Amazon Cognito vs. Cisco Duo

Well Suited

1. B2C mobile and web apps with a high number of users.
2. Cheaper and cost-effective.
3. If the other pieces of the infra are already using AWS services like Lambda, S3, Pinpoint, etc.

Not Suited For:

1. Advanced use-cases (Biometrics based authentication) Email, and other MFA channels.
2. For any use-cases needing SCIM.
3. Customized flows of SSO, and MFA will need a layer on Lambda and other AWS services.

Incentivized

Cisco Duois is well suited in all kinds of scenarios where you need to ensure proper security measurements, I think. We can't just rely on our passwords only, as they can be easily stolen through phishing or data breaches thus keeping multi factor authentication is quite essential. I always prefer MFA or at least 2FA for any critical system.

Incentivized

• Strong integration with React.js and client-side applications
• Easy to bridge Cognito identities with the rest of the AWS ecosystem
• Easy to store user profile data directly in Cognito rather than having to build additional services/endpoints
• Easy integration with AWS Lambda to extend and add sophistication to the service

Incentivized

• Speed - it's fast with almost no delay between triggering the MFA request and receiving the notification on an iPhone
• Security - in addition to the added MFA layer, a simple, 4-digit passcode can be added to the authentication request
• Ease of use - it doesn't scare users. It's simple to install, configure, and use.

Incentivized

• SCIM implementation is not present.
• B2B SaaS use-cases are very hard to configure. More suitable or B2C use-cases.
• Needs more recipes, plugins, SDK's.
• 2FA with Email as an OTP channel is not supported.
• 2 FA using biometrics is not available; can be customised using lambda.

Incentivized

• Documentation is oftentimes missing key information for proper implementation. This is circumvented by reading third-party guides or contacting support for additional details.
• They do not push Fail-Closed as much as I think they should. Fail-Open is fairly trivial to bypass and it should be made known to the customer during setup how much this will affect overall security.
• More vendor integration is something that is always craved by administrators. There are so many third-parties to integrate with.

Incentivized

There are a lot of competing solutions on the market; however, Duo "just works", and there is little to no learning curve for the new members to be acclimated to it. As long as that continues I see it as the preferred option moving forward

Incentivized

All the features AWS Cognito offers gives the user the options they need without making it too complicated. Your customers will be happy. On the administration site usability is also great. After a small learning curve, you can setup Cognito for your usage

Incentivized

La interfaz es intuitiva y fácil de navegar, lo que permite a los usuarios administrar sus dispositivos y acceder a las políticas sin problemas. La integración con las aplicaciones SSO y SaaS facilita aún más el proceso de acceso, mejorando la experiencia del usuario.

Incentivized

In the last 5+ years we've been using Duo, there may have been 1 outage that impacted us. We do receive periodic notifications of issues but, for the most part, they impact carriers or functionality that we either don't use, or do not care about.

We do not see any degradation of performance of the protected applications. There are occasional lags in receiving the push but no show stooppers.

AWS Support overall is poor. Your main resources are trainings and the docs, and the docs can be very confusing. Using Cognito well involves having a developer learn it deeply and help support your team in understanding it. That said, Cognito's competitors also have dismal support and even worse documentation, so while this isn't a strength for Cognito it may still be the frontrunner here.

Incentivized

Since it’s a reputable company, I have received technical support when needed and I trust that if anything else happens I can contact them with any issues. I haven’t experienced bad customer service and I totally feel supported while using this authentication method. No complains so far and the high rating!

Incentivized

There was no in person training but checking the box was the only way I could complete all of the questions.

This was not organized training but the videos that Duo provides to teach you how to install a particular integration are top notch.

Implementation was straight forward and you can isolate different scenarios in order to test new application setup or add to an existing setup. Gui interface is pretty easy to understand and follow. I had no experience with Duo and still manage to easily set up new policies and rules.

Incentivized

They are ideal tools to create a secure and unique login experience for our applications. Thanks to its API authorization, Amazon Cognito ensures connections to applications that are secure.It is easy to use and provides easy access to files and applications that you need to complete your goal.

Incentivized

Ultimately we ended up going with Cisco Duo because we are a Cisco shop. All of our networking infrastructure, our phones, our wireless environment is Cisco based. It made logical sense to stay with a product that we already have a line of support with. With a smaller support / tech group we depend on outside Cisco support. That support is already here for us, so we stayed with a Cisco product.

Incentivized

So far, the only limits we've encountered were tied to our imagination. Duo's strong list of supported integrations is amazing.

• Amazon Cognito has had a positive impact on our business by allowing us to develop services that require user sign-up and sign-in more rapidly. Not only do we not need to build or maintain these features, but Cognito's implementation is also better than what we would be justified in building ourselves.
• Amazon Cognito makes user management easy. This reduces the time we have to spend supporting users. Non-technical product managers can even use the AWS Console to manage users without requiring support from developers.
• Amazon Cognito is likely more secure than what would be built in-house; a portion of our attack surface is now managed by Amazon.

Incentivized

• It's one of those things that only costs money in the sense of you have to convince a leadership team to spend money to save money, right? Like a compromise is far more expensive than duo paying for duo. So specifically it's really just about trying to prevent problems. And so while it costs money and we don't have a direct return on investment that we can point out immediately, I would still always advocate for it just because it keeps security. Paying for security is cheaper than getting compromised essentially.

Incentivized