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Cisco Duo vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

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

Cisco Duo
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Cisco Security Portfolio (3rd), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (2nd)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st), Access Management (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 6.1%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.6%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Patrick Stevenson - PeerSpot reviewer
Centralized authentication simplifies logins and saves time
There aren't any new features or functionalities in Cisco Duo that my company has started using recently; we use it primarily for the authentication portion. There are other features we can use, yet we haven't turned those options on yet, so that's more a matter of time than anything. We have many different vendors and types of devices that we require MFA for login. That said, Duo helps bring all of those accounts into one system, in conjunction with ISE, you have one username, one password, and you access all the devices instead of having every device have its own credentials. It lowers the number of passwords you need to have. Cisco Duo is on the right track for improvement. A lot of their devices already integrate with it now. They keep adding features for more devices that interact natively with it, instead of having to have a third-party server to reach out to Duo. I would rate Cisco Duo overall about an eight out of ten; it's a strong product.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved user experience with seamless integration and easy installation
The feature that I mostly valued is the ease of installation on different systems, especially on Windows. Additionally, it is very beneficial for deploying single sign-on sessions between different windows on a web browser, provided I am connected to the right identity provider. That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The feature of Cisco Duo that I prefer the most is the policies, being able to control what we need to within the policies."
"Cisco Duo has benefited our company overall by giving us the ability to have multi-factor authentication."
"The feature of Cisco Duo that I appreciate most is the push notifications."
"At the moment, the ease of use is what is the best feature for me. Once it has been set up and the security can hoc to my mobile device, it's very simple to use my single sign-on, get prompted for a Duo Security, push, go to my phone, accept the push, and I'm done. It's a very simple process."
"Cisco Duo scales with the growing needs of our organization by making it easy to acquire more licensing, especially with an enterprise agreement, which allows built-in growth and minimizes worries about licensing as we expand."
"Cisco Secure solutions are great for detecting and remediating threats across our infrastructure from end to end. The integration of Talos in SecureX is great. Everything is clear in one dashboard. You have a dashboard there, your dashboard, and now you can have one look in your dashboard and see everything. It's on one pane of glass."
"My overall rating for the solution is ten out of ten."
"The ability for users to authenticate via phone, from any random phone number, has been very helpful for managing a distributed workforce. Using it across a distributed network for securing access to our applications is big for us."
"The most valuable feature is that it meets the requirements of the customer. You have a lot of features in the product. Every product has them, but the question is, are these products going to meet the requirement of the customer?"
"We almost never have outages nor see slowdowns."
"A valuable feature of Siteminder is the way it handles bulk traffic. The features it has, in terms of routing the traffic and load balancing, are good."
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
"It is reliable."
"You can quickly deploy the entire product with a basic config within couple of hours."
"Siteminder allows us to manage identity and portability control efficiently."
"The authentication and single sign-on features of Symantec Siteminder are valuable."
 

Cons

"To improve Cisco Duo, the biggest consideration is the licensing standpoint; the most common issue I've found is customers not setting up the Active Directory sync properly, leading to inflated licensing usage when they try to delete inactive users that are still being charged."
"There is a little bit of apprehension for some users thinking, well, "How do I know this app is not collecting personal information from my personal device?""
"From an administrative standpoint, I'd love to see it be a little better at remembering a device and location so that I don't have to continually authenticate. That's pretty much it."
"For the back-end, there could be a few more security features applied."
"Cisco Duo could be improved, possibly by adding features for the healthcare space. If you're selling something to a healthcare provider, there needs to be consideration for how to launch Cisco Duo with a handheld device that is not native, where you can install the application."
"We first deployed Duo Security for our company with the VPN, and afterward, about a year later, we implemented it for a customer of ours where we offered infrastructure as a service. When I tried to establish a VPN connection through Duo Security, it did not function well on that version, which was the latest one at the time. So, I had to make a copy of the machine and then implement Duo Security with the VPN because it did not function well with the newer version."
"Cisco Duo can be improved with better ways to set users up. Currently, we might not be doing it perfectly as we're having them email in phone numbers to get them set up with Duo Mobile."
"Improving Cisco Duo might involve alerting us about telephony credits when people receive texts. We hit zero at one point, and we were running around in circles without any idea until I discovered it. That's my only complaint."
"An area Siteminder could improve on is that there are a few limitations, in terms of new protocols for OpenID. If I want to have different scopes, the features are limited. They also do not have APIs exposed, which is a major drawback. API is a feature I would like to see included in the next release."
"The tech support has not been very good for us so we don't use them anymore. We have had some issues. Nobody is perfect."
"The GUIs are not very clear, especially when integrating with other products from CA."
"We would like to the OAuth be more stable, more issues being fixed rather than not."
"Symantec SiteMinder is not easy to set up and maintain at an infrastructure level."
"We are finding some compatibility issues. We're still working with CA on them."
"The initial setup was complex, painful. But that is to be expected of any new setup. When you're a big bank like us, any kind of migration to a new product is hard. I expect it to be painful, and it was painful. But it's not something that you can avoid."
"All the problems that we reported actually have never been resolved. We could not capture enough information for CA to be able to debug the problem."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I believe the licensing model is excellent as it offers flexibility to our customers, allowing them to adopt a crawl, walk, or run approach."
"I only need the solution for IT staff, which makes it relatively cheap. If I deployed it for the whole company, it would be costly, so it depends on the number of users. Duo Security is affordable compared to other products in the segment."
"Duo Security's pricing is good, fair, and very comparable to today's market."
"The licensing is very good because it does not cost a lot of money. It's affordable for all-sized customers, including enterprises. There is an additional cost for premium support."
"Its price is reasonable. It is not highly expensive."
"It was very reasonable."
"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"CA solutions are generally expensive but for the customer the ROI is big."
"Siteminder is a little costly. You pay for licensing, and they offer packages, so if you have less users, then you have to buy different products at different prices. If you have more of a user base, then the package is different. They also include other features—for example, if you have a database and you're using Siteminder, then it's good to use a Semantic-specific database, but if you are using less, then you have to purchase the database separately. Whereas if you are going for a bigger license, then it comes within the package. It depends on which plan you are using."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Insurance Company
12%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco Duo is honestly above my pay grade. I don't know any of that.
What do you like most about Symantec Siteminder?
It's agent-based. It's convenient to deploy and integrate.
What needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features. Currently, multi-factor authentication is available as a separate solution, and it ...
 

Also Known As

Duo Security
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. Symantec Siteminder and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.