Cisco Unveils a Suite of Solutions

According to Cisco’s State of Global Innovation report, 85% of IT professionals indicate they value simplicity in their IT systems.

Cisco has unveiled Networking Cloud, an integrated management platform experience for both on-prem and cloud operating models.

New Innovations announced at Cisco Live include single sign-on (SSO), API key exchange/repository, cross-platform navigation, expanded network assurance with Cisco ThousandEyes, cloud monitoring for Catalyst devices, sustainable energy networking solutions for the data center, and more.

Cisco says it is also introducing a more flexible Cisco Catalyst switch stack, improved visibility into data center power and energy consumption, and new AI data center blueprints to improve performance and visibility for network operators. 

AI Security Cloud

Cisco also launched a new Secure Service Edge (SSE) solution, Cisco Secure Access, to enable superior hybrid work experiences and dramatically simplify access across any location, any device, and any application.

Highlights of Cisco Secure Access include:

• Common Access Experience: Delivers a single, easy way to access all applications and resources (not just some) by intelligently and securely steering traffic to private and public destinations without end-user intervention.
• Single, Cloud-Managed Console: Simplifies security operations by converging multiple functions into one easy to use solution that protects all traffic. Instead of managing a broad set of tools, administrators, and analysts can go to one place to see all traffic, set all policy, and analyze security risks. This translates into efficiency gains, cost reductions, and a flexible IT environment.
• Faster Detection and Response: Provides analysis to speed up investigations and is backed by Cisco Talos AI-driven threat intelligence to detect and block more threats.

Cisco also previewed generative AI capabilities in the Cisco Security Cloud to make security analysts significantly more effective at detecting and remediating threats and managing policy across their security environment.

Additionally, Cisco also unveilled Cisco Multicloud Defense, Cisco Secure Firewall 4200 Series appliance and 7.4 software, as well as cloud-native application security enhancements in Panoptica. Cisco’s latest innovations all protect hybrid and multicloud infrastructures with phenomenal user experiences.

Cisco Full-Stack Observability Platform to Drives Smarter Digital Enterprise

Cisco announced the launch of a new Full Stack Observability (FSO) Platform—a vendor-agnostic solution that harnesses the company’s full portfolio and marks a key advancement in Cisco’s accelerating FSO strategy. It delivers contextual, correlated, and predictive insights that allow customers to resolve issues more quickly and optimize experiences, while also minimizing business risk.

Cisco says its FSO Platform is focused on OpenTelemetry and is anchored on Metrics, Events, Logs, and Traces (MELT), enabling businesses to seamlessly collect and analyze MELT data generated by any source. The Cisco FSO Platform is also designed as a unified, extensible platform, allowing developers to build their own observability solutions, empowering an ecosystem of customers and partners.

Cisco Networking Cloud

Cisco says it is delivering the following components across its existing networking products portfolio:

• • Single sign-on (SSO) simplifying access across Cisco networking platforms.
  • API key exchange/repository, when linked with SSO, making it easier for Cisco networking platforms to connect and exchange data through automation to reduce friction and opportunities for error.
  • Cross-platform navigation, delivering more seamless navigation between Cisco networking platforms.
  • Common user interface across Cisco networking platforms, bringing greater consistency and ease of use across a customer’s operational functions.
  • Cisco ThousandEyes for end-to-end network assurance over any network: ThousandEyes delivers expanded visibility, automated insights, and seamless workflows to assure digital experiences across any network—whether on premises, the internet, or in the cloud. New innovations include:

• • • Expanded visibility into internet and cloud networks with new vantage points on Meraki MX and Webex RoomOS devices.
    • Faster insights into incidents impacting digital experiences with new automated Event Detection plus unmatched insight into your AWS connections for enhanced troubleshooting.
    • Seamless workflows with simplified ThousandEyes endpoint deployment with Cisco Secure Client, adding to ThousandEyes’ already rich set of ecosystem integrations, including data export via OpenTelemetry.

• • Cloud Monitoring for Catalyst to view, troubleshoot and manage Catalyst devices: Enhancements to the Meraki dashboard will now support new capabilities for Cisco Catalyst switches including a CLI view, image management, and advanced troubleshooting.

