The Identity and Access Management (IAM) Buyer’s Evaluation Guide

Your business needs security-first IAM. The boundaries between identity and security are blurring, and the result is an untenable position: higher breach risk, mounting compliance pressure, and a rising total cost of ownership. Basic MFA and SSO may have been enough five years ago, but today they’re only the beginning. Worse, any Zero Trust initiative built on this fragile foundation is doomed to fail before it even begins.

In this evaluation guide, we’ll help you identify what to look for in an IAM solution and the top criteria to consider when weighing your options. Threats have evolved, so IAM must evolve too, and this guide will help you find the right solution to strengthen and scale security without compromising productivity.

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In this guide, you’ll get:

An update on the role of security in IAM
Criteria for choosing a solution that avoids identity risk and modern attacks on MFA
A worksheet for evaluating prospecting solutions

Who is this guide for?

CISOs who want to implement Zero Trust initiatives to stop unauthorized access and strengthen trust in identity
SOC and IT Compliance Managers seeking technology that solves modern security pain points
IT and Security Leaders who want to reduce the risk of data breaches while delivering strong and reliable security to their users and customers

BY THE NUMBERS

Modern business calls for stronger, security-first IAM

Year after year, industry threat intelligence reporting finds that compromised credentials are still the number one threat to security. Can your solution protect against unauthorized access and AI-powered threats?

One of the reasons we continue to invest and further our implementation with Duo is because it isn’t just an MFA tool. The risk-based challenges are something we enabled very early on to get ahead of the MFA fatigue attacks that we were seeing.

Read the full case study

Mark Rodrigue

Senior Network Engineer, Room & Board

Duo increased our security and was an easy tool to deploy; every organization should consider it immediately.

Read the full case study

Chad Spiers

Director of Information Security, Sentara Healthcare

Cisco Identity Intelligence allows our security team to identify and prioritize ways to improve our overall security posture 24/7. We benefit from swift responses to detected threats while still offering a seamless end user experience with fewer authentication interruptions helping us alleviate pressure on our help desk. Ultimately, Duo gives us the assurance that we’re mitigating the threats to our day-to-day operations.

Read the full case study

Hugo Egerton

Information Security Engineer, B&M Retail

Cisco Systems is a 2026 Customers’ Choice for the “User Authentication” market on Gartner Peer Insights ™ based on reviews submitted for Cisco Systems for Cisco Duo*

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Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice 2026

Live Demo: See Duo’s Security-First IAM in Action

Learn how to deploy phishing-resistant MFA, eliminate passwords, and improve security in our 30-minute product demo.

Plus, get a FREE pair of sunglasses for attending!

Two coworkers tuning into the Duo Live Demo webinar in an office.

**Gartner, Voice of the Customer for User Authentication, Peer Community Contributors, 22 January 2026

Gartner, Peer Insights, and Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Badge are trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences with the vendors listed on the platform, should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.