Duo Security

Most teams comparing Cisco Duo and Okta are deciding between two priorities: securing the login, or governing the identity lifecycle. Duo is security-first IAM. It leads with phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication (MFA), device trust, single sign-on (SSO), and Duo Directory, its own identity provider, and it is built to protect every stage of the login journey, from enrollment to the help desk call. Okta's depth is in identity governance (IGA), privileged access management (PAM), and lifecycle provisioning at scale. That distinction matters more today because the role of IAM has changed. Organizations once compared authentication capabilities, integration options, and perhaps the user experience before making a decision. Today, the conversation looks very different. Identity has become the front line of cybersecurity . Every employee, contractor, application, managed device, cloud service, and increasingly, AI agent, represents another identity that needs to be verified an

Today's security leaders often find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place: Active Directory (AD) continues to be a foundational legacy infrastructure (in fact, 90% of the Fortune 1000 still uses AD ) but inherent technical debt, visibility gaps, and an inability to extend MFA to these legacy authentication paths have created a serious security gap that enterprising threat actors are actively targeting. Cisco recently surveyed 28 CISOs from around the world to better understand their concerns about the AD security dilemma. The consensus is that it would be impractical to walk away from AD despite the inherent security risks—forcing them to implement new security strategies and controls that harden this legacy identity infrastructure. For a comprehensive dive into all our conversations, visit our CISO Perspectives homebase . Here's how security leaders are securing their legacy identity infrastructure for modern architectures. The 28 security and IT leaders surveyed

Security leaders at universities, colleges, technical schools, and local K-12 school districts all share a common goal: to make learning safe and enjoyable for students and teachers from any location, and any device. With ransomware attacks targeting education rising 23% year over year in 2025, security teams face a formidable set of challenges around securing identity. Identity and access management (IAM) for education is the practice of verifying and controlling access for large, fast-changing populations of students, faculty, and staff across campus, remote, and BYOD environments. The core challenges include: Keeping track of large, constantly changing user populations Protecting sensitive personal information like social security numbers, payment data, and medical records Rapid change as infrastructures evolve to support remote learning, BYOD, and cloud-based learning applications Increasing risk from AI-powered phishing and MFA fatigue attacks targeting credentials Whatever goals

Material Event filed 2026-08-26

In identity security, the hardest questions often sound simple. Who should have access? What should they be allowed to do? What happens when they change roles, leave the company, join as contractors, or create AI agents to act on their behalf? These questions are not new, but the speed, scale, and stakes around them have changed. To better capture how identity is shifting, Cisco Duo engaged third-party research firm AimPoint Group to interview more than two dozen CISOs and security executives across industries and company sizes. The final 2026 CISO Perspectives report shows how identity has become both a challenge and a potential change agent. Here are four key takeaways. Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption has renewed urgency around identity and access management (IAM). Identity security is a top-three priority for most organizations ; AI-driven business questions run through security, and nearly every important security question now runs through identity. If you do not know who or

Quarterly Report filed 2026-08-13

Material Event filed 2026-08-12

I’m excited to announce that Duo Federal Edition FedRAMP High Class D certification is now generally available! This represents a significant milestone in our commitment to supporting U.S. Federal, State, and Local Government agencies with enterprise security solutions that meet strict compliance requirements. Cisco Duo Federal Edition High Class D is a FedRAMP High Class D (IL4) authorized instance of our authentication solution, purpose-built specifically for U.S. Government requirements and compliance standards. It’s a cloud-delivered multi-factor authentication solution grounded in zero trust principles that provides seamless, transparent, and phishing-resistant user access from both desktop and mobile devices to any application—whether internet-based, SaaS, or private applications hosted in the cloud or on-premises. Duo Federal Edition FedRAMP High Class D is built for the environments you actually operate in: Federal agencies handling mission-critical workloads Contractors suppor

Choosing the right authentication protocol depends on your applications, your user types, and the protocols supported by your identity provider. This article considers these three main factors, and others, explaining how modern organizations deploy protocols, their best use cases, and common security risks introduced during configuration. Most organizations use more than one protocol. Match each protocol to the right use case and manage them through a single identity platform, not to consolidate onto one standard. SAML remains widely deployed for enterprise single sign-on, with a market projected to grow through 2033. Use it for legacy applications and deployments that do not neatly communicate with newer protocols like OIDC. OIDC and OAuth 2.0 are built for modern and mobile applications. OIDC verifies who the user is. OAuth 2.0 governs what a third-party application can do with their account. If your stack is moving toward cloud-native architectures, these are the protocols that fit.

Most organizations have outgrown their identity infrastructure. The Identity Provider (IdP) configurations and directory services that worked five years ago were not designed for distributed workforces, hundreds of cloud applications, and machine identities that outnumber people. Here, we cover the principles of designing an identity architecture that keeps up. Explore Duo's approach to identity Legacy identity infrastructure creates security blind spots and operational drag that compound as organizations grow. Cloud-native IAM is not just cloud-hosted identity. It is an identity built for API-driven, distributed, continuously verified environments. Identity orchestration platforms coordinate authentication across multiple identity sources, devices, and risk signals to make dynamic access decisions. An identity management roadmap starts with consolidation and ends with continuous verification. Most organizations are somewhere in between. Most identity infrastructure was designed f

Microsoft’s Active Directory (AD) manages user identities for roughly 90% of Fortune 1000 companies . It controls who can log in, what they can access, and which security policies apply to every connected device. That reach is exactly why attackers treat it as a high-value target, and why security teams should develop strategies that adapt to emerging threats. Active Directory is involved in 9 out of 10 cyberattacks, according to the Semperis 2024 Ransomware Risk Report. Its centrality to enterprise identity makes it the highest-value target in most organizations. Traditional Active Directory hardening—static policies, periodic audits, perimeter firewalls—leaves gaps that attackers routinely exploit between review cycles. A modern Active Directory security strategy layers adaptive authentication, single sign-on, device trust, and continuous verification on top of existing directory infrastructure. Cloud directory services let organizations extend or replace on-premises directories with