Cisco Blog

New Job Roles Equal New Opportunities

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 18:31:36 GMT

For many years I was an ambassador for the motto “No matter what path you take, enjoy the ride.” Whilst I stand by this still, I recently realized that this guidance I had been using for thirty-two years could be a blocker in my future progress. So, now I will update my motto to be, “no matter what path you take, start in the right place and enjoy the ride.”

Needless to say, the scale of industry changes over the last few years has been profound. Being part of the modern-day engineer’s journey as we embrace a NetDevOps style of working, and seeing customer business transformation as they adopt automation workflows and success has been amazing. Every day we are seeing engineers and engineering teams within our customers and partners begin their network automation/programmability journey. And the most common question I hear as they embark is, “what path should we take?”

New job roles equal new opportunities

Firstly, let me dispel a common myth … network automation will not put anyone out of work. Network Automation does not mean network engineer roles will no longer be required. Nor do network engineers have to become software engineers. Network engineering will remain one of the most demanded skills in the industry, but they do need to be software-fluent and comfortable with writing scripts using languages such as Python, Ansible. They do need to know about making API calls, and working with software. Learning new skills has always kept engineers, at all levels, passionate and engaged with their work.

What are the new opportunities?

Business needs. All businesses evolve. As large and ubiquitous as Amazon is today, it’s difficult to remember that it started in a garage. Businesses evolve to meet changing needs for customer experience, business applications, security, and operational efficiency. so does the requirement for speed and agility. It’s no surprise to realize that as the business needs change, so to do the job roles to support (indeed to drive) that change.

Technology Needs: Technological innovation has forever been a driver of business change. The monolithic 800 pound gorilla of a network today needs the speed and agility so often found in DevOps practices for automation at scale. It needs self-serve network operations. Today’s network need to be built with secure CI/CD pipelines and designed, deployed, and managed like distributed applications.

This creates new job roles for network engineers, including (but not limited to):

Network Automation Engineer
DevSecOps Engineer
Network Automation Developer
IoT Architect
Cloud Automation Engineer

Choosing your starting point

I decided to start studying for my CCNA back in 2007. Way back then, I ordered the Cisco Press book, and read it cover to cover until I had the confidence to take the exam. Whilst this may not be the best way to study, it got me through the exam. Since then, I have taken more than my fair share of Cisco certifications and exams.

Now, choosing your path, and where to start, is significantly easier with Cisco DevNet. Learning about what certifications are available, and how to study for them, is laid out for you on the DevNet Certifications website.

Visit the website to learn how you can develop the skills needed by the IT Teams of the future. Skills in areas like:

Automation at scale
Self-serve network operations
Distributed applications

Visit the website to learn how you can become a certified specialist in IT segments such as:

Your Next Steps

Review the Exam Topics and related study materials you will need to prepare for certification in your area of interest
Visit the DevNet Dev Center aligned to your learning goals (listed below) to find learning labs, videos, and sandboxes to help you on your journey

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Cloud is the secret enabler of channel-less retail: Part 1

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 18:30:33 GMT

Authored by: Brian Chung, based in Singapore. (edited by Nicki)

Before I talk about the future of retail, let me start by examining the past. Retail once was very simple and straightforward compared to how the industry operates today. The core capabilities required for retailers in the past were solely focused around how to source the maximum number of products cost-effectively, and how to locate and secure the high traffic location to maximize sales.

Then, retailers started thinking about how to differentiate themselves from their competitors. This introduced the concept of merchandising, and how to identify relevant products (not just many). This required a certain level of analytics, to analyze what products consumers like, how to differentiate products assortments by store locations, how to strategically secure the suppliers, etc. From this time on, retailers started to scrutinize their operations in a detail level, and I would call this time as the “De-tail” era

Then, the retail industry experienced a new paradigm shift mainly caused by commercialization of the internet and smart devices, creating the boom of online commerce. This big shift disrupted the entire retail industry massively. Consumers became aficionados of online commerce mainly because of the ease of shopping and price competitiveness, and the newly evolving concept of “personalization”. This trend was naturally inherent in the personalized devices which the consumers were using for shopping. But for brick and mortar retailers, providing this level of personalized offerings required a new set of capabilities. Retailers needed 360 degree consumer insight to truly understand their customers. This trend turned “De-tail” era to “Me-tail” Era, which was the era which the “personalization” mattered most in retail.

Now, this brings me to the future of retail. The one word to encompass the present and future of retail is the “Channel-less” era. Not because all the channel is gone, but because consumers perceive the different, multiple channels as simply one touch point. Whether they shop in physical stores, use eCommerce, mCommerce or even social commerce, to a consumer these channels are essentially the same, in terms of their expectations around ease and convenience of shopping, interactions with associates, available information. If those expectations are not met, they know there is an alternate store with better options, elsewhere. Why? Because consumers are always-on, always-connected, and well-informed. Manufacturers (brands) now connect directly to end-consumers, bypassing retail channels. Product information that is readily available, as well as social media postings, and product reviews are all factors that influence a consumer’s buying decisions, that lie outside the direct control of a particular retailer. This channel-less ecosystem is hyper connected, and moves almost like an organic body. We are living in the era of “hyper-connected retail”.

So in this hyper-connected retail era, I would foresee the retail industry to continually shift to digitization, in which the channel-less format enhances seamless experiences, and optimized operations to secure the profitable growth. And I would prefer to call this future era “Digi-tail.”

Future of brick & mortar retail

In short answer, brick & mortar stores will still matter in the future, and as a matter of fact, I think they will play a even more critical role for retail operations going forward. Having witnessed the boom of online commerce, consumer’s heavy shift to digital shopping patterns, and many closures, I still have a reason to believe why this is not the end of brick & mortar stores.

