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Cisco Duo vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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)
3rd
Ranking in Access Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
116
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (3rd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
13th
Ranking in Access Management
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.3%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 2.6%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo3.3%
Symantec Siteminder2.6%
Other94.1%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Muzi Lubisi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior technical Consultant at CA Africa
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

"Cisco Duo is so integral to our core operations that we cannot perform any task without it."
"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."
"Cisco Duo scales very well with the growing needs of my company; during COVID, when we had a higher number of users, there were no problems at all."
"Duo Security provides a high level of certainty regarding the identity of the individual performing an action. Whether it's logging into a system, using VPN, or utilizing Autopay, establishing that trust is crucial. I can't imagine any security company, organization, or IT team that wouldn't prioritize having multifactor authentication enabled when accessing critical systems."
"It's a lot easier for our end users to connect to our network. You don't have to type in a code. You get push notifications, that's probably the best thing about it. The fewer clicks they have to do to be online, the better it is. They can easily get into the network and do remote work."
"The Verified Duo Push feature is valuable. It gives an extra level of security beyond just the regular push."
"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."
"Duo offers dual-factor authentication for our logins. I put in my credentials and hit go. Then I get an alert on my Apple watch, and I approve it. That part is just phenomenal."
"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."
"With Single Sign-On, we don't have to do anything in our system, and after they deploy the application, everything works seamlessly."
"It provides end users with SSO to our applications – they log in once and they can access all of our applications."
"Extraordinary product; extraordinary flexibility to explore and meet the requirements of the customer."
"Ease of use is very good, for administrating it."
"The single sign-on is the solution's most valuable feature"
"It's our single solution for managing user authentication."
"For the most part, SSO is very stable."
 

Cons

"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."
"They could just continue to add more integrations."
"General announcements when new features come out with Cisco Duo should be broadcasted to customers who are using it, which might bring more accessibility to their documents so users can be more in tune with updates."
"Technical support seems to be lacking. It takes a long time for them to come back to the customer."
"Reducing or eliminating the "telephony credits" system used by Duo would be great."
"Regarding the Premier licensing, it is a little bit pricey, but it is in the market range with the competitors."
"I'd like to see it integrated into other applications. I know there are some integrations, but I haven't been able to explore that any further."
"I think the prices of Cisco Duo are quite fair, but the main problem is that Microsoft Authenticator is built-in with Microsoft 365, so everyone is switching to that and not using Cisco Duo because it is a standalone product that costs extra, despite the price being fair."
"The initial setup of Symantec SiteMinder was a bit tricky. I would rate it a seven on a scale of one to ten, where ten indicates an easy setup."
"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."
"We have challenges, performance issues for which we’re unable to find the root cause as we scale."
"Sometimes technical support is slow to respond, and that’s typical."
"The admin UI needs to be more stable."
"They need to make configurations easier, and not have the engineer having to guess what will happen when he changes a particular setting."
"With the other ones, we’ve had problems, and they don’t really match our business needs."
"I've seen a lot of analytics capability being built in for a number of products. Obviously, I want to be able to use analytics on CA SSO as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I am not aware of the pricing. There are two departments, and I don't have any information about them."
"The pricing was a lot more than what we were paying for our previous solution."
"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."
"Overall, the pricing is fair. Customers can wrap it into their Enterprise Agreement, making it easier for them to solve their issues."
"It's very simple. Its price is fair. We use the hardware tokens as well. You get what you pay for. In terms of licensing, Cisco has very complicated products, but Duo Security was surprisingly easy."
"Our licensing fee is currently on an annual basis."
"I believe the licensing model is excellent as it offers flexibility to our customers, allowing them to adopt a crawl, walk, or run approach."
"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 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."
"Symantec Siteminder is expensive; they could definitely do better on the price."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Insurance Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise69
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Duo Security?
I cannot speak to the financial planning of the organization, but I can confirm that Cisco Duo falls within the security budget that has been allocated to us.
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
Areas that have room for improvement in Cisco Duo include pricing, as Cisco is quite expensive, and the fact that Cisco Duo relies heavily on external identity providers such as Active Directory or...
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: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.