Cisco Live! Recap Below...
Missed Cisco Live! earlier this month? Don't fret! We've got a Live! recap available for you right here...
Cisco held its annual IT convention July 10-14, 2016, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. There, thousands of networking and communications professionals met together to learn about the future of the industry's networking - and expanding global security - leader. Several staff members from R2 were able to attend Live! and the reaction from this year's event was that it was an incredible, amazing experience, blazon with abundant energy and discussion.
This year's theme at Live! - "Your Time is Now" - focuses around their new multi-channel branding campaign, "There's Never Been A Better Time", linking their networking leadership with being a technology visionary. Many of their seminars, hands-on labs, and showcases at Live! were designed around this theme and the positive impact that technology can have on humanity and the world as a whole.
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Over the years, Cisco has taken a weighty approach towards growing their security business. They are seen as masters at overseeing the dynamic IT industry and using market shifts to gain customer demand and increase share. At this year's Cisco Live! convention, the focus was around industry changeover that is affecting security: digital transformation. Today's enterprises need to be elastic and progressive while also secure in order to stay competitive. During Live! Cisco announced several new acquisitions and product releases to help enterprises strengthen their position within the security industry against malicious malware attacks.
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Cisco executives such as Singh, Goeckeler, and [CEO] Robbins, spoke about Cisco's firm security focus and key acquisition strategy of future security players to enhance Cisco's innovation and industry strength. Cisco unveiled its new cloud-based security briefcase. This new portfolio of cloud-based products are designed to simplify and reduce the myriad of tools and software needed to protect enterprises from malware threats affecting the data center network.
"Digital business is the most impactful to security...customers are finding that they need a more integrated approach to security." - David Goeckel, Cisco SVP and GM, Networking and Security Business
Cisco unveiled several new product releases as well, focusing mainly on increasing security around those digitally-transforming organizations. During Live!, it was noted that as more companies transform to become digital - efforts which include, but are not limited to remote and distributed workforce, data analytics, cloud-model architectures, and the Internet of Things (IoT) - they become susceptible to sophisticated hackers. This industrialization of hacking stretches far beyond the boundary of an organization's network, piercing into the virtual infrastructure and software core.
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"It's not just tech innovation, it's business innovation and disrupting ourselves, that's what's needed to be successful." - Chuck Robbins, Cisco CEO
Two of Cisco's newly unveiled security products are Umbrella Roaming and Defense Orchestrator. Umbrella Roaming is an AnyConnect module built upon protecting those remote distributed workforce employees including off-network threats and site connections. Cisco's Defense Orchestrator is a cloud-based portal designed to simplify large enterprises' policy management and security infrastructure with total system security management. Defense Orchestrator application which provides customers the ability to consistently manage their security infrastructure over the cloud across multiple devices.
"Two things that I think are going to be most important: number one is security...and then moving fast in innovating over and over." - Chuck Robbins, Cisco CEO
Furthermore, Cisco unveiled three new solutions which are part of their Security Advisory Services designed to be highly effective in providing mobility and support against cloud security threats. These three services - Umbrella Branch, Stealthwatch Learning Network Licenses, and Meraki's MX Security Appliances with AMP ThreatGrid - are geared towards helping organizations navigate the security aspects of their digitization transformation. These new products can help businesses reduce their malware intrusion detection from the industry average one hundred days to less than twenty hours.
Umbrella Branch is a cloud-model type security software securing control over guest WiFi usage through content filtering. In addition, Umbrella Branch can be activated on the ISR 4000 series enabling enhanced filtering and malware blockage, command and control callbacks, and phishing threats before they arrive at the network. Cisco Stealthwatch Learning Network specializes in monitoring network behavior and analytics reporting, security intelligence and threat viability. Stealthwatch enables enterprises to monitor, detect, track, and analyze any and all suspicious network activity to thwart identified malicious movement. Lastly, Meraki's MX Security Appliance with AMP ThreatGrid permits advanced threat protection for those ROBO (remote or branch) locations, preventing those distributed remote workers from downloading malicious content with cloud-managed malware protection.
Our team walked away with a greater understanding and respect around security as it pertains to protecting the value of an enterprise: Cisco is intent on building the right solutions which will enable businesses to maintain innovation and move forward on mission-critical initiatives which would otherwise have been halted due to security issues and malicious attacks. We hope to see you at Cisco Live! with us next year!