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Cisco Duo vs Microsoft Entra ID comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.7
Cisco Duo improves ROI by enhancing security, reducing costs, increasing employee satisfaction, and protecting against data breaches cost-effectively.
Sentiment score
7.5
Microsoft Entra ID improves efficiency by consolidating identities, reducing costs, enhancing security, and supporting cloud transitions for businesses.
I think Cisco Duo offers a good return on investment for startups, newer organizations, or those utilizing cloud-based applications.
We leverage existing licensing, like Windows Server or SQL, and hybrid benefits, and our sales and marketing teams benefit from co-selling and partnership advantages.
We get a return from not needing to pay other vendors to do what we already had from Microsoft, which was better than the competition.
The return on investment comes from not needing as many IT staff to manage and verify user identity and ensuring seamless device connection without needing to administer device compliance manually.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Duo's customer service is generally reliable and knowledgeable, but inconsistent response times and delays are noted by some users.
Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Entra ID's support receives praise for expertise but faces criticism for inconsistency, delays, and repetitive explanations.
However, the response time could be faster.
I find Cisco's technical support to be good but not excellent.
The actual support when you get to that level is a ten out of ten.
There are immediate answers to any issues that arise with great knowledge and a deep understanding of the product and business needs.
They usually try to deflect, buy time, and often do not address the problem immediately.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco Duo offers scalable, cloud-based security with flexible integration, easily adapting to various company sizes and operational demands.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Entra ID efficiently scales for all organization sizes, supporting global deployment and enhancing user management through robust cloud infrastructure.
I believe Cisco Duo is very scalable because it is cloud-based.
We experienced no scalability issues with Microsoft Entra ID.
Its scalability is impressive, aided by Microsoft's efforts to expand its data centers.
When dealing with tens of thousands of objects, it requires proper management and best practices to retrieve only necessary data.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Cisco Duo is praised for its stability, reliable connectivity, seamless integration, and proactive updates, with minor, rare issues.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Entra ID boasts high stability and reliability, with quick resolutions to occasional outages and strong user satisfaction commitment.
It's a critical solution that we can't do without.
The stability of the solution is very high at 99.999%.
We rarely had significant problems or crashes.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Duo needs better telephony, app integration, UI, deployment, authentication speed, pricing, and SMS service improvements.
Microsoft Entra ID needs better UI, integration, and support while improving onboarding, management, and third-party compatibility.
Cisco should allow easier integration with third-party equipment because Cisco's own equipment is expensive.
Cisco Duo is a modern product that does not support older applications, lacking backward compatibility.
A recent incident we dealt with took four months to resolve with a seven-day deadline, which was quite frustrating.
Synchronization issues occasionally occur, making it challenging to analyze logs and pinpoint the exact problem.
There is a need for better transformation support from on-premises Active Directory policies to the cloud, as Entra ID doesn't cover this sufficiently yet.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Duo is affordable and flexible, offering per-user licensing and a free trial, adding significant value for enterprises.
Enterprise users praise Microsoft Entra ID for cost-effective, flexible per-user pricing, especially when bundled with Office 365 packages.
The approximate cost is around eighty dollars per user.
The setup cost is reasonable, estimated at around six euros per month.
I find the pricing of Cisco Duo to be reasonable.
We are getting our money's worth.
Microsoft sets pricing based on customer demand, adjusting to find the optimal balance between sales volume and profit per unit, similar to how Costco manages product prices.
Most features of Entra ID are part of Microsoft's ecosystem and included in Microsoft 365 bundles, which means there are no additional costs associated with pricing and licensing.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Duo offers easy-to-use multi-factor authentication, single sign-on, and application integration, enhancing security across remote and on-site environments.
Microsoft Entra ID offers seamless app integration, enhanced security, centralized management, and scalable user management for optimized organizational efficiency.
A valuable feature of the solution is its hybrid structure, which involves proxy agents running on-premises while other services are on the cloud.
The client VPN and multi-factor authentication (MFA) features are the most useful.
We can secure the applications that we are building and make sure that if the application were to be compromised, there is no full access to a customer's environment causing issues and other security concerns.
It's integrated with Microsoft technologies like Authenticator, SSO, and MFA, streamlining operations and creating a seamless environment.
The granular control, such as preventing logins from specific locations, enhances security significantly.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Duo
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
2nd
Ranking in Authentication Systems
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
ZTNA as a Service (6th), Cisco Security Portfolio (4th), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st)
Microsoft Entra ID
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
1st
Ranking in Authentication Systems
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (1st), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (1st), Access Management (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Cisco Duo is 6.1%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 27.2%, up from 25.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

