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Cisco Duo vs Safe-T Secure Application Access comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), ZTNA as a Service (8th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Cisco Duo
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (4th), Authentication Systems (2nd), Access Management (5th), ZTNA as a Service (3rd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
Safe-T Secure Application A...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (37th), Access Management (30th), ZTNA (19th)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
Charles Slaustas - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Contractor at Insight global
Supports seamless authentication for users across multiple organizations and personal portals
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.
it_user787671 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer
Needs to be easier to configure and to display logs more simply
We use only it for scanning files for viruses. That's the only feature we use in this product It needs to be easier to configure, it should be something that's working well with other sources. It should be something that allows me to see the logs simply. One to three years. Sometimes it doesn't…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"I would say iboss is a very good product; its scalability is very good, and it's seamless for the user."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"The iboss solution gives me the ability to scan the traffic through all the ports, through all the 131,000 PCP and UDP ports, and with this ability, we have the granularity also for consults over social media and applications on mobile, and this is an advantage that the customers are looking for right now."
"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"If you have to log in to something, you must go to Duo Security to confirm that you're who you are on your phone."
"The most valuable aspect is the authentication and the SSO."
"It's simple. It's reliable. I haven't had any issues with it."
"The feature of Cisco Duo that I value the most is that it's easy to use; it monitors all our devices to ensure everything is updated before we're given access to those applications."
"In the world of network security, it is outstanding and very strong."
"The most valuable feature of Duo Security is the ability for the user to easily approve access. The application prompts the user, and they can see the location and the IP address. This makes it easy for the user to approve it and go through the process of logging in to the VPN."
"The thing that I appreciate the most about Cisco Duo is the ease of setup."
"My advice to others looking into using Cisco Duo is that it is a great product, and I recommend it for everyone, specifically for those using Cisco Secure Client."
"Safe-T is very good for users because it has plug-in for Outlook."
"This product allows us to actually send it straight from our email to the other person's email in a safe way, where we can meet all our regulations and still keep the data in our control."
"You can easily integrate it and fit the system to your organization's needs, and that's a very huge advantage."
"If you want a very flexible system that you can easily integrate, and develop interfaces for it or plug-ins to other application environments, it's probably the most flexible"
"Safe-T SDA has allowed my organization to secure my office applications and makes it harder for hackers to be able to hack into my internal office web applications."
"It's easy to use over the web. A user who is not in the office can use it and securely insert files."
"Safe-T SDA has allowed my organization to secure my office applications and makes it harder for hackers to be able to hack into my internal office web applications."
"At the end of the day it's really good and really improved."
 

Cons

"iboss can be improved because the integration could be better; you need to import all the sites that you access today, and there are a few problems whenever you import thousands of websites, making the integration process messy for the users."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You feel that you are running into that support wall."
"Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc. It is easy to gain access if, for example, hackers obtain my username and password."
"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"Its pricing could be better."
"I have heard they are doing DDoS filtering, but I am not certain if they are implementing it correctly."
"An enhancement they might make is if they can log it to Splunk since they're big into Splunk. Instead of me having to go into that portal to look at things when someone is trying to log in and they forgot their password, I can look in and tell them they forgot their password or didn't respond to the prompt."
"There could be improvements made to the dashboards and more integration with the rest of the Cisco ecosystem."
"In Cisco Duo, what could be improved is having more features."
"It is not easy to maintain network connectivity."
"We have a 24 hour timer for our Duo cookie and we would like to reduce this to a shorter time when using Duo."
"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'm unsure how to disable the ping notification sound on my phone when using Cisco Duo."
"I evaluate the stability and reliability of the solution as somewhat tricky. Cisco Duo Access Gateway is mostly VM-based, and while I'm not sure whether there is an on-premises hardware-based solution, having this VM-based solution can be buggy."
"The cloud solution is not that great especially with Swiss customers."
"I'm not sure what advice I would give others about this product because I don't like Safe-T."
"The Outlook agent is not working well for installing it in the entire office."
"Better UI. A better UI for the people that manage all the processes of Safe-T. Some of the UI is not as intuitive as you would like it to be."
"In terms of improvement, they need to be much more strict regarding the roadmap, about timelines and when new features will be up in production."
"One important thing that we haven't found in this product is the ability to provide a read-only view for documents. Also, the ability for the customer to add annotations to these documents."
"When we have something that we want improved, it takes a little bit of time until it can be fixed."
"The Outlook agent is not working well for installing it in the entire office."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"Its price is reasonable. It is not highly expensive."
"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."
"Duo Security is free."
"Duo Security's pricing is good, fair, and very comparable to today's market."
"It has a fair pricing model. I know they have different tiers, but it would be nice to have different types of licenses for certain groups of users in our organization. That way, we wouldn't have to lump everybody into one group. That would be also one complaint."
"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."
"My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been good, with no issues. I am pleased that the prices remained stable after Cisco acquired the solution."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Performing Arts
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Media Company
9%
Religious Institution
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise58
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We used iBoss mainly for Internet Access by having an Agent on Windows laptops Primarily because when we try to use i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
I am not involved in pricing, but as per the information I have, during that time, the Blue Coat proxies we were usin...
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 Du...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Cisco Duo shows that it is a cost above our Entra costs...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
I believe Cisco Duo needs to be improved on the delay process because there is a delay when we send a Duo Push or whe...
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Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Duo Security
Safe-T SDA, Safe-T, Safe-T Software-Defined Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Information Not Available
Government of Israel, eviCore Healthcore, Glen Imaging, Sarin, LBG, Rollomatic, Boegli-Gravures SA, Banque Heritage, Groupe Minoteries, Temenos, ZEK, RLM Finsbury, Harel Insurance, Meitav Dash
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. Safe-T Secure Application Access and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.