The company adds that it is simplifying operations with an easier, more predictable, and more scalable Cisco Catalyst stack, improved visibility into data center power consumption insights and energy footprints, and new AI data center blueprints:

• • Simplified branding for the Cisco Catalyst Stack: Cisco is now connecting the power and flexibility of the Catalyst brand across the entire enterprise networking stack with Catalyst Center (formerly DNA Center), Catalyst Software and Licensing (formerly DNA Software and Licensing), Catalyst Wireless, Catalyst Switching, Catalyst Routing, and Catalyst SD-WAN (formerly Cisco SD-WAN or Viptela SD-WAN). 
  • New Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Consumption Model: With cloud-delivered Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, customers can now consume SD-WAN as a utility with a flexible subscription model. Customers can simply purchase and have the SD-WAN software and services spun up in minutes. Cisco will be responsible for management of the underlying delivery of the SD-WAN fabric automating solution with zero-touch lifecycle deployment and management.
  • Simplified Licensing Options: Starting with Cisco Catalyst switches, new licensing combines hardware and software support into a single subscription—simplifying buying and renewing.
  • Sustainable Data Center Networking Bolstered by new integrations for Cisco data center networking and Nexus Dashboard, customers will gain real-time and historical insights for power consumption of all IT equipment in their data center and estimate the energy footprint of their data center operations.
  • AI Data Center Blueprint for Networking: Leveraging Cisco experience with customer deployments, the Cisco AI/ML data center network blueprint will give customers a new and proven solution for high performance compute, InfiniBand to Ethernet network migrations, and large-scale ML fabrics. With visibility into AI workloads via Cisco Nexus Dashboard and automation templates, customers can meet the demand for specific network performance characteristics such as deterministic load-balancing, line-rate transmission, congestion management and no drop characteristics with their Cisco Nexus 9000 and NX-OS implementations.

Secure Connectivity to All Applications

The company is also releasing Cisco Secure Access, its new SSE solution. Highlights of Cisco Secure Access include:

• Common Access Experience: Delivers a single, easy way to access all applications and resources (not just some) by intelligently and securely steering traffic to private and public destinations without end-user intervention.
• Single, Cloud-Managed Console: Simplifies security operations by converging multiple functions into one easy to use solution that protects all traffic. Instead of managing a broad set of tools, administrators, and analysts can go to one place to see all traffic, set all policy, and analyze security risks. This translates into efficiency gains, cost reductions, and a flexible IT environment.
• Faster Detection and Response: Provides analysis to speed up investigations and is backed by Cisco Talos AI-driven threat intelligence to detect and block more threats.

Cisco is collaborating with mobile device vendors to create the safest and best user experience no matter where users work. Cisco collaborated with fi to incorporate Zero Trust Access (ZTA) capabilities powered by Cisco Secure Access into a native experience on iOS and macOS, making secure access to applications pervasive while making it simpler for IT and more secure for everyone.

“At Apple, we believe deeply in providing security that is built-in, not bolted-on,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Enterprise & Education Marketing. “That’s why iPhone, iPad, and Mac will have native support for network relays coming in free software updates this fall. When combined with the work Cisco is doing to support relays, enterprises will have a private and seamless remote access solution with the best devices for business.”

Cisco Secure Access is taking a hybrid Points of Presence (POP) approach with Cisco Data Centers and public cloud providers to rapidly extend global reach for our customers. As part of the Cisco Security Cloud, it leverages capabilities from the rest of the Cisco security and networking portfolio, including embedded network visibility from Cisco ThousandEyes, and can be easily integrated with solutions from third-party vendors. Cisco Secure Access will be in limited availability starting in July 2023 and will be Generally Available in October 2023.

“Organizations are deploying SSE for a variety of reasons, but improving security outcomes is arguably at the top of the list. Achieving this requires an emphasis on users to create a frictionless experience and simplifying security team processes to improve efficiency and ensure consistency,” said John Grady, Principal Analyst Enterprise Strategy Group. “Security teams making plans for SSE should prioritize integrated solutions that focus on simplicity, scale, and user experience.”

“At WWT our goal is to provide security solutions and services that help our customers achieve their business goals. As a Cisco partner, we are really excited about the direction Cisco is taking with the launch of their Cisco Secure Access solution,” said Neil Anderson, Area Vice President, Cloud & Infrastructure Solutions at WWT. “With Cisco Secure Access our customers gain a simplified way of accessing both private, cloud, and SaaS applications private and internet resources, while transparently securing against threats and boosting user productivity while reducing frustration.” 

Generative AI to Improve Threat Response & Simplify Security Policy Management

Cisco is previewing the first generative AI capabilities in the Security Cloud. Today, most organizations have a patchwork of security products, forcing teams to set and maintain extremely complex security policies as well as track and remediate threats across numerous solutions.

