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Defender by One Identity vs RSA Adaptive Authentication comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 20, 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
Sponsored
Ranking in Authentication Systems
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
176
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (5th), Access Management (5th), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (7th)
Defender by One Identity
Ranking in Authentication Systems
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
RSA Adaptive Authentication
Ranking in Authentication Systems
24th
Average Rating
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 3.7%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Defender by One Identity is 1.7%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of RSA Adaptive Authentication is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Duo3.7%
Defender by One Identity1.7%
RSA Adaptive Authentication1.4%
Other93.2%
Authentication Systems
 

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.
Mahesh Malve - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Business Development Associate at DigitalTrack Solutions ind pvt ltd
Advanced analytics have strengthened privileged access security and reduced incident response time
While One Identity Defender is a strong solution overall, there are a few areas where I feel it could be improved. One area is the user interface and dashboard customization. Although it is functional, making it more modern and allowing deeper customization would improve the user experience, especially for quick monitoring. Another improvement could be in reporting flexibility. While it provides good reports, having more custom report building options and easier export features would be helpful for different compliance and manageability needs. From an integration perspective, while One Identity Defender works well with core systems, having more out-of-the-box integrations with modern cloud services and SaaS platforms would reduce the need for custom configuration. In terms of support, the overall support is good, but faster response times for critical issues and more detailed troubleshooting documentation would help teams resolve problems more efficiently.
Directorc4e7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Cyber Security at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
We need better ease of use; the product is overly complicated
There are many use cases that we have defined based on our business needs Ingestion of logs and raising alert space on those logs are the most valuable features. The product is basically unusable. We need better ease of use; it's overly complicated. It has taken years to implement. We used RSA…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Duo Security improved my organization by helping us secure all access points within the company infrastructure."
"They are users who, as mentioned before, utilize RDPAP and MDPAP. It includes functionalities related to finance, specifically in single sign-on."
"Furthermore, the reporting, logs, and management capabilities are exceptional with Cisco Duo, which stands out as its best feature."
"We like the different ways that it allows you to push notifications to people. It can do text, a phone call, and email. We liked the versatility for all of our different end-users, regardless of their level of understanding of the technology."
"Cisco Duo has improved our operational efficiency and reduced costs in areas such as authentication, IT support, and security operations by enhancing our security workflows; pretty much everyone is using MFA at work, making it easy for us to see who is actually accessing our network and computers."
"My experience with Cisco Duo's strong security authentication system has benefited my organization; it is quite simple."
"What I appreciate most about Cisco Duo are the security features it brings to our network environment and machine access."
"Documentation is the most valuable feature, and if you ever have to reach out to them with a question, their support is also fantastic."
"One Identity Defender has positively impacted our organization by improving overall security through the addition of MFA, which reduces the risk of unauthorized access and makes user authentication more controlled and reliable."
"It's very fast, and it's easy to use because it's integrated with Active Directory."
"If you decide to activate this solution, your infrastructure will be centered around flexibility."
"We have definitely seen a positive ROI from using One Identity Defender, as our security team now spends about twenty to thirty percent less time on manual log analytics and investigations because the system automatically highlights high-risk activities, and we did not need to increase team size despite growing infrastructure as the tool helps us handle more security events with the same team."
"We find that the product scales very well."
"One Identity Defender has good network protection."
"Once we started adopting these products, we've seen the fraud losses go down considerably."
"The most valuable feature is the stock tokens. That works the best for us."
"Our customer are seeing value from the product, as they experience cost reductions. They can stop fraud from their customers, then their customers can have a better experience from their services."
"One of the most valuable features is the fraud detection capability with minimal friction in the customer experience."
"Ingestion of logs and raising alert space on those logs are the most valuable features."
"Risk Engine’s risk score, eFN, GeoIP, and device binding all coming together in the Policy Rules to decide when to escalate to MFA."
"The capability to manage your business policy related to security when required without vendor involvement."
"It has reduced false positives greatly in our fraud detection ability."
 

