Cisco
Organizations
worldwide
are
dealing
with
short-staffed
security
operations,
and
a
security
parasol
that
stitches
together
numerous
single-point
solutions
and
hampers
threat
visibility.
At
its
LIVE
2023
event
in
Las
Vegas
this
week,
Cisco
revealed
an
array
of
solutions,
paving
stones
on
its
path
to
a
platform
strategy
called
Cisco
Security
Cloud.
Jeetu
Patel,
executive
vice
president
and
general
manager
of
security
and
collaboration
at
Cisco,
said
simplicity
was
key
to
Security
Cloud,
describing
it
as
a
secure
way
for
users
to
connect
to
any
application
they
have
in
a
frictionless
way.
“It’s
about
zero
trust
and
zero
friction
–
providing
the
least
privileged
access
with
the
least
amount
of
friction
to
the
user,”
said
Patel.
Cisco
also
unveiled
several
generative
AI
products,
visibility
tools
and
collaborations
at
the
event
that
advance
upon
the
announcements
it
made
at
the
RSA
conference
2023
in
April,
which
focused
on
its
extended
detection
and
response
cloud
service.
In
an
interview
with
TechRepublic
about
Cisco
LIVE
2023,
Patel
said
the
new
technologies
addressed
a
need
to
simplify
security
operations
and
address
security
considerations
caused
by
the
shift
to
hybrid
work.
“It’s
the
most
amount
of
innovation
we’ve
had
in
a
decade,”
he
said.
Patel,
executive
vice
president
and
general
manager
of
security
and
collaboration
at
Cisco,
gives
a
keynote
presentation
at
Cisco
LIVE.
Image:
Cisco
Patel
said
three
key
products
advance
the
company’s
move
to
Cisco
Security
Cloud:
Cisco’s
talking
points
in
Las
Vegas
this
week
put
large
language
model
interfaces
in
bold,
showing
how
AI
can
make
it
easier
for
security
teams
to
deal
with
the
proliferation
of
apps,
data
and
threat
surfaces.
Jump
to:
Cisco
Secure
Access
A
key
focus
at
Cisco
LIVE
was
its
approach
to
simplifying
authorization
and
access
through
a
new
security
service
edge
solution,
designed
to
enable
hybrid
work
experiences
and
simplify
access
across
any
location,
device
and
application.
The
new
platform,
called
Cisco
Secure
Access:
-
Delivers
a
single,
easy
way
to
access
all
applications
and
resources
that,
in
part,
use
AI
to
steer
traffic
to
private
and
public
destinations
without
end-user
intervention. -
Converges
multiple
functions
into
one
solution,
giving
administrators
and
analysts
a
single
interface
for
traffic,
policy
settings
and
analysis
of
security
risks. -
Includes
analysis
from
Cisco
Talos
AI-driven
threat
intelligence.
LIVE
returned
to
Las
Vegas
in
2023.
Image:
Cisco
“With
Cisco
Secure
Access,
any
user
can
go
to
any
application,
whether
it’s
cloud
SaaS
or
an
order
management
system
or
(a
media
platform).
Usually,
if
you
want
to
do
that,
you
have
to
use
VPNs,
zero-trust
network
access
for
applications
or
even
the
web,”
said
Patel.
“We
think
this
makes
no
sense
and
realized
we
needed
to
remove
all
of
that
complexity
for
the
user.
Our
job
is
to
create
the
most
obvious
experience
for
the
user
with
the
least
cognitive
overload.”
Cisco
Secure
Access
launches
with
limited
availability
starting
in
July
2023
and
is
generally
available
in
October
2023.
Integration
with
Cisco
ThousandEyes
As
part
of
the
Cisco
Secure
Access
launch,
the
company
announced
that
the
solution
will
be
integrated
with
its
ThousandEyes
visibility
engine
for
digital
experience
management.
SEE:
Here
are
some
of
the
upsides
to
observability.
“ThousandEyes
gives
us
end-to-end
seamlessness,
so,
when
the
user
experience
goes
sideways
—
perhaps
the
internet
is
not
working,
there
is
friction
access,
or
there
are
other
issues
the
user
can’t
identify
—
we
can
detect
it
and
fix
it,”
said
Patel.
Firewall
focuses
on
hybrid
work
and
cloud
The
new
Secure
Firewall
4200
series
is,
according
to
the
company,
designed
to
address
the
move
to
hybrid
work,
with
new
cryptographics
and
AI
and
machine
language-based
encrypted
threat
blocking.
SEE:
Hybrid
work
creates
a
wide-open
threat
surface.
The
firewall
uses
zero-trust
network
access
with
threat
inspection
and
policy
for
each
application,
and
new
security
protocols
addressing
traffic
from
remote
offices
to
applications
in
hybrid
data
centers.
