Every category where a model named Cisco Duo for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant	Since September 2026
Multi-factor authentication	Identity and access	47%	1 of 77	6%	63	endorsed leader	▲+5Since September 2026: 43% → 48%, +5 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
Network access control	Network and edge	2%	12 of 111	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Portnox Cloud at 35%
Zero trust network access	Network and edge	0%	19 of 66	20%	5	under 10 labels · led by Twingate at 39%	=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
Workforce identity and SSO	Identity and access	0%	14 of 44	0%	2	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Entra ID at 46%	▼−4Since September 2026: 4% → 0%, −4 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
Enterprise AI assistants	Data platform	0%	99 of 145	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by ChatGPT at 25%
Identity threat detection and response	Identity and access	0%	79 of 105	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Huntress Managed ITDR at 51%

Movement

Since September 2026, Cisco Duo held within the floor in all six categories: no change cleared 11 points.

Best category · MFA · by segment

Small business▼−2Since September 2026: 45% → 43%, −2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.

43%from 45% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 9 pointsRank 1 of 57, unchanged

Mid-market▲+5Since September 2026: 43% → 48%, +5 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.

48%from 43% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 6 pointsRank 1 of 69, unchanged

Enterprise▼−15Since September 2026: 30% → 15%, −15 points. Past the 11-point floor: movement. Read over the models both editions asked.

15%from 30% in September 2026

Cleared the floor by 4 pointsRank 2 → 3 of 59

All categories · Mid-market

Category	September 2026	Now	Change	Reading	Rank
MFA	43%	48%	▲+5Since September 2026: 43% → 48%, +5 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.	Within noise	Rank 1 of 77, unchanged
Workforce identity	4%	0%	▼−4Since September 2026: 4% → 0%, −4 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.	Within noise	Rank 5 → 14 of 44
NAC	0%	2%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 2% now.	New this edition	Rank 12 of 111, unchanged
ZTNA	0%	0%	=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.	Within noise	Rank 14 → 19 of 66
Enterprise AI	0%	0%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.	New this edition	Rank 99 of 145, unchanged
ITDR	0%	0%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.	New this edition	Rank 79 of 105, unchanged

Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.

The floor is 11 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions

By model

How each model treated Cisco Duo across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

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Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	2	0	0	0	2
GPT-5.4 mini	0	3	1	1	5
Gemini 3.5 Flash	3	2	0	1	6
Perplexity Sonar	4	0	1	0	5
Grok 4.20	4	1	0	1	6
Mistral Small	2	2	3	0	7
DeepSeek V4 Flash	4	1	0	0	5
Llama 4 Maverick	0	2	4	0	6
Qwen 3.7 Flash	3	2	1	2	8
Kimi K2	4	0	1	0	5
GLM 4.7 FlashX	4	0	0	0	4
MiniMax M2.5	3	2	0	0	5
GPT-6 Luna	0	4	0	0	4
Muse Glimmer 30B	3	2	0	0	5

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct37 labels16

Paraphrase42 labels24

Comparative49 labels22not counted in share

Budget-constrained52 labels22

Scale-constrained34 labels7

Negative17 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative231 labels in all, every segment counted; 69 of the 92 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Best overall for mid-market B2B: Cisco Duo – MFA-first product with strong phishing-resistant auth (FIDO2/WebAuthn), device trust, and easy deployment.” MiniMax M2.5 · MFA · direct prompt · first choice

“Duo Security (Cisco) — it offers the best balance of security, ease of deployment, user experience, and pricing for mid-sized B2B companies.” MiniMax M2.5 · MFA · paraphrase prompt · first choice

“Choose Cisco Duo if you want best-in-class ease of deployment and user experience for core MFA with minimal IAM overhead.” Muse Glimmer 30B · MFA · direct prompt · first choice

“start with Microsoft Authenticator (if using M365) or Duo Free — both offer solid security with minimal cost” MiniMax M2.5 · MFA · budget prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Duo and Okta are established options, though their pricing is typically quote-based rather than simple low-cost self-serve pricing” GPT-5.4 mini · MFA · budget prompt · soft negative

“Push notifications (e.g., "Approve login?" on apps like Duo, Microsoft Authenticator push): Susceptible to MFA fatigue/bombing” Grok 4.20 · MFA · negative prompt · soft negative

“Only use push notification systems (like Microsoft Authenticator or Duo) if they are configured to require Number Matching” Gemini 3.5 Flash · MFA · negative prompt · soft negative

“implementing them as a full ZTNA control plane for internal apps can become expensive and administratively burdensome” Qwen 3.7 Flash · ZTNA · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Cisco Duo, over the 230 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Cisco Duo was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Microsoft Entra ID153 of 23051Compare →

