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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
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
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 (6th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (7th)
Cisco Duo
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
163
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (5th), Authentication Systems (2nd), Access Management (5th), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (7th)
Safe-T Secure Application A...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (26th), Access Management (35th), 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

"The iboss system is highly reliable. The false positive rates are small compared to some other systems we've experienced through other partner agencies who use competing solutions."
"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"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."
"I recommend iboss for organizations looking for strong cloud-based web security and centralized access control."
"I would say iboss is a very good product; its scalability is very good, and it's seamless for the user."
"The students were always protected, and the content filtering worked very well, seeming to work better than other products we had tried previously."
"Cisco Duo just works; that is the best feature."
"Duo Security gives us an additional layer of security that would give us added confidence that our network will be less likely to get hacked, compromised, or otherwise."
"Cisco Duo has improved my operational efficiency and reduced costs in areas such as authentication, IT support, and security operations because many times it ends up coming down to the ease of use, especially for the third-party contractors we have."
"The feature of Cisco Duo that I prefer the most is the policies, being able to control what we need to within the policies. You can get pretty granular."
"We get fewer threats to remediate due to the two-factor authentication, which does not allow as many threats through."
"Compared to Cisco, the general support I experience is fantastic; I have no complaints about it."
"It's simple. It's reliable. I haven't had any issues with it."
"It is a good solution for hybrid environments and VPN."
"If you need a solution for sending big files to customers or for receiving large files from them, this is a very good solution."
"We use only it for scanning files for viruses."
"At the end of the day it's really good and really improved."
"It's easy to use over the web. A user who is not in the office can use it and securely insert files."
"You can easily integrate it and fit the system to your organization's needs, and that's a very huge advantage."
"the security level is very high. After we tested it and checked all the security aspects of the product, we found that it's highly secure."
"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"
"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."
 

Cons

"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."
"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."
"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers. This type of encryption is tough for any appliance in a BYOD environment."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"Fold that in with the risk intelligence they're getting from all of the different subscriptions they are a part of. Now, these security companies subscribe to things like emerging threats, databases, etc. You can fold all this intelligence to decide what's happening on an endpoint. I would love to see them start moving into that space. That would compete directly with Microsoft. Maybe that's why they haven't. Having that ability native within the solution would be great. The other area in which I would love to see improvement is more detailed descriptions of why they block websites."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"I know that Cisco Duo is pretty expensive; we have affiliates that use the Microsoft product just because Cisco Duo is so expensive, and they don't want to pay for it."
"They could just continue to add more integrations."
"I think Cisco Duo can be improved. I found the onboarding was very difficult, even for engineers who have been using similar solutions before."
"I think Cisco Duo could be improved by including email authentication, as there is currently only SMS, SMS push, and code generation, but having email authentication could be beneficial when you don't have a phone."
"Duo Security should have more customized use cases. For example, if a client needs to have more customization, it would be better to connect directly with Duo's R&D to try to discuss the issues together in order to add customizations."
"I faced a significant issue about a year back when I tried to integrate Cisco Duo with Citrix NetScaler and enable MFA for Citrix NetScaler integration."
"An AI support robot or bot that provides direct answers to questions without requiring the search for facts or documents to find solutions would be an improvement."
"Its management interface should also be improved. They should also improve its update period."
"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."
"The Outlook agent is not working well for installing it in the entire office."
"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."
"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."
"Setting up Safe-T SDE is very complex. It is not straightforward, and it requires much understanding on the concepts of the product."
"The cloud solution is not that great especially with Swiss customers."
"When we have something that we want improved, it takes a little bit of time until it can be fixed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"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."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"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 product’s pricing is reasonable."
"From a business perspective, it is a little bit costly. The licensing is on a per-user basis."
"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."
"It's a bit confusing because we're on a three-year plan with a certain number of licenses, and we've gone over that number. They told us that when we renew, they will add all these licenses. We've expanded quickly, so everyone's kind of scared because no one knows what the bill is with the long pricing cycle."
"You pay per user when using this solution and the pricing is fair."
"The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it."
"I am not aware of the pricing. There are two departments, and I don't have any information about them."
"Price wise, it's not cheap, but it's not expensive at all either. It's in the middle."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Transportation Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise82
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
iboss could be improved by making the dashboard more user-friendly, providing more detailed real-time alerts, and imp...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
iboss is primarily used for cloud security, helping to protect users when they access websites and cloud applications...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
The pricing and licensing for iboss were reasonable for the security features. The setup costs were manageable, thoug...
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?
Regarding the pricing, what actually happened was that we got the product purchased through our HQ, so the costing as...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
I do not have a straight answer for how Cisco Duo can be improved at this time. With the implementation that we are g...
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

Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.
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: September 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.