The world has transitioned to a more distributed workforce, and with recent global happenings, hybrid work culture seems to be the new way forward. Users now expect to connect from anywhere and on any device.
“Security has to be at the heart of everything in the new world we live in. We believe it needs to be done with a platform approach that is simple, comprehensive and based on intelligence,” said Cisco Chairman and CEO Chuck Robbins, addressing a virtual conference audience. “There is really no perimeter in the enterprise to defend anymore. We need visibility across endpoints, users and applications as well as securing critical control points with continuous passwordless authentication.”
Highlighting the need for an end-to-end security solutions for the new age, Cisco, the leader in enterprise security, unveiled innovations across users, devices, networks, applications and data.
Improving visibility and simplifying extended detection and response (XDR)
The erosion of the network perimeter and transition to work-from-anywhere exposes endpoint devices, users and applications to threats. In response, Cisco has expanded its XDR capabilities, integrating multiple security control points and applying analytics and automation to reduce time to detection and response.
- Industry-leading vulnerability management with Kenna Security: Cisco will combine threat and risk-based vulnerability management as part of the SecureX platform with its announcement of intent to acquire Kenna Security. This integration will help customers prioritize vulnerabilities, speed and automate decision making with tailored information, and accelerate response time for cyber readiness.
- SecureX device insights: Consolidation of device inventory from multiple sources within the SecureX platform to provide visibility and context for IT operations (ITOps) and security operations (SecOps) as well as automated threat enrichment and response.
- Simplified transition to XDR from EDR: As the only endpoint security solution with a built-in platform, SecureX simplifies the move from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) to XDR with more than 30 pre-built workflows, 40 turnkey integrations and new orchestration capabilities.
- Expanded investigation and quicker response: Cisco Secure Endpoint’s advanced search technology now bolsters XDR value, offering more than 200 endpoint queries out-of-the-box to get real-time answers to support investigations, threat hunting, and IT Ops use cases such as tracking artifacts about endpoints.
SASE with enhanced cloud security
Cisco’s SASE architecture integrates multiple security and networking functions into a single, secure connectivity offer.
- Rapid deployment of cloud security across SD-WAN: New integration between Cisco Umbrella and Cisco SD-WAN powered by Meraki extends the SD-WAN fabric to the cloud with intelligent path selection to enable secure access and the best user experiences when connecting to cloud applications.
- Intrusion prevention system (IPS) in cloud-delivered firewall: Umbrella’s cloud-delivered firewall now includes an additional layer of protection with Snort 3 IPS, backed by Cisco Talos, one of the largest commercial threat intelligence teams in the world.
- New packages for best protection and value: Umbrella’s new secure Internet Gateway (SIG) Advantage package reduces the complexities of purchasing and unifying point solutions by offering a complete set of security capabilities in a single subscription.
Redefining and simplifying network security
Constantly changing application environments make network security more complex. Modern continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) applications necessitate tighter coordination among developers, security, and network teams to ensure application environments and workloads are secure, firewalls are appropriately configured, and policies are integrated.
- Industry-first integrated network and workload security: Cisco Secure Workload dynamically informs Cisco Secure Firewall of required policy changes and provides comprehensive visibility and control regardless of where applications are located.
- Upgraded threat defense: Secure Firewall Threat Defense 7.0, delivers better efficacy with Snort 3 IPS, the world-leading threat protection platform which defined next generation intrusion prevention systems (NGIPS). Snort is now deployed across 800K+ Cisco devices, and the open-sourced Snort engine witnessed over 8M+ downloads with 750K+ active users. It includes the flexibility to create robust policies in dynamic environments where fixed IP addresses don’t exist, and performance gains up to 30 percent on most appliances. (Snort 3 is also now featured in Cisco SD-WAN powered by Meraki and Umbrella.) The addition of the SecureX ribbon to Secure Firewall Management Center also further simplifies detection and response.
- Cisco secure firewall cloud native: Purpose-built for Kubernetes environments, Cisco Secure Firewall Cloud Native is developer-friendly, and the most elastic firewall Cisco has ever built.
