Cisco Advances Effort to Simplify Security
Cisco Systems has updated SecureX, a free console it provides for its portfolio of security offerings, to include sample extended detection and response (XDR) workflows along with additional analytics and a refreshed Ribbon interface through which security administrators can manage multiple tasks.
Jeetu Patel, senior vice president and general manager for the recently formed Security and Applications business group, said this latest update to SecureX is part of a companywide initiative to make Cisco products and services easier for IT organizations to consume.
Announced during the virtual annual Cisco Partner Summit, the update to SecureX coincides with an update to Duo, a two-factor authentication platform that now automatically detects suspicious logins using machine learning, which then surfaces alerts on the SecureX console.
Cisco also revealed it has tightened the integration between Cisco SD-WAN and Secure VPN (formerly AnyConnect) by enabling both offerings to be managed by the same agent software.
Overall, Cisco has now reduced the number of product names by 50% to align with its simplified Cisco SecureX platform strategy. Since launching Cisco SecureX last summer, Cisco said it is now adding more than 1,000 customers per month to the platform. On average, Cisco claims customers are seeing a 95% reduction in time to detect threats and an 85% reduction in remediation time.
Cisco has been making a case for reducing the overall cost of IT by aggressively converging the management of networks and security. At the same time, Cisco is applying machine learning algorithms across its portfolio to reduce IT fatigue at a time when more employees are working from home.
It’s not clear to what degree the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the convergence of networking and security management. Prior to the pandemic, understaffed cybersecurity teams were shifting responsibility for security operations tasks. As more IT tasks are automated, the rate of convergence may have accelerated.
Regardless of who performs the security task, defending an extended enterprise is becoming more challenging as more workloads shift both toward the cloud and the network edge. Cybersecurity teams, meanwhile, have not increased in size mainly because organizations have been unable to fill open positions. One way to compensate for that shortage of cybersecurity expertise is to rely more on existing IT operations teams to implement policies defined by the cybersecurity team. Achieving that goal, however, often requires a level of collaboration over a diverse set of IT cultures that can be difficult to achieve and maintain.
Cisco, of course, is not the only provider of networking hardware and software trying to expand its reach into the realm of cybersecurity. Security vendors, meanwhile, counter there is a need for platforms that span multiple networking architectures because most organizations have not standardized on networking gear from a single vendor.
It may be a while before most IT organizations modernize their approach to security operations. However, the pressure to achieve that goal sooner than later has never been greater.
