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Cisco Duo vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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
Ranking in Access Management
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (2nd), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (3rd)
Symantec Siteminder
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
13th
Ranking in Access Management
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Web Access Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.2%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Siteminder is 3.0%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo3.2%
Symantec Siteminder3.0%
Other93.8%
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 benefits my organization by making it easy for me to reach out to customers using Cisco Duo so they can integrate on my platform using their credentials."
"Cisco Duo works within a huge Cisco security ecosystem and the integration is straightforward."
"Once you break that curve, it gives end users a sense of security where they know that if they're trying to sign on to Office 365 or some other application, they need to authenticate with Duo to make sure that they have the multi-factor authentication."
"It's easy to use for the security part, and it helps to improve our security posture."
"The two-factor login is great. I receive a message and just have to press okay."
"Cisco is the perfect product for our current size, and I don't think we'll have problems with scalability as we grow."
"Clients I implemented Cisco Duo at immediately feel more confident in their security environment, and we can see a lot of illegal attempts to get in, giving me faith in the product."
"Cisco Duo has positively impacted our organization by improving our overall access security by adding an extra layer of protection beyond passwords."
"SAML is the best thing we're using right now because there is no need for creating an external account."
"For the most part, SSO is very stable."
"Extraordinary product; extraordinary flexibility to explore and meet the requirements of the customer."
"The features most valuable to us are its usability, the way you can customize it, and its supportability."
"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?"
"It restricts cookie replacement and provides enhanced ones, so the applications are safer, helping keep our data secure in a much better way without affecting user experience."
"It has the ability to authenticate and authorize users. It is the main feature for our security."
"It's more efficient; we're providing immense security to the applications, to Chase, and we're securing 70 million customers in Chase."
 

Cons

"There is always room for improvement."
"I think that the dashboard needs to be improved."
"I would like to see Duo Security increase the time that the users have to log into the devices. The maximum time interval is 50 minutes at the moment, and I would like it to be 60 minutes. When you try to log into a device and have to authenticate yourself, sometimes it's not very pleasant. It's not the best thing particularly if you have to do this every 50 minutes, which is the maximum time that Duo gives. This makes it difficult to use and does not save time."
"My experience with Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system is that sometimes there are difficulties, and sometimes users just won't be able to log in. We have to reset their password so they can use Duo."
"Integration was probably the toughest part for us with Cisco Duo, as with any new product."
"Duo Security should better organize its tile feature to organize applications better."
"If I could improve Cisco Duo, I would suggest providing some notification back that the Cisco Duo system was not able to reach the remote device, because I was left in a situation where I did not know if it was actually my cell phone or something was wrong with Cisco Duo."
"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 Entra ID and does not offer full identity lifecycle management on its own, which leads organizations to often pair Cisco Duo with another IAM solution for complete identity governance."
"There are certain integration points that can be leveraged and made more easy to deploy, like the REST APIs and things like that."
"I would like to see a move towards the newer technologies, which is what we are doing right now. I think that's in the roadmap that's coming, in the 12.8 and 14 releases, but we would like to have it sooner than later."
"We had some performance-related issues that caused some outages. Outages actually happened pretty frequently back then."
"Better documentation. I went through some sessions on single sign-on for version 12.7."
"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."
"The support team could work on their response time and overall competence."
"Some of the new protocols, like OAuth 2.0, could be improved."
"The admin UI needs to be more stable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it."
"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."
"During testing we are allowed a certain number of licenses for free."
"I haven't seen any information on the pricing in four years, so I can't comment on that."
"Duo Security's pricing is good, fair, and very comparable to today's market."
"It was very reasonable."
"My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco Duo has been great. We've been there for 10 years. While we haven't gone through the setup part for a while, licensing is straightforward and convenient for higher education because student populations are included. So, we don't have to pay extra for it. We just pay for our knowledge workers, which has been great, and the cost is reasonable."
"Overall, the pricing is fair. Customers can wrap it into their Enterprise Agreement, making it easier for them to solve their issues."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"The price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"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."
"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 pricing is reasonable."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Construction Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise80
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?
Regarding Cisco Duo's affordability for the Ukrainian market, I think it is affordable. It depends on an installation base. For a medium and mid-range market, I think it is a fully affordable price...
What needs improvement with Duo Security?
Cisco Duo is a fully cloud-based solution. It would be beneficial if Cisco provided a fully on-premise solution. I have discussed this with the local Cisco office in Kyiv regarding any possibility ...
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 ...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Siteminder?
I deploy and support Symantec Siteminder ( /products/symantec-siteminder-reviews ). I have been a partner and reseller.
 

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: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.