RyanDeppe - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps reduce the risk of a breach and is easy to deploy and onboard
For our customers, Duo Security is a significant advantage because it provides them with a straightforward method to implement MFA across their entire environment. Moreover, once we delve into the more advanced features of Duo Security, it enables us as a partner to engage in ongoing discussions regarding security strategies with our customers. Initially, we may only introduce them to MFA during the onboarding process. However, as their security strategy evolves, we can leverage Duo to perform additional tasks such as risk-based assessments and deployments, thereby assisting in the development of their security measures. Duo Security helps secure our infrastructure. It serves as our gateway layer of protection, allowing us to understand who is logging in and why. We conduct risk-based assessments on each user to determine whether their actions are appropriate or not. Duo Security is not a comprehensive security solution, but it is undoubtedly a crucial component, a critical layer of security. This aspect resonates with our customers consistently. Their ability to reduce the risk of a breach is of utmost importance. It serves as the primary line of defense. Currently, credential gathering and leaks are widespread in the market. By implementing an MFA solution like Duo Security, we can effectively prevent these issues. When we put a stop to credential harvesting, it becomes much harder for attackers to infiltrate and navigate our network. Therefore, Duo Security acts as an excellent first line of defense. User authentication and device verification are the methods through which we envision our customers navigating in order to prevent identity-based attacks. Initially, when we employ Duo Security, it is a straightforward implementation of multi-factor authentication. As we progress, we enhance security measures by incorporating device risk assessment and potentially even regional assessment. This includes considerations such as whether the login is being attempted from a specific IP address. These gradual enhancements contribute to the establishment of an additional layer of protection. Thus, it is not necessary to implement a completely disruptive strategy right from the start. Instead, it is possible to gradually adopt and integrate this approach, following a crawl, walk, or run methodology. The Duo Security self-service portal helps free up our customers' IT staff time, allowing them to focus on other projects. As a Cisco partner, we have received feedback from our customers that the portal is highly interactive, enabling them to easily navigate and resolve issues. After setting up their Duo environment, we rarely receive callbacks for assistance, as the portal is intuitive and empowers users to handle everything they need on their own. The appealing aspect of Duo Security is its ability to establish trust for every access request, regardless of its origin. It is a cloud-based solution with excellent API integrations. It doesn't matter where or how a user logs in; Duo will be there to protect the user, whether it's through MFA, risk assessment, or similar methods. It is extremely beneficial to our customers that Duo Security considers all resources as external. Our customers frequently inquire about a zero-trust model, and this is a key component of it. Unfortunately, I would love to say that there is a simple solution for zero trust where we can just deploy this solution and be done with it. But that's not the case. It requires a layered approach, and that's what we convey to our customers. Duo Security is definitely a part of that. Duo Security has helped improve our customers' cybersecurity resilience. Internally, it protects our users from accessing sales operations-based environments. Additionally, our customers use it regularly to protect business-critical applications.
Aaron Liang - PeerSpot reviewer
Has significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment
Microsoft Entra ID has helped by simplifying our management of permissions for APIs. We are not directly exposing credentials, as we use tokens instead. It has made management easier and more secure, especially in a multi-user environment. The implementation of Microsoft Entra ID significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment, primarily through the widespread use of single-sign-on. Managing API permissions became much easier, as application registration often involves calling an API to utilize services without directly exposing credentials, relying instead on token-based authentication. This streamlined approach benefits end-users by simplifying access while remaining transparent to them. Ultimately, my role focuses on ensuring a smooth and user-friendly experience, even if the underlying technology remains unseen by the end-users. Our company strongly emphasizes passwordless authentication, primarily through device-bound passkeys in Microsoft Authenticator. While administrators with high-privileged accounts utilize YubiKeys and passwords for tasks like accessing Microsoft Graph, we are actively transitioning all other users towards passwordless methods such as Windows Hello biometrics. This approach streamlines authentication and enhances security. Though initial deployment in 2022 presented challenges due to hardware limitations and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the technology has significantly improved and provides a simple and effective user experience.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
28%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
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 do you like most about Azure Active Directory?
It is very simple. The Active Directory functions are very easy for us. Its integration with anything is very easy. We can easily do third-party multifactor authentication.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
Regarding pricing, for the services we receive, it seems within the market range and about average.
What needs improvement with Azure Active Directory?
If I have one criticism, it's regarding processing times. Changes or even inbound email logging tend to take a minimum of fifteen to twenty minutes. There is a need for more real-time processing. S...
 

Also Known As

Duo Security
Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Duo vs. Microsoft Entra ID and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.