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IBM Tivoli Access Manager [EOL] vs Symantec Siteminder comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
165
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (5th), Authentication Systems (2nd), Access Management (5th), ZTNA as a Service (2nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (1st), AI Data Analysis (7th)
IBM Tivoli Access Manager [...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Siteminder
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (13th), Web Access Management (1st), Access Management (15th)
 

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.
it_user711612 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Reverse proxy provides central control over authentication and authorization.
It is a single product that caters for all the business needs throughout the organization. It provides a seamless integration that in turn encourages most of the applications to use the SSO features Reverse proxy is the most valuable feature as it provides central control over authentication and…
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

"From the front end, it's very fast and it hasn't missed a beat, so to say."
"It meets our security needs very well. It is easy to use, and documentation is also available. It is also very stable and scalable, and its support is also very good. We are satisfied with this solution."
"I can say that it is difficult to measure the direct return on investment, but what I can say is that we are safer and feel more comfortable having this security implemented than before."
"Duo has allowed us to add an additional layer of security to our organization and to establish trust for every access request and secures our environment."
"I appreciate the secured push feature of Cisco Duo, which requires you to choose a number, because it enhances the security of your users, especially when combined with geolocation for a Verified Push, benefiting my company and our customers by making logins much more secure."
"I rate it highly because it's something that can grow with you, whether you have very little security or a lot of security, whether it's already Cisco or not, and whether you have a mixed mess that you're trying to put into some kind of order."
"Cisco Duo has improved my operational efficiency and reduced costs in areas such as authentication, IT support, and security operations because many times it ends up coming down to the ease of use, especially for the third-party contractors we have."
"Cisco Duo benefits the company by increasing the security footprint, and it is easy to manage users, disable users, or bypass if needed in case of an emergency."
"Flexibility to connect with different environments and product stability are the best features."
"Some of the valuable features are: Reverse proxy Protected object space Ease of integration Multiple and robust AuthN and AuthZ mechanisms built-in No single point of failure (SPOF)"
"It is one of the best products in the present market in the area of access management."
"The WebSEAL reverse proxy is great for protecting your critical systems."
"Single Sign-On functionality is valuable because the core purpose of the product is to allow universal (or bespoke) SSO for application suites."
"Several SSO methods are supported out of box, federation based SSO (SAML / Oauth / OpenID etc) setup is easy, performance and scalability are very good, and the internal STS token service can be used for custom SSO tokens."
"It is a single product that caters for all the business needs throughout the organization."
"It is a very stable and good product."
"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."
"All of our applications get a point, click, and you are in, while we increase security at the same time."
"It provides a secure interface and single sign-on to a variety of different applications."
"It’s definitely an industry leader in the web access realm."
"Extraordinary product; extraordinary flexibility to explore and meet the requirements of the customer."
"It puts the expertise around authentication and security on our organization where it belongs."
"Right now, federation that comes out-of-the-box with single sign-on is the most valuable feature that we have, and also scalability."
"It’s a secure product; we can make use of two factor authentication with the product and so from a security perspective, it gives us strong authentication."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The only challenge is finding the right person sometimes. From what I've seen, being a named account is a big deal."
"They can make authentication easier. It should be done in a shorter time. Sometimes, it can take a bit more time to get the answer on your phone. You have to wait a bit longer to get the SMS code and other things. There can be some internet or connection issues. They should make it faster because sometimes, it's urgent, and you need to access something as soon as possible."
"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."
"We have a 24 hour timer for our Duo cookie and we would like to reduce this to a shorter time when using Duo."
"It took me a while to figure it out. I went to every user and forced them to set it up. I might have done it the long way."
"I cannot think of a specific feature that should be focused on for improvement, but perhaps addressing the trouble we have when people are changing phones would help."
"The self-service portal needs improvement."
"The TAMeB policy server is not scalable."
"It was complex for us as we have multiple domains."
"The license model is pretty complex."
"The profiling element is incredibly robust, but also equally as complex, it requires an off-site course to be able to understand the context or the plethora of options available."
"Sometimes, there are long running support tickets (for 6-8 months) and that is unacceptable from the customer's point of view."
"Multi-factor authentication with social integration needs to improve."
"Administration of the product can be improved a lot."
"The OpenID Connect piece, we would like to see the new technologies baked into the product, as opposed to going out and using a different product to accomplish the same thing."
"I would give the technical support a rating of 2-3/10."
"To add more value to this solution it needs to be more user-friendly."
"I think they need to integrate some of the newer types of authentication into the product. I'm not seeing the innovation when it comes to biometrics in the product."
"Unfortunately, SSO doesn't really allow us to do that. We have to basically do it through brute force."
"They need to make configurations easier, and not have the engineer having to guess what will happen when he changes a particular setting."
"We go by agents for authentication; anything relating to agent configuration could be improved, or even agentless security."
"The admin UI needs to be more stable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product pricing a seven out of ten."
"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 haven't seen any information on the pricing in four years, so I can't comment on that."
"The licensing is very good because it does not cost a lot of money. It's affordable for all-sized customers, including enterprises. There is an additional cost for premium support."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing was a lot more than what we were paying for our previous solution."
"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."
"The IBM prices are, as ever, extortionate, even with a business partnership, and high levels of discounts."
"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 price is quite comparable to the other enterprise-level solutions in that market."
"The solution's pricing is competitive."
"The licensing is fair for this solution."
"I recommend conducting a PoC on every available product before choose one."
"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."
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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
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise83
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise18
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 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...
Ask a question
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What needs improvement with Symantec Siteminder?
Symantec Siteminder needs to have adaptive authentication and multi-factor authentication as integrated features. Cur...
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
Tivoli Access Manager, IBM Security Access Manager
SiteMinder, CA SSO, Layer7 SiteMinder
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Essex Technology Group Inc.
British Telecom, CoreBlox, DBS, HMS, Itera ASA and Simeo
Find out what your peers are saying about Okta, Microsoft, One Identity and others in Single Sign-On (SSO). Updated: November 2026.
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