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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)
4th
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 (4th), 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 (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 5.9%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.4%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Thomas Botts - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing security policies effectively with seamless authentication
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. There isn't a lot of training that goes on in school districts. Email is an easy way where many people give out their credentials, so the level of protection is something that we definitely need in a school district. Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system has been easy when logging in, although the teachers don't appreciate it as much. We have it configured so users essentially just hit accept. If it sees any sort of built-in risk, then it steps up authentication. It's pretty easy. I appreciate it. I've encountered advantages with Cisco Duo in that it has stopped significant pushback from teachers. It has prevented credential sharing and unauthorized access. We've seen a huge decrease since we've rolled it out across the entire district.
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

"Regarding the valuable features, I would say that Duo Security is easy to use, has speed, and is dependable."
"It is really scalable. It is easy once you get an application in. You can import users from Active Directory and enroll users really fast."
"It has continuously evolved by introducing new solutions and products to address emerging security threats in our industry, demonstrating its commitment to staying ahead of evolving security challenges."
"Duo features benefit my company by making logins more secure and simpler. Everything is in one box, so we don't have multiple servers trying to do the same thing."
"The most valuable aspect is the authentication and the SSO."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Duo for us is the multi-factor authentication."
"It's pretty easy for users to figure it out."
"It is a good solution for hybrid environments and VPN."
"It has considerably reduced the amount of time that new users would take to join into the organization. Previously, it was a lengthy, manual process because it's a very secure environment, where they need to verify the user before they can actually grant him a user-ID and password. Integrating with the built-in custom application, and exposing CA Single Sign On to the internet, we were able to get the employees onboard. The time that we gained was: previously it would generally take from four to eight weeks for each employee, we brought it to one to two days."
"I liked the debugging part. There are only two files (trace file and log file) that you need to look into while performing debugging, and the logs give you the exact info on where and what needs to be fixed."
"It is pretty easy to learn."
"That seamless integration significantly improves user experience and efficiency."
"If you look at our organization, and really all financial institutions, we have a lot of legacy apps. So it really helps to get Single Sign-On."
"The most valuable feature is the Federation part of Single Sign On, which is customizable and is easily integrated with any customer application or any third party application."
"It's quite scalable."
"It is reliable."
 

Cons

"There is always room for improvement."
"I wish that the support would be a little bit more prompt and a little bit more flexible because there are certain things that they will do and certain things they won't do."
"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."
"I'm not a big fan of relicensing products every year or two years, but that's the model at the moment. I prefer to go back to licensing perpetually or permanent licensing."
"Cisco Duo could be improved if there were a way to make two-factor authentication quicker."
"There was an issue related to integration with third parties."
"Certain customers can not use this product because it is cloud-based."
"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. I wish there was more of a self-service option than there is currently, at least to my understanding of Duo."
"Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features."
"The main thing is we do not have the traceability and good monitoring that CA can provide us to capture problems when they occur."
"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."
"If the reporting feature can be integrated into SSO itself that will be an icing on the cake."
"The GUIs are not very clear, especially when integrating with other products from CA."
"The support could be faster."
"We're currently unable to find information about if the solution can do a full implementation with SQL. Some better and more accessible documentation for new users or those curious about the product would be helpful."
"The Federation part of CA Single Sign On, it's a bit complex to implement because it involves the SSL certificates, exchange of certificates, and lot of technical details. The documentation misses some important parts of this, so that's the reason it took some time for us to go live."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I am not aware of the pricing. There are two departments, and I don't have any information about them."
"Duo Security's pricing is good, fair, and very comparable to today's market."
"Their pricing model is a little bit weird. Currently, there is no price advantage in signing up for yearly contracts. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing costs."
"Price wise, it's not cheap, but it's not expensive at all either. It's in the middle."
"Price-wise, the solution has been very, very reasonable...Licensing is the last thing I think about Duo Security because it's so easy, and I had no problems with it."
"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."
"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."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"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 licensing is fair for this solution."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Transportation Company
5%
 

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: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.