Cisco has announced a range of new cloud-based IT management, security products and features designed to give organizations better visibility, control and security over their networks and help them simplify IT operations.
Announced during Cisco Live in Amsterdam this week, the new products and innovations are aimed at helping organizations meet sustainability goals, secure and manage networks, devices and apps, and modernize their IT systems.
Zero trust security solutions for hybrid work and multi-cloud environments
Cisco announced several new cybersecurity solutions designed to protect distributed workforces and infrastructure, including the general availability of new Risk-Based Authentication capabilities across the company’s security portfolio designed to better protect hybrid work and multi-cloud environments, which the company says demonstrates progress toward its full vision of the Cisco Security Cloud.
In the now-available Duo Risk-Based Authentication, users can now authenticate less often in trusted situations without compromising privacy, as the tool now features a Remembered Devices feature and patent-pending Wi-Fi fingerprint so users can stay logged in when using familiar applications, devices and networks.
In addition, organizations can help protect against authentication phishing attacks with a new Verified Push capability that will require users to enter a code instead of just pushing a button to confirm.
Cisco is also releasing Expanded Single Sign On capabilities that enable modern enterprises to improve productivity by notifying users to reset their passwords before they expire.
For application security, Cisco announced what it calls the industry-first Business Risk Observability tool, an enhancement of the company’s Full-Stack Observability application security solution. Available through Cisco Secure Application, the solution is designed to provide a business risk scoring solution, which brings together Kenna Risk Meter score distribution and Business Transactions from Cisco AppDynamics, and also integrates with Panoptica for API security and Talos for threat intelligence.
To help IT teams secure a distributed workforce, Cisco is releasing Cisco+ Secure Connect, a new unified single-vendor SASE solution that extends support to Cisco SD-WAN, powered by Viptela. The company says the solution “uniquely converges Cisco SD-WAN fabrics and Cisco’s leading cloud security services to provide secure access to anything from anywhere.”
Cloud-managed networking
Cisco’s new cloud-managed networking solutions are designed to help customers simplify their IT operations with new cloud management tools for industrial IoT applications, simplified dashboards to converge IT and OT, and flexible network intelligence to secure all assets via a unified experience.
New cloud services include an integration between Cisco Cyber Vision and Cisco IoT Operations Dashboard, which is designed to give IT and operations teams full visibility into IT and OT devices to manage threats across the organization.
Secure Equipment Access Plus now provides access to any connected equipment with IP connectivity, which is designed to allow teams to run native applications on workstations to access remote assets more easily.
To help customers optimize users’ digital experiences, Cisco is adding OpenTelemetry support to cisco ThousandEyes to help simplify IT data intelligence. According to Cisco, this will make it possible or customers to interconnect cloud and internet intelligence across a wide range of solutions for data correlation and insight. The company calls ThousandEyes OpenTelemetry a true end-to-end solution for correlated insights across multiple domains, from user to application.
Sustainability
To help organizations meet their sustainability initiatives, Cisco is releasing Carbon Emissions Insights in Webex Control Hub to give organizations actionable insights on scope 2 emissions reporting and recommendations for optimizing energy consumption and usage of Webex devices.
Specifically, the tool allows organizations to estimate their energy usage and related carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from Cisco collaboration devices, based on formulas from recognized government agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The solution allows organizations see their emissions trends over time and track their progress, and also helps IT administrators enable features like Webex’ Office Hours to reduce their energy usage. Carbon Emissions Insights will be available in Webex Control Hub and enabled by default for IT administrators, and will be available this summer.
