Amazon Cognito vs. HID DigitalPersona

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

During the onboarding process, remote workers can enroll their fingerprints or create secure PINs. This eliminates the need for complicated passwords and enables them to safely access company resources and critical apps from remote locations. HID DigitalPersona's robust authentication techniques and access control features can assist you in adhering to data security laws.

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

• Super fast to recognize fingerprint and authenticate .
• Accurate with a wide area of fingerprint. Most windows laptops with built in fingerprint scanners only recognize a small area of print.
• Units are inexpensive.
• Quick and easy to install server software and client hardware.
• When workstations were upgraded from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 the software continued working flawlessly.

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

• Multiple domains - DigitalPersona struggles with multiple domains. Since the solution is licensed per domain, migrating users between domains can be troublesome to keep licensed. Additionally, migrating to a new domain removes the AD leaf objects that store all digital persona information, essentially wiping out and credentials or other stored information.
• Password change - DigitalPersona can be confusing to update when a stored password for a website is updated. The password is entered, and then the user is redirected to the websites password change page. Users must then authenticate with a Digital persona credential again before being prompted by Digital Persona to update the password. If the user is allowed to change the password manually through the websites page, this will lead to what is stored in Digital Persona being out of sync with the new password, and eventually account lockouts.
• Terminal Server - DigitalPersona has performance issues when utilized on a high-traffic terminal server. Often it causes big CPU spikes as well as hanging sessions upon disconnect.

Incentivized

It is wonderful for multifactor authentication and gives us many options for what we use to authenticate. All of our users use it and it is engrained into our group policies and people would be very disappointed if it went away.

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

I think there are still fundamental enhancements needed to be added to the management consoles and I think there ought to be a Centralized, Windows Based "Thick" Management Application instead of individual utilities which vary from MMCs, Scripts, Wizards, etc.

Incentivized

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

Extremely poor; I've never encountered such. Professional Services completely dropped us for months. Crossmatch tech support seems like it has 3 techs tops! No response to emails, calls, the absolute worst! I will never recommend DP to anyone.

Incentivized

Could use tools to audit license usage at a more granular level as to allow an administrator to free up licenses from users whom seldom use their biometrics to login.

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

We evaluated Cisco DUO but ultimately chose HID because of their support for biometrics. With DUO every user would have to have the authentication app on their personal phone and pull it out each time they had to log in. We definitely did not want this for our frontline staff as it would slow the process way down

Incentivized

• 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

• Provides a quick one finger authentication\log-on.
• Logging onto a machine that is used by several other users, such as in retail is no problem because the DigitalPersona software does a switch user function instead of logging out the other user.
• One negative that was apparent immediately after installing the DigitalPersona software was that users very easily forgot their Windows passwords because of the one finger log-on.

Incentivized