First, from the simple statistics, the majority of retail revenue still comes from physical stores, and the data indicates that this will continue in the future. Second, I want to share a perspective on how the pure online players have been trying to penetrate into the physical retail world. Pure online players like Amazon or Alibaba have turned their focus to physical shopping recently, by opening up digitalized stores, and developing omni-channel services to influence consumers’ physical touch points or moment of truth. With this movement, we have to think of why these pure online retailers have massively invested in this way. I have two main reasons- one for complementing the shopping experiences, which only the physical stores can provide. And second, more importantly, for profitable growth.

Let’s talk about cost structure of online commerce. The costs of delivery, inventory management, change/return management, ultimately really do add up. Even in the recent pandemic situation, if you look at how Nike performed in this first half year. Not surprisingly, their online sales skyrocketed by almost 80%, year on year, which accounted for more than 30% of their entire sales globally. (Their goal for online sales to reach 30% was set for 2023, but was actually accomplished this year) However, the profit margins with this surge in ecommerce paints a more detailed picture. Not surprisingly a result of the pandemic meant their offline operations were closed down, but another large factor was the cost associated with the online sales increase, primarily around delivery and return cost. This goes to show efficient ecommerce and delivery operations, such as those of Alibaba and Amazon, are integral to support a surge in your online shopper traffic. In the absence of such operational ecommerce resources, a retailer may try to find ways to secure higher profit by bringing shoppers from online to offline stores.

The cost structure and variables for retailers in motion today imply that in the future, the question each retailer will ask will not simply be will retail happen online vs. offline. Rather, the goal will be how to find the right balance across every touchpoint, and for physical stores to play mission-critical role to complement online retail. Now that we have set the context, stay tuned for part 2 of this series, as we explore more of the details behind how cloud tangibly enables agility, efficient cost structure for retailers. Not only so, but how cloud equips retailers with the flexibility to manage physical and e-commerce retail platforms centrally.

Also, here’s the podcast I did on this topic with the Cisco marketing team. Enjoy.

For more of our solutions for retail, here’s our webpage, and be sure to subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss part 2!

The post Cloud is the secret enabler of channel-less retail: Part 1 appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Cisco Silicon Powers the Best Systems

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 17:00:16 GMT

All networking products, in every installation from the smallest home office to the largest cloud service, have fundamental characteristics in common: They all perform actions on network packets. They modify packets, forward packets to other pieces of equipment, collect data about packets, and sometimes block packets.

But each market has its own unique requirements, and Cisco optimizes its various products to suit. Cisco uses both in-house and 3rd party silicon to create industry leading platforms that optimally address specific functions and roles. In fact, we invest more heavily in silicon than any other network vendor in the world. Every single silicon innovation Cisco has brought to market has defined a disruptive breakthrough.

The Catalyst 9000 family is focused on the enterprise campus, for example, while the Nexus 9000 focuses on the enterprise and service provider data centers. The ASR 9000 is for the service provider core and aggregation markets. The Cisco 8000 is for the very large service provider and web scale markets. All these products, and many others, are purpose-built for their unique customers. Each offers the appropriate degree of programmability, buffering, scale, port speeds, and performance – at the right price point. These particular examples from our wider portfolio are powered by Cisco silicon, developed by Cisco’s own development teams and representing one of the largest investments in networking silicon in the industry. The following diagram illustrates the latest lineup we have to offer.

Catalyst 9000: Optimized for the Enterprise Campus and Branch

In our Catalyst 9000 family, you’ll find the Cisco Unified Access Data Plane (UADP) chip. This line of Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) is built with a multi-stage programmable pipeline coupled with smart on-die buffers. This unique combination allows UADP to meet the evolving and complex feature set for the continually changing enterprise campus. Learn More.

Nexus 9000: Optimized for the Enterprise and Service Provider Data Centers

The Nexus 9000 is powered by the Cisco Cloudscale ASIC family. Based on a high-performance pipeline coupled with smart on-die buffers, it offers customers high bandwidth, rich telemetry and support for Cisco’s ground-breaking Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI). This recipe optimally serves even the most demanding data center customers. Learn More.

ASR 9000: Optimized for the Service Provider Core and Aggregation

In our ASR 9000 series you will find Cisco’s Lightspeed ASIC, which is built with a massive number of multi-threaded C programmable network processors paired with high scale and deep buffers. This enables highly sophisticated features for the edges of the service provider networks while still providing enough bandwidth for the service provider core. Learn More.

Cisco 8000: Optimized for the Service Provider and Web Scale Networks

The Cisco 8000 is based on the Cisco Silicon One architecture, which uses a new P4 programmable run-to-completion processing engine. With a diverse set of devices customers can use purpose-built devices with deep buffers and high scale or devices with smart on-die buffers. This blend of programmability, optional deep buffers and high bandwidth allows the Cisco 8000 to be deployed in the service provider and web scale markets.

In addition, Cisco Silicon One chips can be purchased directly, by customers interested in building their own hardware and software solutions. Learn More about the Cisco 8000 and the six new Cisco Silicon One chips ranging from 3.2T to 12.8T.

We continue to invest heavily in all our silicon architectures to address the different needs of our customers. You’ll be hearing more from Cisco about these silicon architectures, and the amazing products that we build with them.

Stay tuned!

