication

Ranking in Authentication Systems

27th

Average Rating

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Axiad Conductor is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of RSA Adaptive Authentication is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Authentication Systems

Featured Reviews

TonyVentura

Director of Information Technology Services at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

Eliminated the drudgery of having to run our own PKI environment

One of the things that we find the most valuable is not actually a feature, but it's the fact that we are not managing the environment ourselves. Because it is a managed solution in the cloud, it takes away a lot of the drudgery of having to run our own PKI environment. And the product has proven itself to be incredibly flexible and has been able to address all of our pain points. That's why we bought it. And even while we've been going through it, new pain points or challenges keep coming up, and Axiad has been able to deal with all of them. It was very impressive in terms of its utility right from the get-go, and has shown its ongoing utility when we have reached these catch points, issues it has been able to resolve. And when it comes to enrolling a user, it's super easy with One Click Issuance. It's far easier than the solution we replaced. I haven't put a stopwatch on it, but I'm sure it takes less than a minute with Axiad, whereas before it was taking three to five minutes. It's so easy now that we can offload the process to our clients who can self-enroll. Previously, we would have to do the enrollment process because it was so complicated. In addition, it's super simple for deploying and managing authentication devices. Our IT department is rather small, so all the incremental wins that we can get are hugely important to us.

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Directorc4e7

Director of Cyber Security at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We need better ease of use; the product is overly complicated

There are many use cases that we have defined based on our business needs Ingestion of logs and raising alert space on those logs are the most valuable features. The product is basically unusable. We need better ease of use; it's overly complicated. It has taken years to implement. We used RSA…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I have found most valuable is the overall way Axiad listened to our problems and helped us solve them. They provided guidance and expertise, with their experience, that enabled us to be successful in a very challenging space."

"The solution has also saved us time by having end-users troubleshoot issues through the MyCircle feature, and has definitely reduced the efforts of our administrators. It is saving us five to 10 minutes per incident."

"Aside from Active Directory, anything that is a multi-factor platform is handled through Axiad Cloud. It is critical for helping to enforce usage of authentication devices across our organization."

"And when it comes to enrolling a user, it's super easy with One Click Issuance... It's so easy now that we can offload the process to our clients who can self-enroll. Previously, we would have to do the enrollment process because it was so complicated."

"It's very user-friendly. We're issuing YubiKeys for our corporate users and they just plug it in, go to the Axiad Cloud portal, and click the issue button. It's a couple of steps."

"The life cycle management of credentials is the aspect that we have found to be the most useful... The differentiator that Axiad provided was the ability to provide users a way to self-serve the updating of their credentials on their private keys. That was the feature we were most interested in and Axiad does an excellent job of it."

"Ingestion of logs and raising alert space on those logs are the most valuable features."

"The capability to manage your business policy related to security when required without vendor involvement."

"Risk Engine’s risk score, eFN, GeoIP, and device binding all coming together in the Policy Rules to decide when to escalate to MFA."

"The most valuable feature is the stock tokens. That works the best for us."

"Our customer are seeing value from the product, as they experience cost reductions. They can stop fraud from their customers, then their customers can have a better experience from their services."

Cons

"I would like a more modern look to the portal."

"We would prefer that the solution be hosted in Canada because we're a Canadian entity. That would be nice to have. It's not a feature, as such, but it would really make us a lot happier if it could be located in Canada."

"macOS is notoriously ever-evolving and it's difficult to keep pace with it as it pertains to certain kinds of crypto authentication. That's really not even on Axiad. That's a decision by Apple, but it makes it a moving target."

"With their licensing model, it becomes hard to scale. For example, we couldn't roll it out enterprise-wide because if you scale it across more than 100,000 users, the cost becomes too exorbitant."

"I'm looking forward to seeing how they move to FIDO U2F as their primary authentication method across all of their solutions."

"There are just some minor tweaks that could be made on the front end. It would be cool to have nicknames for authenticator devices. If you have more than one, it's hard to discern what you have."

"Reporting modules is one of the major areas that can be improved further."

"Better filters when searching for events. The current features for current filters when searching fraud events are not very comprehensive. You can only filter by certain fields in the transaction."

"I would like to see a more adaptive type of solution, something that we could use on our web pages..."

"It has taken years to implement."

"RSA Adaptive Authentication lacks a mechanism to verify the identity of a new user in the Enrollment event workflow."

"The product is basically unusable. We need better ease of use; it's overly complicated."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's very cheap on a per-year basis. The cards themselves last about three years and the license is on the order of double-digit dollars per user, and not hundreds of dollars per user, per year."

