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Cisco Duo vs Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 23, 2024

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
7.7
Cisco Duo enhances security and adaptability, reducing costs and downtime, benefiting remote work and boosting employee morale.
Sentiment score
8.4
Cisco Identity Services Engine enhances security, reduces breaches, ensures compliance, simplifies management, and consolidates systems for cost savings and efficiency.
I think Cisco Duo offers a good return on investment for startups, newer organizations, or those utilizing cloud-based applications.
Direct comparisons with Forescout reveal up to 30% to 40% difference in cost savings.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Duo's support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge but critiqued for delays without service agreements and contact difficulties.
Sentiment score
5.9
Cisco ISE support is praised for knowledge and responsiveness, yet occasionally inconsistent with integration and follow-up challenges.
However, the response time could be faster.
I find Cisco's technical support to be good but not excellent.
I rate the technical support as one out of ten.
Sometimes it's challenging to identify which support team is responsible for certain issues, which is a significant concern.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco Duo's cloud-based design enables seamless scalability and integration, making it ideal for various organizational sizes and requirements.
Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) offers high scalability, supporting large deployments and enterprise expansions despite hardware and setup challenges.
I believe Cisco Duo is very scalable because it is cloud-based.
Factors like architecture, business nature, and legal limitations such as GDPR affect it.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Cisco Duo is praised for stability, seamless integration, proactive support, with most users rating its reliability highly.
Sentiment score
7.7
Cisco ISE is highly reliable and stable, though larger deployments may experience occasional performance and configuration challenges.
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is considered very reliable and stable.
The stability of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is poor for certain use cases, like authentication.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Duo users seek improvements in telephony, integration, user experience, device management, customization, pricing, licensing, and technical support.
Cisco Identity Services Engine requires improved integration, user interface, documentation, compatibility, and management efficiency to enhance user experience.
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.
The whole setup works well with Cisco access points and Cisco switches, but when you have multiple vendors in the environment, such as HP switches or access points like Aruba, you'll find they will not work well with Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE).
Pricing can be more expensive compared to other vendors, and there is a significant price gap observed, which doesn't seem justified by some specific features.
Additionally, the product is vulnerable and has many bugs.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Duo provides flexible, user-based pricing suitable for any business, with additional costs for premium support and benefits from initial free trials.
Cisco ISE offers three pricing tiers, with high costs and complex licensing, but provides extensive features and potential discounts.
The approximate cost is around eighty dollars per user.
I find the pricing of Cisco Duo to be reasonable.
The setup cost is reasonable, estimated at around six euros per month.
Compared to other solutions like HPE ClearPass, Cisco is more costly, and the conversation suggests a possible forty percent price gap compared to competitors.
The license costs can range between $50,000 to $100,000 per year for enterprises.
Making large organizational costs significant.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Duo provides seamless integration, robust security, and ease of use, enhancing operational efficiency and user experience for hybrid environments.
Cisco ISE enhances network security with integration, 802.1X authentication, policy management, ease of use, and strong access control.
This setup makes it scalable, as the deployment section is in the cloud, allowing the installation of agents according to needs.
The client VPN and multi-factor authentication (MFA) features are the most useful.
This solution ensures organizations have secure environments and also supports robust policy enforcement, allowing control over who has access to various parts of the network.
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is very good at device administration.
The solution is integrated with other Cisco devices and can offer automation for an organization, making deployments more dynamic and providing real-time visibility.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Duo
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (2nd), Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
Cisco Identity Services Eng...
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
142
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 6.0%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) is 23.5%, up from 19.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cisco Security Portfolio
 

Featured Reviews

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.
SunilkumarNaganuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced device administration hindered by complex deployment and security limitations
Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) needs to improve the profiling preauthentication. They are very poor in asset classification and should focus on improving the preauthentication profiling, especially for NAC use cases. This will give them a roadmap for software-defined access (SDA) use cases and network segmentation. Threat detection capabilities are very weak. Additionally, the product is vulnerable and has many bugs.
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
The setup cost is reasonable, estimated at around six euros per month.
Which is better - Aruba Clearpass or Cisco ISE?
Aruba ClearPass is a Network Access Control tool that gives secure network access to multiple device types. You can adapt the policies to VPN access, wired, or wireless access. You can securely ...
What are the main differences between Cisco ISE and Forescout Platform?
OK, so Cisco ISE uses 802.1X to secure switchports against unauthorized access. The drawback of this is that ISE cannot secure the port if a device does not support 802.1x. Cameras, badge readers, ...
How does Cisco ISE compare with Fortinet FortiNAC?
Cisco ISE uses AI endpoint analytics to identify new devices based on their behavior. It will also notify you if someone plugs in with a device that is not allowed and will block it. The user exper...
 

Also Known As

Duo Security
Cisco ISE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Aegean Motorway, BC Hydro, Beachbody, Bucks County Intermediate Unit , Cisco IT, Derby City Council, Global Banking Customer, Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha, Houston Methodist, Linz AG, London Hydro, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Molina Healthcare, MST Systems, New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Reykjavik University, Wildau University
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.