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One Architecture on Multiple Devices with No Compromise

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 16:02:18 GMT

Service providers, web scale companies, and equipment manufacturers have long struggled with networks comprised of multiple unique architectures driving up huge operational complexity and cost. Power-hungry routers, feature-limited web scale switches, and an ever-expanding footprint have them seeking new alternatives. Unfortunately, it seems the only solution is to wait for another chip family release once every 24 months.

Well, we have some good news. Those days are over. In December of 2019, we made a bold announcement about how we’ll forever change the economics of the Internet. Two of the key elements in that announcement were the introduction of Cisco Silicon One and a new business model. For the first time in the industry, customers can buy our state-of-the-art silicon and discrete optics parts directly from us.

The 10Tbps Cisco Silicon One Q100 is the first device in a family of chips that mark a fundamental shift in the routing silicon market. Whereas it once took at least five pieces of routing silicon to build a complete system, this can now be accomplished with just one. More than ever before, customers have the freedom to innovate at their own pace. We designed the new Cisco Silicon One architecture to be endlessly scalable, enabling faster iterations of future generations. Naturally there were skeptics – after all, this defied the norm.

Today, less than 10 months later, we’re proud to announce six new 7nm additions to the Cisco Silicon One portfolio: three highly efficient web scale switching devices, and three high-scale and deep-buffered routing devices covering an expanded performance range between 3.2Tbps and 12.8Tbps. The Cisco Silicon One portfolio now covers the entire space from service provider and web scale routers all the way to the Top of Rack (TOR) switches and everything in between. With one architecture, one Software Development Kit (SDK), and one P4 forwarding code, Cisco Silicon One unifies the network across routing and web scale switching.

The Cisco Silicon One Q200 extends our market leadership in routing silicon with a 7nm high performance, large scale, run-to-completion P4 engine and deep buffers. At 12.8Tbps, it enables customers to build a 32x400GE 1RU router with a single piece of silicon while others on the market require between two and 10 pieces of silicon. This dramatic difference alters the fundamental economics of building fixed-box routers.

Multiple Q200 devices can then be interconnected to create massive multi-petabit systems with a fully scheduled Ingress Virtual Output Queueing (VOQ) fabric. The Q201 and Q202 extend the portfolio down to enable lower bandwidth and less expensive 64x100GE and 32x100GE 1RU systems. Cisco Silicon One now covers the entire routing market, from 3.2Tbps to multiple petabits.

Today we also expand the market addressability of Cisco Silicon One in a big way by adding purpose-built devices for the web scale switching market. The Q200L is a 7nm 12.8Tbps web scale switching device featuring high performance, run-to-completion P4 engines and a fully unified on-die buffer. The Q200L is also foot-print compatible with the Q200, which enables one hardware design to support a 32x400GE router with the Q200 or a 32x400GE web scale switch with the Q200L, simplifying the development costs for our customers.

Although the leading switching devices are at rates of 12.8Tbps (and soon 25.6Tbps), we found that many customers are searching for highly efficient 3.2Tbps and 6.4Tbps to play different roles in their network. Because Cisco Silicon One is built with a scalable, slice-based architecture, we can easily create fully optimized, lower-speed devices from the same architecture. The Q201L at 6.4Tbps enables a highly efficient 64x100GE web scale switch and Q202L at 3.2Tbps can be used to build a 32x100GE web scale switch.

The efficiency of the Cisco Silicon One architecture combined with 7nm creates a truly unique offering in the web scale switching market.

Cisco Silicon One erases the hard-architectural boundaries that have existed for decades in the industry between routing and web scale switching devices by providing a single architecture that optimally spans both market segments. Customers can port one SDK and address multiple markets, while network operators need only train their support staff once to troubleshoot one architecture across their entire network. But in the end, this unique level of convergence wouldn’t be so interesting if each of the devices weren’t best of breed themselves. What sets Cisco Silicon One apart from the competition is how it brings convergence without compromise.

Cisco Silicon One was created by the team that built the silicon carrying more than 90 percent of the world’s Internet traffic and we believe this clean sheet architecture will serve the industry for the next several decades. To do this, we had to solve many of the problems that other architectures stumble over, but just as important, we’ve created an architecture that is highly efficient and scalable.

The impacts of a unifying architecture are clearly visible today. Most silicon vendors announce new silicon once every few years, whereas today we’re announcing six new devices in less than a year, just as we promised back in December 2019.

But as exciting as these new devices are, this is just the beginning. We’ve started a journey and we have more devices on the way. Stay tuned because there will be exciting news ahead!

Learn more about Cisco Silicon One architecture, devices, and benefits.

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Securing Your Vote

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 15:40:26 GMT

Today’s special edition post is a part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, where we will discuss election security and the imperative duty to safeguard our democratic systems.

Elections are top of mind – for voters, for candidates, and for governments around the world. From the high-profile efforts around foreign meddling to cyber attackers continuously taking advantage of the pandemic situation, ensuring election integrity is more important than ever.

What American voters should know before November 3

Over the past few months, we have proudly taken a leading role in educating election officials, security pros, and voters on the successes, challenges, and adversarial tactics related to election security.

Last week, Cisco hosted a panel conversation, where experts discussed the state of the upcoming election, revealing insights from new research that delves into effective communications for election officials. They help dispel myths, share deep knowledge, and bring clarity to the state of our elections. As confusing contradictory messages continue to permeate every platform, Cisco responds with a crack team of election security educators to help explain to voters what exactly is going on.

Countering disinformation and the fake news challenge

Threat actors aren’t simply concerned with modifying of votes, there are broad efforts to manipulate voters and to undermine faith in democracy in general.