Cisco
said
the
Secure
Firewall
4200
series
will
be
generally
available
in
September
2023
supporting
the
7.4
OS,
which
will
be
generally
available
for
the
rest
of
the
Secure
Firewall
appliance
family
in
December
2023.
Extending
the
firewall
to
the
cloud
On
the
heels
of
its
acquisition
of
Valtix,
Cisco
launched
Cisco
Multicloud
Defense
for
the
SaaS
multicloud
environment.
The
new
system,
available
now,
lets
IT
operations
manage
security
across
AWS,
Google
Cloud
Platform,
Microsoft
Azure
and
Oracle
Cloud
Infrastructure
with
a
single
policy
in
real-time
from
one
SaaS
platform.
In
addition,
teams
can
rapidly
spin
up
security
for
any
cloud
environment.
“Multicloud
Defense
allows
you
to
take
any
application
running
in
any
cloud
environment
and
access
only
precisely
the
data
that
you
want,
and
the
environment
that
you
want,”
said
Patel.
He
added
that
the
system
applies
zero-trust
—
and
a
“least
privileged
access”
paradigm
—
to
data
and
systems.
“We
want
to
give
customers
the
least
access
you
need
to
get
the
job
done,
to
make
sure
that,
say,
an
application
a
customer
built
in
the
cloud
is
able
to
access
this
specific
data
in
their
data
center
and
nothing
else.”
According
to
Patel,
Cisco
Multicloud
Defense
will
use
the
same
management
console
as
the
new
Cisco
Secure
Firewall
4200
series.
“You
now
have
a
platform
that
lets
you
add
each
new
solution,
and
every
subsequent
piece
gets
to
be
less
of
an
effort
to
plug
into
your
ecosystem,”
he
said.
New
AI-powered
solutions
from
Cisco
AI
Policy
Assistant
Cisco
revealed
a
new
AI
system
designed
to
automate
security
policies
across
numerous
interfaces.
The
company
said
the
AI
Policy
Assistant
will
enable
teams
to
describe
policies
at
the
granular
level
and
evaluate
how
to
best
implement
them
across
different
aspects
of
their
security
infrastructure.
At
Cisco
LIVE,
the
company
showed
how
the
assistant
can
“reason”
with
a
firewall
policy
and
help
IT
generate
and
implement
rules
using
Cisco’s
Secure
Firewall
Management
Center.
Patel
said
the
solution
addresses
an
inherent
flaw
in
the
proliferation
of
security
solutions.
“On
average,
most
companies
have
50
to
70
vendors
in
their
cyber
stack;
that’s
70
policy
engines,
70
places
where
contention
can
occur,
and
before
you
know
it
you
have
70
different
cracks
in
the
system,”
he
said.
“Applications
can
have
millions
of
lines
of
policy
for
a
firewall.
Our
policy
engine
will
have
reasoning
and
natural
language
capability,”
said
Patel.
“Administrators
can
therefore
request
access
for
a
person
using
natural
language,
using
generative
AI
to
interface
with
the
policy
engine,
have
a
conversation
with
it,
and
make
suggestions
to
administrators
about
how
to
simplify
the
policy
rules.”
SEE:
Study
shows
tech
leaders
are
investing
big
in
AI.
AI
SOC
Assistant
Cisco
said
the
generative
AI
SOC
Assistant
is
designed
to
lighten
the
load
on
endemically
understaffed
security
teams
by
parsing
alerts
across
the
Cisco
Security
Cloud
platform,
and
making
natural
language
recommendations
on
whether
to
act
upon
issues
as
they
arise.
According
to
Cisco,
the
SOC
Assistant
will
provide
broad
situation
analysis,
relaying
potential
impacts
with
the
goal
of
reducing
threat
response
time.
Cisco,
which
is
previewing
a
generative
AI
solution
for
Webex
at
Cisco
LIVE
2023,
said
AI
summaries
for
Webex,
policy
management
and
SOC
Assistant
will
be
available
by
the
end
of
2023,
with
additional
SOC
Assistant
features
available
in
the
first
half
of
2024.
Collaborations
with
Apple,
AT&T
At
LIVE
2023,
Cisco
announced
collaborations
with
mobile
device
vendors
to
enhance
users’
experiences.
With
Apple,
it
will
incorporate
zero-trust
access
through
Cisco
Secure
Access
into
a
native
experience
on
iOS
and
macOS.
In
addition,
Cisco
announced
a
partnership
with
AT&T
aimed
at
hybrid
workforces.
The
partnership
is
meant
to
enable
Cisco’s
Webex
Calling
and
SD-WAN
solutions
to
work
with
AT&T
mobile
networks
to
“let
businesses
offer
employees
a
simple,
secure,
consistent
experience
to
thrive
in
any
setting.”
About Author