Cons

"One downside of Cisco Duo is the expense, as there are clients that can afford only the basic package, which does not include Geo-fencing, leaving them unable to pay for the more expensive level, which I do not feel justifies the double price of that upper tier version."
"Removing the need for a password would be a positive change as well as the ability to cover all the different enterprise applications. They don't have coverage for everything."
"Despite the price being quite high, I would rate Cisco Duo's value for money as seven out of ten."
"They could just continue to add more integrations."
"I evaluate the stability and reliability of the solution as somewhat tricky. Cisco Duo Access Gateway is mostly VM-based, and while I'm not sure whether there is an on-premises hardware-based solution, having this VM-based solution can be buggy."
"We were considering purchasing other products, like AMP for Endpoints, and it was not properly integrated with the firewall function. It might be better now with SecureX."
"I think that the dashboard needs to be improved."
"I'm unsure how to disable the ping notification sound on my phone when using Cisco Duo. I don't know how to silence it."
"The login capabilities could be better."
"Maybe it could provide support for more web applications. It seems more focused on IIS web applications."
"One Identity Defender is a strong product, but there are a few areas where it can be improved."
"We have some clients that are wanting to protect their Apache web servers with One Identity Defender but all the research I have done says cannot be done. It can only be oriented to an IIS server. One Identity Defender should have more integration with more types of web servers."
"The only reason it is not a ten is because response time can sometimes be slower for complex or escalated cases."
"Reporting modules is one of the major areas that can be improved further."
"It's an okay solution. It's just old technology and it's time to move on."
"It has taken years to implement."
"I think I would like to see them use more of our data, and give us more ability to control or configure how the protection patterns work for a specific business, and also provide more transparency into the methodology."
"The product is basically unusable. We need better ease of use; it's overly complicated."
"Better filters when searching for events. The current features for current filters when searching fraud events are not very comprehensive. You can only filter by certain fields in the transaction."
"RSA Adaptive Authentication lacks a mechanism to verify the identity of a new user in the Enrollment event workflow."
"I would like to see a more adaptive type of solution, something that we could use on our web pages..."
 

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."
"Overall, the pricing is fair. Customers can wrap it into their Enterprise Agreement, making it easier for them to solve their issues."
"The pricing was a lot more than what we were paying for our previous solution."
"From a reseller perspective, it's still challenging to explain the whole license strategy to a client, so we really have to be ahead of that for all the true forward conversations."
"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."
"The pricing is pretty competitive. It's pretty cheap. Anybody can adopt it."
"Duo Security's pricing is good, fair, and very comparable to today's market."
"Its price is reasonable. It is not highly expensive."
Information not available
"The pricing is $50 per head, yearly."
"Keep the proxy service layer on premises. That consumes SaaS security services on the back-end."
"You may need to opt for second best if funding is low and the number of users is huge. However, the pricing is able to be negotiated if your user figures are huge."
"Customers need to deploy the solution in a very expensive infrastructure. RSA should should think about a less expensive infrastructure for customers because the solution costs around $100,000, and the infrastructure needed to support that solution may be even more expensive than that price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
21%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Construction Company
15%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise29
Large Enterprise93
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
 

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 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...
What needs improvement with One Identity Defender?
One Identity Defender is a strong product, but there are a few areas where it can be improved. First, the user interf...
What is your primary use case for One Identity Defender?
One Identity Defender strengthens identity and access security through MFA, helping us ensure that only authorized us...
What advice do you have for others considering One Identity Defender?
My advice for others looking into using One Identity Defender would be first to clearly define your use case, especia...
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Also Known As

Duo Security
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Bakersfield Police Department, Village of Westmont, Illinois
ADP, Ameritas, Partners Healthcare
Find out what your peers are saying about Defender by One Identity vs. RSA Adaptive Authentication and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.