Based on years of research and real-world experience working to secure elections, Cisco Talos lends recommendations for us, as we each have a role to play in working against attackers who would interfere in free and fair elections:

Everyone should understand that interference in, and attacks on, the election system are part of a larger, coordinated attack on the very concept of free democracies.
Security improvements in election security can best be achieved by combining the expertise of election officials with that of traditional security practitioners.
Election officials should extract maximum value from this period of heightened interest in election security.
Security practitioners should recognize the specialized nature of the elections environment and be careful to provide the best advice for that unique environment.
Everyone has a role to play in ensuring that faith in democratic institutions is reinforced and that social divides aren’t unnecessarily aggravated.

And one final pro tip: Don’t panic! Disinformation campaigns on the regular is normal and happens every election.

#Protect2020 with Cisco Security

We know that election security cannot be solved just by looking at disparate components of the system. Cisco cyber experts recommend an architectural approach that encompasses a complete infrastructure outlook – a systemic review that examines all technology, processes, and even the people who run the election. Advanced cybersecurity controls must be integrated into the election infrastructure itself, not bolted on later.

We get it. You need a security partner you can trust. SecureX is the only integrated platform that simplifies your experience, accelerates mission success, and secures future government operations. We make our security technologies work in concert to strengthen your election security program.

Together, we can reinforce faith in our election systems and trust in the fundamental pillars of democracy. At Cisco, we’re committed to securing what’s now and what’s next.

What measures are you taking to protect election systems? Comment below. Share your thoughts. Join the conversation. Keep an eye out for the next #GovernmentNow post and follow along with our #NCSAM series.

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Customer Spotlight: How One Montessori School Delivers Engaging and Inclusive Learning ...

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 15:03:18 GMT

The Customer Story blog series highlights how Cisco’s collaboration technology has helped customers solve their business challenges. Learn how Cisco is meeting customers where they are helping them achieve their business goals.

Webex Rooms Helps Oak Meadow School Engage with Ideas and Knowledge

Oak Meadow School is an independent school based in Littleton, Massachusetts, serving children between the ages of 15 months all through Grade 8. Oak Meadow School is a Montessori school, rooted in the child-centered Montessori philosophy, which fosters academic excellence, personal growth, and cultural awareness while nurturing children’s spirits.

In essence, the teachers at Oak Meadow School spend a lot of time observing the students. This is to uncover where they are in their development, engaging with ideas and knowledge rather than content, and using the student as a guide to further their development. When schools had to shut down, the immediate response from the teachers at Oak Meadow School was that their hands-on, engaging teaching style could not be captured through just online learning. They wanted and needed to “teach” and “observe.”

“It has been truly amazing to see how quickly the teachers adopted Webex, and how well-received it was by the students! Being able to effortlessly provide our students high-quality education, observing them and watching them grow, and of course seeing the smiles on their faces when they get to connect with their classmates face-to-face would have been impossible without Webex.” – Jay Scheurle, Headmaster, Oak Meadow School

Turning Challenges into Opportunities

However, teachers quickly realized that even if they cannot be physically present with their students, they still needed to facilitate those personal connections and continue on with their teaching. So, they turned to Webex. After only three days of deploying Cisco Webex, they found that the experience was so simple and intuitive that they went from thinking that online teaching was an impossible feat, to having daily classes with their students. Even the toddlers got to have morning class! This way, teachers were able to continue to observe and challenge their students, constantly urging them to develop their skills and knowledge.

We all know how important it is for children to connect with their peers, and the social aspects of education cannot be understated. By deploying Cisco Webex videoconferencing solutions, the students at Oak Meadow could see one another, catch up, and have those social interactions that are crucial for feeling connected in a time where being physically present in the same room is not available.

“I cannot wait to take this one step further and start delivering hybrid and blended learning. Democratizing access to education for children who due to various reasons cannot be physically present in the classroom is something that is dear to our hearts here at Oak Meadow, and I am excited for what the future holds.” – Jay Scheurle, Headmaster, Oak Meadow School

The Way Forward

In this new normal where everyone has had to adjust to remote teaching, a newfound sympathy for children who are not always able to attend school due to various reasons have emerged. Making learning inclusive to all children, regardless of where they are is something that Oak Meadow school will continue to drive forward, as this is only the start. With school having just started Oak Meadow is using Webex and Webex Room systems for Hybrid classrooms allowing teachers to teach both the children in the class in front of them, as well as those at home in a natural and intuitive way to ensure everyone is engaged. Something that they could not achieve with just a single video conferencing system.

Make sure you check out Oak Meadow’s landing page on hybrid and blended learning, and stay tuned for the continuation of this digital transformation!

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Collaboration on social!

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Click to connect with all the Customer Story blogs in the series

Distance Learning Expands with Webex Education Connector in in Learning Management Systems

Secure, Hybrid Learning with Webex

Resources

What is Distance Learning?

Webex Meetings: Advanced Ramping Up for Virtual Education [Live Class]

Remote Teaching: Tips and Tools to Build Engagement

Education Resources

What is distance learning?

Welcome to virtual learning

Cisco Webex Education Connector

Cisco Education Home Page

The post Customer Spotlight: How One Montessori School Delivers Engaging and Inclusive Learning Experiences with Webex Rooms appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

DellEMC PowerMax and Cisco MDS 9000 series SAN switches: Pushing the limits

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 15:00:14 GMT

A new breed of applications and devices is evolving. Secure, reliable, flexible data access is essential for any Enterprise IT environment to succeed in their wake. In the case of remote work, for example, companies have found themselves moving from in-office to work-from-home policies, placing greater demands on the application, storage, and networking requirements. Implementing these changes seemingly overnight is no easy task, and the environment must remain flexible, agile, and reliable. Organizations are also faced with the fact that these changes could become permanent. An effective disaster recovery plan, built with end-to-end encryption and timely analysis of highly-distributed virtualized data, is critical for Enterprise IT agility and company success.

