Cisco unveiled innovations to further its journey to radically simplify and deliver end-to-end security across users, devices, networks, applications and data. Announcements improve extended detection and response (XDR) with greater visibility across network, endpoint and cloud. New innovations expand Cisco’s vision for secure access service edge (SASE) with enhanced threat detection in the cloud and redefine and simplify network security. Cisco continues to simplify customers’ security, network and IT operations - empowering organisations to embark securely on digital transformation.

The world has shifted towards a more distributed workforce, and with recent global events, hybrid work is here to stay. Users now expect to connect from anywhere and on any device, while security teams have the same complex, piecemeal and time-consuming solutions. It is time to rethink security. “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 the virtual RSA 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 password-less authentication.”

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. “Organisations are increasingly looking to adopt end-to-end security architectures to support this new way of working, and we think it’s critical to take a platform approach to simplify security, network and IT operations as customers embark on digital transformation,” said Gee Rittenhouse, SVP and general manager, Cisco Secure. “Since it was launched last year, more than 7 000 customers are using Cisco’s SecureX platform to unlock value from existing security solutions and accelerate their migration to XDR.”

“SecureX device insights provides an instant view of all the endpoints and devices with details needed to assess compliance and health of all assets in my environment,” said John DePalma, cybersecurity engineer, Sentara Healthcare. “SecureX device insights delivers welcome help to gain momentum on our zero trust journey at Sentara.

Delivering on a SASE vision with enhanced cloud security, today’s distributed and hybrid workforce necessitates delivering protection and performance wherever employees access the internet or cloud applications. Cisco’s SASE architecture integrates multiple security and networking functions into a single, secure connectivity offer.

This significantly simplifies security and reduces the cost, time and resources previously required for deployment, configuration and integration. Continuing to deliver on its SASE vision, Cisco announced:

• 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 the click of a button, and includes intelligent path selection to give customers secure access and the best user experience 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.

Introducing 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.