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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
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (6th), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (7th)
Cisco Duo
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
157
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (3rd), Authentication Systems (2nd), Access Management (4th), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (3rd)
Safe-T Secure Application A...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (32nd), Access Management (34th), 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

"This product is solid, fairly easy to use, and reliable."
"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."
"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."
"We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"Consolidating management into iboss's single pane of glass has helped my organization reduce operational costs by around twenty to twenty-five percent."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"The deployment and installation process for Cisco Duo is quite straightforward, which is an advantage."
"My experience with Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system has been good; it performs very well when logging in."
"It is a good solution for hybrid environments and VPN."
"The features of Cisco Duo have benefited our organization in terms of security level because before, it was not secure—anybody could get your password and log in—however, with that second layer of defense, it helps us and helps our community."
"Cisco Duo is a simple and effective tool that gives detailed information about users who connect to your domain."
"The most appealing feature of Cisco Duo is the phone notification system that simply pops up on your phone."
"The two-factor authentication is valuable because that is the use case for which we are using it."
"The product is really amazing, and I think it is one of the best documentation sets I have ever seen."
"At the end of the day it's really good and really improved."
"From a technical point of view, products are stable and scalable, and we do appreciate the personal touch the sales engineers (SE) support and development bring, as well as the personal touch of the sales support, the free online, and web-based training."
"If you need a solution for sending big files to customers or for receiving large files from them, this is a very good solution."
"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."
"Safe-T is very good for users because it has a plug-in for Outlook."
"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"
"It's easy to use over the web. A user who is not in the office can use it and securely insert files."
"We use only it for scanning files for viruses."
 

Cons

"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"The endpoint-type solution is an area that needs some improvement."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"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."
"It is stable, but due to growth, it can sometimes be less stable than wanted."
"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."
"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"Cisco Duo can be improved by exploring a way to make it a more seamless integration and by deploying an in-house server."
"While two-factor authentication with mobile devices provides a high level of security, it's still not foolproof, as someone could potentially steal your phone. It would be beneficial to have information about the authentication location."
"Regarding the stability and reliability of the Cisco Duo solution, we have experienced some outages over the last few years that are significant because people can't log in."
"Cisco Duo can be improved because people have their own personal mobile devices."
"It is easy to use when logging in, but at times, there's a delay in getting the pop-up on a phone, requiring users to occasionally retry authentication depending on backend services."
"I believe Cisco Duo needs to be improved on the delay process because there is a delay when we send a Duo Push or when we are signing into any applications."
"There might be a little slowness, but that could be my connection."
"When you come to the push in Duo Security, there are some integrations where you have to use the code instead of the push functionality."
"Setting up Safe-T SDE is very complex. It is not straightforward, and it requires much understanding on the concepts of the product."
"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."
"I'm not sure what advice I would give others about this product because I don't like Safe-T."
"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."
"The cloud solution is not that great especially with Swiss customers."
"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 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."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"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."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"Cisco's licensing is always a bit complicated to understand, but the price is fair. It could be more expensive than others, but the way they integrate everything, it has a fair price."
"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."
"The cost was reasonable. Licensing was pretty straightforward for a change."
"It was very reasonable."
"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."
"I believe the licensing model is excellent as it offers flexibility to our customers, allowing them to adopt a crawl, walk, or run approach."
"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."
"Duo Security's pricing is good, fair, and very comparable to today's market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
13%
Performing Arts
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise79
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
I think iboss could be improved by making reporting and dashboard customization more flexible, and simplifying troubl...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
I use iboss as a cloud-based secure web gateway to provide secure internet access, web filtering, and protect remote ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
My experience with iboss's pricing structure, setup cost, and licensing model has been positive, straightforward, and...
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, the setup cost, and the licensing of Cisco Duo is that it is really inexpensive in th...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
For the next release, Cisco Duo could be improved by adding touchless authentication and biometric features.
Ask a question
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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: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.