A History of MDS and Dell EMC Innovation

In late 2019, Cisco announced 64G capability for MDS 9700 Series directors. They are the industry’s first 64Gbps capable directors available in the market today. The non-disruptive upgrade of the existing MDS 9700 Series chassis prepares these directors for future speeds and feeds without incurring the huge investment required for new chassis. The SAN Analytics feature in these directors allows customers to address performance problems before it becomes critical. Customers have assured peace of mind as the new components include anti-counterfeit technology using Secure boot, ensuring Cisco-genuine hardware and software.

In 2018, Dell Technologies announced the powerful Dell EMC PowerMax storage array equipped with end-to-end NVMe. With the recent PowerMax enhancements, simplified management, seamless cloud mobility, and improved security are redefined to improve mission-critical workload performance needs.

PowerMax combined with Cisco MDS 9000 Series switches are pushing the limits for scalability, flexibility to provide the unmatched infrastructure required to create a resilient and agile Enterprise IT environment.

Solution Advantages

When designing new infrastructure for your organization’s storage environment, it’s important to keep some key requirements in mind:

Flexibility to scale from 8-port to 768-port
Multi-speed and multi-protocol support
Security to support end-to-end encryption
Deep packet visibility to ensure storage arrays are running with optimal efficiency

The advantages of having a Cisco MDS 9000 series switches paired with Dell EMC PowerMax storage array can bring in:

Cloud mobility: Cisco MDS 9000 series switches seamlessly integrate with Dell EMC PowerMax to provide cloud infrastructure- public, private, and hybrid in a flexible POD like environment.
Flexibility: Moving from a hardware-based virtualization approach to application-centric, customers can deploy PowerMax SRDF/A replication for automated VM movements non-disruptively in a long-distance environment using Cisco MDS 9000 Series switches.
Security: While providing an anti-counterfeit security approach, the efficient, dedupe compression by PowerMax provides unmatched security with end-to-end data encryption from the host to storage media.

Cisco MDS 9000 series SAN switches: Deep pack visibility, built-in security, multi-protocol flexibility, higher scalability with proven reliability

The Partnership

The Cisco and Dell Technologies partnership span more than 17 years. Dell Technologies sells and services Cisco MDS products under the Dell EMC Connectrix brand. Dell EMC is a SAN storage market leader, while Cisco leads the SAN market with innovation and investment protection. Through strong executive alignment, these companies continue to deliver solutions with integration at every level by identifying and mitigating challenges from the protocol to the application level. Joint solutions like VxBlock are just one example of this growing partnership.

In Summary

Network demands for remote work have shifted from on-site to at-home, from rigid in-company network environments to flexible and agile network environments. The combination of PowerMax with Cisco MDS 9000 Series switches will surpass the demands of the new environment, with a next-generation solution providing agility, flexibility, reliability, and scalability.

Learn more about Cisco Storage Networking solutions.

The Dream Team and you!

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 15:00:12 GMT

Opportunities to engage with Networking Academy and Cisco

One of the longest standing services offered by the Cisco Networking Academy Talent Bridge program is the Dream Team. Since 2011, Dream Teams have been helping install the temporary wireless networks at major events around the world. Past events have included Cisco Live, NBA games, the Olympics, music festivals, and more. Even though Partner Summit Digital and other events have gone virtual or put on hold in 2020, it is a great time to start thinking about the next opportunity that people can get together in person.

Dream Team participants are nominated by their instructors to apply, and hand selected to participate for this engaging real-world opportunity. They spend a week, on average, working alongside industry experts to install the equipment needed to support the demand of thousands of attendees (and their devices!) that create an engaging experience.

Most of our students receive new employment or a promotion within the first year that they participate, but often much sooner. The Dream Team opportunity allows participants to have relevant experience on their resumes and help prepare them to achieve their dream job.

Cisco Channel Partners and the Dream Team

The Dream Team is not only a special learning opportunity for Networking Academy students but can also be a unique opportunity for our channel and technology partners. Partnerships have allowed us to expand the program to new events, creating a deeper relationship with our customers, partners, and local community as we collaborate on a social impact effort.

Meet members of the Dream Team from last year’s Partner Summit in Las Vegas sponsored by NetSync.

Most Dream Team opportunities involve working with the regional Networking Academies near the event site (example: for an event in Las Vegas we work with students based in Las Vegas). This creates a positive impact on the host city by empowering local students with relevant work-related experience and chance to build their professional network.

Select events allow channel partners sponsorship opportunities. You can read more about our partnership with CDW for the Cisco Live Dream Team here! Both sponsor and partner opportunities for the Dream Team allow you to recruit top talent for your organization by establishing relationships during the lifecycle of the event. Many of our Dream Team alumni have found employment with our sponsors and partners (like Ifedolapo Ogunjuyigbe, our 2019 Cisco Live Team Captain now at CDW).

With the Dream Team, our partners can build relationships, recruit talent, and help empower our future generation of network engineers. For any events that you or your customer hosts, consider teaming up with a Dream Team!

Learn more about our Talent Bridge Dream Team program.

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Cisco named #1 in the IT industry on Corporate Information Transparency Index (CITI) ranking

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 15:00:03 GMT

In the spirit of working together with our supply chain, industry peers, and organizations with which we have shared values, I am pleased to announce that Cisco has been named as #1 in the IT industry on the Green Supply Chain CITI Evaluation this year. This evaluation assesses brands on the environmental management of their supply chains in China.