• Reduce Policy Complexity: The Cisco Security Cloud will leverage a generative AI-powered Policy Assistant that enables Security and IT administrators to describe granular security policies and evaluate how to best implement them across different aspects of their security infrastructure. For the first implementation, customers will be able to reason with Cisco’s AI Assistant to evaluate and produce more efficient firewall policies. It will leverage customers’ existing rulesets in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center to drive unmatched efficiency without sacrificing granular control and will be available later this year.
• Quickly Detect and Remediate Threats: Cisco’s SOC Assistant will support the Security Operations Center (SOC) to detect and respond to threats faster. When an incident occurs, the assistant will contextualize events across email, the web, endpoints, and the network to tell the SOC analyst exactly what happened and the impact. Analysts can then interact and reason with the assistant to determine the best remediation approach leveraging an extensive knowledgebase of potential actions while also taking into account the analysts input. Cisco first shared the concept at RSA Conference 2023 and is excited to share that the event summarization feature will be available by the end of calendar 2023 with the remaining capabilities in the first half of calendar 2024.

Network Security Bolstered for Hybrid Work

As the demands of the firewall as the foundation of the security stack continue to expand, the new Cisco Secure Firewall 4200 Series raises the bar for performance and flexibility with cryptographic acceleration, clustering and modularity.

Running the new 7.4 version of the operating system, Secure Firewall 4200 features:

• AI and ML-based encrypted threat blocking without decryption.
• An evolution of Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) with complete threat inspection and policy for each individual application.
• Simplified branch routing that brings security, control, and visibility to traffic from remote offices to applications in hybrid datacenters.

Cisco Secure Firewall 4200 Series appliance will be generally available in September 2023 supporting the 7.4 version of operating system. The 7.4 OS will be generally available for the rest of the Secure Firewall appliance family in December 2023.

Additionally, Cisco Multicloud Defense will follow the company’s recent acquisition of Valtix. Multicloud Defense extends the traditional firewall concept into a service-oriented, multicloud world.   SecOps teams can now manage security across AWS, GCP, Azure, and OCI with a single policy, in real-time, from a single SaaS platform.

Cloud Application Security

Cisco is also delivering an integrated approach to secure cloud native applications from code to cloud with new capabilities in Panoptica, Cisco’s cloud native application security solution.

Adding to the Cloud Workload Protection (CWPP) that Panoptica currently provides, Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) will be available starting Fall 2023 to deliver continuous cloud security compliance and monitoring at scale, giving customers visibility into their entire inventory of cloud assets, including Kubernetes clusters.

In addition, a new attack path engine that uses graph-based technology to deliver advanced attack path analysis will help security teams quickly identify and remediate potential risks across cloud infrastructures.

Further, Panoptica’s integration with Cisco’s Full Stack Observability portfolio provides real-time visibility to prioritize business risks.  

Finally, Cisco is also launching its new Full Stack Observability Platform—a vendor-agnostic solution that harnesses the power of the company’s full portfolio. It delivers contextual, correlated, and predictive insights that allow customers to resolve issues more quickly and optimize experiences, while also minimizing business risk.

“Full-Stack Observability is critical in today’s digital-first business environment,” said Liz Centoni, Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer, and General Manager, Applications. “Cisco Full-Stack Observability brings together network intelligence, security insights, and application observability across the multi-cloud environment and the full technology stack to enable enterprises to deliver unmatched digital experiences with deep business context.”

Cisco’s FSO Platform is focused on OpenTelemetry and is anchored on Metrics, Events, Logs, and Traces (MELT), enabling businesses to seamlessly collect and analyze MELT data generated by any source.

Cisco FSO Platform Applications: Cloud Native Application Observability

Cloud Native Application Observability is the premier solution delivered on Cisco FSO Platform. In addition to Cloud Native Application Observability, the first set of modules on Cisco’s FSO Platform are:

• Cost Insights: Provides visibility and insights into application-level costs alongside performance metrics, helping businesses understand the fiscal impact of their cloud applications, while also supporting sustainability efforts.
• Application Resource Optimizer: Provides visibility into Kubernetes workload resource utilization, so businesses can maximize resource usage and reduce excessive cloud spend, helping them meet financial targets and sustainability goals.
• Security Insights: Generates an application-based business risk score to help DevOps and SecOps teams to prioritize and eliminate vulnerabilities on cloud native applications or services that have a high likelihood of exploitation.
• Cisco AIOps: Visualize contextualized data relevant to infrastructure, network, incidents, and performance of a business application, all in one place. Simplifies and optimizes IT’s operational needs.

Cisco adds that is already collaborating with partners, including CloudFabrix, Evolutio, and Kanari, to develop and monetize a diverse ecosystem of solutions for the Cisco FSO Platform.