Technology company Cisco revealed the ongoing development of Cisco Security Cloud, which is designed to become the industry’s most open platform, protecting the integrity of the entire IT ecosystem – without public cloud lock-in.

After the release of its hybrid work report, the company now aims to provide organizations with a cloud-delivered and integrated security platform that addresses security issues that hound remote work.

“With the complexity of hybrid work, the continued acceleration of cloud adoption, and the ever-advancing threat landscape, organizations are looking for a trusted partner to help them achieve security resilience,” said Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager of Security and Collaboration at Cisco. “We believe Cisco is uniquely positioned due to its scale, breadth of solutions, and cloud-neutral business model to meet their needs. Cisco is already delivering upon key tenets of our cloud platform vision.”

Cisco study underscores the importance of cybersecurity in a hybrid work setup
Cisco research confirms the future of work is hybrid

A hybrid work setup means employees working at different locations and this has become a challenge for security teams. The Cisco Security Cloud offers unified management, the open platform will provide threat prevention, detection, response, and remediation capabilities at scale.

According to Cisco, the company has been on the journey toward the Security Cloud for some time and is sharing additional progress with new innovations across its security portfolio.

Secure Access

Ushering in the next generation of zero trust, Cisco is building solutions that enable true continuous trusted access by constantly verifying user and device identity, device posture, vulnerabilities, and indicators of compromise. These intelligent checks take place in the background, leaving the user to work without security getting in the way. Cisco is introducing less intrusive methods for risk-based authentication, including the patent-pending Wi-Fi Fingerprint as an effective location proxy without compromising user privacy.

Secure the Edge

To radically simplify how organizations connect and protect users, things, and applications, anywhere, Cisco introduced Cisco+ Secure Connect Now, a unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution. Cisco+ Secure Connect Now is a turnkey offer available in several countries to quickly deploy SASE and ease day-to-day operations through a cloud-managed platform. The as-a-service subscription is optimized for value and managed through a unified dashboard.

Secure Operations

Cisco added a new Talos Intel On-Demand service offering custom research on the threat landscape unique to each organization. To help accelerate incident detection and response, Cisco announced enhancements to Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics with its ability to automatically promote alerts into SecureX and map those alerts to MITRE ATT&CK. This follows the general availability of SecureX device insights to aggregate, correlate, and normalize data about the devices in their environment, and the integrations of Kenna and Secure Endpoint to better prioritize vulnerabilities. Cisco also introduced the Secure Firewall 3100 Series, designed for hybrid work with a new encrypted visibility engine that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect hidden threats.

Simplification

Cisco is introducing simplification across the portfolio with the new unified Secure Client. Streamlining how administrators and users manage endpoints, half of Cisco Secure agents, including AnyConnect, Secure Endpoint, and Umbrella, will be unified by mid-year with additional elements to be added over time. This follows the new cloud-delivered Secure Firewall Management Center, which is enabled through the Cisco Defense Orchestrator and unifies management of both cloud and on-premise firewalls.