We know that making the world a better place with technology begins with how that technology is made. A responsibly managed supply chain upholds human rights and promotes worker health and well-being. We also work to minimize negative environmental impacts and collaborate broadly to promote healthy ecosystems on which all life depends.

We have set ambitious public goals on greenhouse gas emissions and waste. In addition, minimizing environmental pollution is an essential part of environmentally responsible supply chain management. And like all work in supply chain sustainability, addressing pollution requires rigorous data collection and analysis, working with suppliers to drive change, and partnership with organizations to advance shared goals.

In 2017, Cisco began our collaboration with the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) to address environmental pollution in China. We leveraged their Blue Map database to screen our supplier sites for environmental violations. We then used our influence with those suppliers to drive them to correct identified issues and reduce their impact to the surrounding environment.

To date, Cisco’s efforts have resulted in the screening of more than 500 factories in our first, second, and third tiers of the supply chain. Based on those screening results and Cisco’s influence, more than 130 factories have corrected more than 360 environmental infractions. Furthermore, in the past two years, Cisco has required more than 100 factories to complete pollutant data in IPE’s Pollutant Release and Transfer Register platform. Altogether, this work is reducing environmental impact and promoting transparency for environmental protection in China.

Cisco recognizes we can extend the reach and impact of this work by cascading these requirements through our global supply chain. To this end, we have engaged our manufacturing partners in China to implement the same process of screening their suppliers and working with them to address violations. We also collaborate with our manufacturing partners to influence suppliers. For example, we identified a tier two supplier site with an air pollution issue, but we had small spend with that supplier and therefore not a lot of influence. We were able to bring in a manufacturing partner that had much more business with that site, and together we were able to drive our requirements and get the issue corrected.

Looking ahead, we believe the focus on supply chain sustainability will continue to grow, not just for Cisco, but for all our stakeholders globally. The interdependencies of society, the environment, and long-term prosperity have never been so clear as they have in 2020. As the impacts of climate change are increasingly visible, including the wildfires in California where Cisco is headquartered, there is an increased urgency to take action on this global challenge. And as the world continues to grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic, responsible businesses work to meet customer needs and protect workers’ health and well-being, and governments are looking to transition to a more sustainable economy and society. The opportunity is ours collectively to collaborate, drive progress, and make meaningful impact on these issues we care deeply about, and that affect the future of our planet and subsequent generations.

For more information, please see our Supply Chain Sustainability website.

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Securing Internet-Connected Devices in the New Era of Healthcare

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 13:06:38 GMT

The proliferation of medical and internet-connected devices in healthcare brings both clinical benefits and security risks. Just think of the volume of healthcare data being transferred and stored every day — data from IoT and connected medical devices, electronic health records (EHRs), clinical workstations, and smart hospital applications for patients, clinicians, researchers, and administrators.

All of this data requires secure and segmented networks to better protect medical devices, guest wireless devices, clinician devices and more from cybersecurity threats.

As part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’re focusing on what’s at stake when it comes to securing internet-connected devices in healthcare and how you can create an end-to-end security strategy to help address patient privacy requirements, improve threat detection, reduce management complexity and ultimately lower the risks associated with medical and IoT devices.

Why do my internet-connected devices need to be secure?

With the number of connected devices on healthcare networks rising, and more devices requiring network connectivity, there’s never been a more critical time to consider your medical device and IoT security strategy.

Did you know that 63% of healthcare organizations experienced a security incident related to unmanaged and IoT devices in the past two years?¹

The average number of connected medical devices per hospital room is 15-20, and each of those medical devices have, on average, 6.2 vulnerabilities.²

Legacy medical devices can increase the threat surface as well. Sixty percent (60%) of medical devices are at end-of-life stage, with no patches or upgrades available. And the average age of medical devices being used by hospitals and healthcare organizations is 20+ years, making them significant targets for hackers.²

Add mobility to the mix, and you have even more devices to secure. 4 in 5 clinicians use smartphones each day³, and 71% of clinicians said their hospital allows BYOD use.⁴

So, what’s at stake?

Above all, patient safety continues to be the greatest concern when it comes to the security of internet-connected devices.

In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration recalled 465,000 pacemakers after the discovery of security vulnerabilities that could potentially put patients’ lives at risk.⁵

Recently, a ransomware attack on a German hospital may become the first ever to result in death.⁶ After the emergency clinic’s IT network was attacked, a 78-year-old woman was redirected to a care facility more than 20 miles away, resulting in delayed care that ultimately caused her passing.

When critical clinical devices are hacked, it can become a matter of life and death, thus emphasizing the importance of a strong security strategy.

What can you do to protect your patients and internet-connected devices?

To protect patient data and secure your networks, users, endpoints, cloud edge and applications, you need a strong security strategy that includes the following:

Ability to identify all endpoints on the network, categorize each to a security posture, and create profiles and policies by device type and vendor
Quickly identify, isolate, and remediate cyber attacks
Control access to patient data at the device, location, and user level to minimize risk
Analytics and clinical informed alerts that enable IT to minimize security risks to the entire network while troubleshooting a known issue in an isolated segment

With Cisco Secure, and the Cisco SecureX platform, you can improve patient safety, automate medical and IoT device tracking and inventory, and reduce the risk associated with internet-connected devices within your healthcare facility.