"Don't just focus on the hardware or software costs of acquiring a solution, but look at it from the perspective that so much of what it takes to run a PKI environment has to do with the people who are running it.... look at the total cost of ownership and not just the cost of acquisition."

"Axiad's pricing was what we were expecting. It was at the right spot. They were competitive."

"The pricing is very competitive for what is offered at the level that we need. They are right there with what the industry standards are. They tend to be a little bit less, in terms of cost, when we are talking about security at government standards. So, I would say that they have a slight advantage on cost compared to the industry average. They are the lower cost solution and the best bargain out on the market today."

"You may need to opt for second best if funding is low and the number of users is huge. However, the pricing is able to be negotiated if your user figures are huge."

"The pricing is $50 per head, yearly."

"Customers need to deploy the solution in a very expensive infrastructure. RSA should should think about a less expensive infrastructure for customers because the solution costs around $100,000, and the infrastructure needed to support that solution may be even more expensive than that price."

"Keep the proxy service layer on premises. That consumes SaaS security services on the back-end."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

22%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

University

Financial Services Firm

47%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Axiad Cloud?

The life cycle management of credentials is the aspect that we have found to be the most useful... The differentiator that Axiad provided was the ability to provide users a way to self-serve the up...

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What is your primary use case for Axiad Cloud?

Our use case is credential management for one of the business units. Axiad provides credential management for those users, including the creation of new credentials and life cycle management of the...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Axiad Cloud?

You have to understand the number of users and the number of devices that are going to use the solution. I'm saying that because of my experience with the licensing part. That's my one gripe. If yo...

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Comparisons

Venafi vs Axiad Conductor

Compared 43% of the time

Cisco Duo vs Axiad Conductor

Compared 31% of the time

Yubico YubiKey vs Axiad Conductor

Compared 25% of the time

More Axiad Conductor Competitors

RSA Authentication Manager vs RSA Adaptive Authentication

Compared 100% of the time

More RSA Adaptive Authentication Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Axiad Conductor

June 2025

Download Axiad Conductor product report

Buyer's Guide

Authentication Systems

June 2025

Download RSA Adaptive Authentication product report

Also Known As

Axiad Cloud

No data available

Overview

Axiad Conductor offers a user-friendly platform for managing multifactor authentication and credential lifecycle, supporting seamless transitions to cloud environments for enhanced security compliance and access control.

Axiad Conductor stands out with intuitive management of multifactor authentication systems, assertive device lifecycle management, and a managed cloud solution that streamlines operations. It promotes user self-service for credential updates, minimizing the need for extensive training. With the capability to handle large networks, it enhances efficiency while meeting contract demands. Addressing user suggestions, plans include interface design updates and Canadian hosting, although macOS's frequent updates pose integration challenges.

What are the principal features of Axiad Conductor?

"One Click Issuance": Simplifies user enrollment through easy interface actions.
Multifactor Authentication: Manages critical authentication processes securely.
PKI Support: Facilitates seamless management in PKI environments.
Credential Self-Service: Empowers users to handle updates independently.
Cloud Management: Reduces operational burdens due to its managed environment.

What should users look for in terms of ROI and benefits?

Efficiency: Streamlined operations boost productivity across large networks.
Flexibility: Adaptability to meet evolving challenges and contract requirements.
User Empowerment: Enables users to manage their credentials autonomously.
Compliance: Supports regulation adherence effortlessly.

In diverse industries, Axiad Conductor is implemented to manage multifactor authentication and PKI elements like smart cards and YubiKeys. Organizations leverage it to ensure compliance, facilitate secure workforce access, and transition PKI systems to the cloud, handling substantial volumes of smart card and machine certificates with ease.

Axiad

RSA Adaptive Authentication is a risk-based two-factor authentication solution providing cost-effective protection for an entire user base. Adaptive Authentication secures online portals, SSL VPNs, and web access management portals for different types of organizations in the healthcare, insurance, enterprise, government, financial services, and other industries. Based on the transparent two-factor authentication technology, Adaptive Authentication works behind the scenes to authenticate end users and transactions based on individual end user and device profiles. In addition, Adaptive Authentication uses the RSA Risk Engine to estimate the level of risk for the specific activity and uses information collected from the RSAeFraudNetwork (a cross-organization, cross-application, cross-border online fraud network) to identify fraudulent activities. The Policy Manager determines what actions must be performed, depending on the risk score and other parameters.

RSA

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

ADP, Ameritas, Partners Healthcare

Buyer's Guide

Axiad Conductor vs. RSA Adaptive Authentication

June 2025

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