Okta Verify143 of 23020Compare →

YubiKey64 of 2305Not among the top eight

Google Authenticator60 of 2300Not among the top eight

Ping Identity46 of 2300Not among the top eight

JumpCloud Protect43 of 2300Not among the top eight

Microsoft Authenticator41 of 2304Compare →

Authy32 of 2300Not among the top eight

Auth029 of 2300Not among the top eight

OneLogin MFA25 of 2301Compare →

A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Cisco Duo. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 198 of the 230 answers that named Cisco Duo and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

expertinsights.com106

aimultiple.com70

duo.com68

miniorange.com59

frontegg.com58

rippling.com56

securityboulevard.com55

gbhackers.com53

mojoauth.com53

checkthat.ai50

628 of the 628 domain citations in answers naming Cisco Duo came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

expertinsights.com/identity-and-access-management/the-top-multi-factor-authentication-mfa-98

frontegg.com/guides/multi-factor-authentication-solutions57

rippling.com/blog/mfa-providers55

miniorange.com/blog/mfa-providers49

gbhackers.com/best-mfa-compared48

aimultiple.com/mfa-solutions47

checkthat.ai/answers/what-are-the-best-multi-factor-authentication-solutions42

encomputers.com/2024/05/best-multi-factor-authentication-small-businesses42

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

Where Cisco Duo stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.

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In search

Google, US estimates

Searches for its name, Google: 3,600 a month (“cisco duo”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 103 a month
Its own site: It sits on Cisco's site (cisco.com), so there are no site figures for it alone

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

47%

rank 1 of 77 in MFA

First choices

across its categories

Named in: 230 answers
Its own site cited: in 198 of the answers that named it

Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.

Names read as Cisco Duo

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Cisco Duo; a claim can dispute any of them.

Duo 10Duo Security (Cisco) 6Cisco Duo Security 4Duo Security 4Cisco Duo Free 2Duo (Cisco) 2Duo Essentials 2Cisco Duo (Duo Security) 1Cisco Duo (with ZTNA features) 1Cisco Secure Access / Duo 1Duo Security (Free Tier) 1Duo Security (by Cisco) 1Duo Security by PingIdentity 1

Follow Cisco Duo

An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.

Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.

The company

Cisco is the company behind Cisco Duo.

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On record

Company records

Also from Cisco: Cisco ACE, Cisco ACI, Cisco ACI / Tetration, Cisco AI Defense, Cisco ASA/Firepower, Cisco AnyConnect, Cisco AppDynamics, Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure and 68 more

In its own words

Stated by the vendor, not checked

Positioning: the industry leading solution for identity security with end-to-end phishing resistance, security-first IAM, multi-factor authentication (MFA) and more.
cisco.com/site/us/en/products/security/duo/index.html
Free plan or trial: Start your free trial cisco.com/site/us/en/products/security/duo/index.html
Customers named: The School District of PhiladelphiaGeorge SinkWashington County, WisconsinCisco
Not stated on the pages read: Who it is for, price, starting price, integrations, certifications, hosting

What Cisco Duo's own pages state, read October 5, 2026: cisco.com/site/us/en/products/security/duo/index.html, talentbridge.cisco.com/organization/cisco. A claimed page can correct any of them.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Cisco Duo's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Cisco Duo, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives

A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Cisco Duo by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Cisco Duo is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
who was chosen in the answers that did not name Cisco Duo, and every reason the record gives;
a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.

Badges

Wins only: a badge exists where Cisco Duo is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.

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AI models recommend Cisco Duo first in Multi-factor authentication this edition. Each badge says so in the buyer's words, names the edition, and links to the standing. The next edition issues a new badge; this one stays true as a record of October 2026.

Wide · 320 × 104 Website, beside other badges

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/identity/multi-factor-authentication/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/cisco-duo--multi-factor-authentication-wide.svg" alt="AI models' first choice in Multi-factor authentication, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="320" height="104"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Multi-factor authentication standing, where the claim can be checked.

Square · 240 × 240 LinkedIn, slides

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/identity/multi-factor-authentication/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/cisco-duo--multi-factor-authentication-square.svg" alt="AI models' first choice in Multi-factor authentication, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="240" height="240"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Multi-factor authentication standing, where the claim can be checked.

Compact · 200 × 56 Email signature, footer

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/identity/multi-factor-authentication/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/cisco-duo--multi-factor-authentication-compact.svg" alt="AI models' first choice in Multi-factor authentication, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="200" height="56"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Multi-factor authentication standing, where the claim can be checked.

Badges read on light and dark pages. Alt text carries the claim, the category, the edition and the index, so it stays a citation where the image does not load.