Learn more about the healthcare security portfolio

Sources:

Armis, Medical and IOT Device Security for Healthcare, 2019
Cybersecurity Magazine, Patient Insecurity: Explosion Of The Internet Of Medical Things
Beckers Health IT, 14 Statistics on Clinicians and Mobile Device Usage
BYOD use is on the rise, and hospital policies need to be robust, Healthcare Dive, April 2018
465,000 Pacemakers Recalled on Hacking Fears, Fortune
Ransomware attack on a hospital may be first ever to cause a death, Fortune

The post Securing Internet-Connected Devices in the New Era of Healthcare appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Cisco Partners Help Small Businesses Navigate Unprecedented Changes

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 12:00:51 GMT

As the global community navigates a catastrophic health crisis, business ecosystems are banding together to provide guidance and assistance.

In addition to committing $225 million to support the global and local response to the pandemic, Cisco has taken a number of steps to help the small business community. The company has provided a variety of resources, tips, and classes for working from home. It is offering free licenses of Cisco Webex and Cisco Security solutions. And it has expanded its portfolio of small business technologies that are designed to be simple and secure.

Partners help with reopening strategies

Even more important is the legion of partners working alongside Cisco to help small businesses during unprecedented changes. Cisco partners are on the front lines of business offering local presence and support. Many partners are working day and night to ensure small businesses survive and thrive amidst the chaos.

ZAG Technical Services, a managed services provider with three offices in California and one in Idaho, initially helped its clients transition to remote work and is now assisting them with reopening strategies. ZAG has also created a pro bono program to support nonprofit, education, and healthcare organizations during the crisis.

“The needs have been fairly universal,” says Greg Gatzke, founder of ZAG Technical Services. “With more people working from home, companies need connectivity, collaboration, security, and access to key applications.”

Your Technology Support, another longtime Cisco partner, has found creative ways to mitigate the financial strain many small businesses are experiencing.

“Instead of big projects, we’re focusing on tweaks and efficiency improvements that help our clients save money,” says Adrian Turri, technical lead for Your Technology Support. “We’ve adjusted our services and costs, worked with Cisco Capital to secure some incredible financing, and we’re even paying the interest in some cases. Whatever it takes to get the job done.”

Protecting users and data beyond the firewall

Multilayered security is another critical requirement for small businesses adapting to a new normal. With more spokes connecting to each business hub, a secure connection that is supplemented by endpoint protection and identity and privacy management can make the difference between survival and obsolescence.

“Small businesses are aware of the risks, but they’re not always aware of their vulnerabilities,” says Vince Zappula, chief revenue officer of DataEndure, a Cisco partner focused on digital resiliency. “And many don’t have the resources to fully protect themselves. It requires 24×7 monitoring and the ability to thoroughly investigate and quickly respond if something happens.”

The power of the portfolio

What may sound like enterprise-scale capabilities that can only be attained with enterprise-scale budgets are more affordable and accessible than ever before.

“The power of the suite is Cisco’s secret sauce. The products are better together than they are alone,” Gatzke says. “Meraki firewall, Cisco SD-WAN, Cisco VPN, Cisco Umbrella, Cisco AMP. These are big enterprise technologies that have been brought to the small business market. They’re easy to use and they’re inexpensive, with payback in months, not years.”

Success through adaptation

Despite the uncertainty that has been borne from the pandemic, Cisco and its partners see distinct light at the end of the tunnel for small businesses.

“This is the ultimate pressure test,” says Turri. “We have the opportunity to reevaluate everything and determine what’s really important and what’s unnecessary. As a result, businesses will become faster and more efficient.”

“Companies will also be more adaptable,” Gatzke adds. “They will be more comfortable with change, and they’ll have the mindset to make big changes quickly.”

Although many things may change when we reach the other side of the pandemic, Cisco will still be here with our partners to help small businesses adapt and succeed.

For more information

The post Cisco Partners Help Small Businesses Navigate Unprecedented Changes appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

The Critical Next Stage for Business in the New Normal

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 21:56:41 GMT

The global pandemic has been an extraordinary catalyst for change, propelling organizations to navigate change and digital transformation at both scale and speed. Models once seen as the “future of work” became a reality almost overnight as organizations accelerated digitization to support new ways of working and learning.

Beyond the need for new or extended virtual capabilities, the pandemic has created a fundamental step-change in how organizations operate and plan for the future.

Amidst this, the magnitude of business discontinuity has been extraordinary, but it has unlocked immense new opportunities for organizations to leverage technology to drive innovation and long-term growth.

Discontinuity creates opportunity

Throughout the global crisis, technology has played an indispensable role in enabling organizations of all sizes and across all industries to ‘keep the lights on’ and operations running.

Since the first outbreak of COVID-19, our teams have worked tirelessly to deliver industry-leading solutions to maintain secure, seamless, and accessible virtual working and learning environments for our customers. This has included supporting mission critical health services at the pandemic’s outset in Wuhan in China by enabling remote doctor-patient care, as well as subsequent initiatives across the Asia Pacific region to support our customers, partners, and communities as the virus spread and mass disruption grew.

In India, our team helped to set up a COVID-19 War Room at New Delhi’s Ministry of Health for a Geographic Information System (GIS) map-based view of pandemic hotspots across the country and enable collaboration between government agencies to help contain the pandemic in real-time. The digital dashboarding solutions have since been replicated in Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, and Telangana states and 20 other cities across India to facilitate density monitoring, communication of lockdown protocols and agency coordination, among other features.

Supporting educational institutions to shift to virtual in a fast, effective way has been a big focus. In South Korea, we worked with Dongguk University to leverage the Webex platform to conduct nearly 3,500 live online lectures for 17,000 students during the crisis. This meant students did not miss a single day during their first semester of 2020.

From continuity to resilience

As we move through a new phase, where countries and economies are gradually re-opening, now is a critical time for organizations to turn their attention from business continuity to business resilience.

Strengthening an organization’s resilience involves more than just implementing solutions to solve existing or immediate challenges, it is about building the long-term ability to withstand and recover quickly from future shocks and adapt with agility to new challenges when they occur.

It also means enhancing digital capabilities and building holistic IT architectures to secure your organization, empower your teams, and automate processes. This is what will enable organisations to thrive now, and to be future-ready when disruptions happens again.

Regardless of an organization’s size, cloud-based technologies, security, and automation are all crucial pillars that companies should focus on to build resilience in the post-pandemic world.

Realizing a hybrid new normal of work

Cisco’s Future of Secure Remote Work Report shows that the flexible and hybrid work environment which has become the norm during the pandemic is here to stay.

56% of Asia Pacific organizations now have more than half of their workforces working remotely, and one-third (34%) expect this to continue beyond the pandemic. Having worked remotely for an extended period of time, employees now expect they will continue to have the flexibility and ability to work from anywhere, at any time and on any device, even as they return to the office.

Our report also highlights that COVID-19 has brought about significant transformational change among organizations in Asia Pacific, with many indicating they need to rethink their overall security strategy to prepare for the hybrid future of work ahead of us.

97% of organizations made changes to cybersecurity policies to support remote working and 85% of organizations in the region say that cybersecurity is extremely important or more important than before the pandemic.

Reimagining for future transformation

Discontinuity and business disruption will continue to happen in the future, and it will present itself in many different forms. It is important that organizations take learnings from this year’s pandemic and be equipped and ready to respond quickly and effectively when disruption inevitably reoccurs.

Ultimately, the actions that organizations take to strengthen their operational resilience will have a profound impact on their overall agility, flexibility, and adaptability to evolve for future demands.

With the right tools and technology architecture in place, organizations can build a strong foundation to accelerate innovation, gain competitive edge over peers, and drive stronger sustained growth into the future.

Future of Secure Remote Work Press Release

The post The Critical Next Stage for Business in the New Normal appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Your Day Just Got Better with the Cisco IP DECT 6800 Series Phones

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 17:50:32 GMT

Cisco IP DECT 6800 Series Phones

It’s hard enough running a retail store with curbside pickup only. It might be even harder when people come back to in-person shopping. You can’t always have all the help you need and stay profitable; you need to find ways to get the best out of the people you have. We have good news, your day just got better.

Your staff isn’t desk bound. They spend their time on the floor keeping things tidy and helping customers find what they need. They work best when they are in touch with each other and with your customers. The Cisco IP DECT 6800 Series Phones provide that extra lift right where you need it.

Easy to Install and Easy to Use

The 6800 Series DECT phones featuring the new, cost-effective 6823 handset, DBS-110 Single Cell Base Station and the RPT-110 Repeater, are easy to install, easy to use and reliable all day long. Their sleek design clips well onto belts and fits well into shop apron pockets. The handsets fit well into their charging cradles. There’s never any doubt whether they are charging up properly overnight. Each handset provides 2 lines. You may set up your system so that all of your staff sees the same line on their handsets. This way, there’s always enough people ready to answer each call.

An Emergency Button

For personal safety, the 6825 handset has an emergency hard button on the top surface. You can program it to call others within your system or the local 9-1-1 or emergency number. For quick, internal information sharing, there are paging and text features. These enable your staff to receive up-to-the minute details without making a call. Your people can feel secure working alone in remote areas of the store. Help is available from a single button press.

Grow Your System as You Grow Your Business

With the new system hardware, you may set up a small system cost-effectively with the DBS-110 Single-Cell Base Station. Extended coverage areas provided by the RPT-110 Repeater. As Cisco has offered for well over a year, the DBS-210 Multi-Cell Base Station can start as a single cell system.

As you grow, you can expand to a multicell system by adding more DBS-210 Base Stations to the same network. And your day just got better with the DBS-210 Base Station. You can link together enough units to cover the need of a large warehouse, airport, cruise ship or maintenance facility.

High-quality audio, an intuitive user experience and the durability you’ve come to expect from Cisco IP Phones. The Cisco IP DECT 6800 Series makes your store hum, your people shine, and your profits exceed expectations. Call your local service provider and ask about the Cisco IP DECT 6800 Series phone today.

Learn more about Cisco IP DECT 6800 Series with Mutiplatform Firmware

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Collaboration on social!

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The Hold Music Heard Round the World: Celebrating 100 Million Cisco IP Phones

Webex Room Phone: Innovating During Unprecedented Times

Top 5 Reasons Your Organization Needs Cisco Webex Calling with Multiplatform Phones

The post Your Day Just Got Better with the Cisco IP DECT 6800 Series Phones appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Empowering Secure Remote Work at University of Western Australia

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 17:04:45 GMT

An Integrated Approach to Security Helps De-Risk Remote Working and Learning at UWA

The overnight transition to remote working, teaching, and learning has been a major challenge for universities, not least because of potential cybersecurity implications. In a recent survey by Educause, more than 40% of respondents noted that security awareness training, email filtering, data loss prevention, and vulnerability scanning were more important now than ever before.

Remote working and learning heightens a number of threats:

Mission-critical data is now traversing networks you do not control, like insecure home networks or public Wi-Fi
Employees are probably working with personally owned devices, which are often out-of-date, vulnerable or potentially insecure
Cyber criminals are using clever phishing and other tactics to spread malware or trick people into revealing privileged access credentials during a time of uncertainty.

Meet University of Western Australia

“Short of war, there’s probably nothing much that has impacted on this institution as much as COVID-19.”
Professor David Sadler, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Education

In terms of data, universities are big targets due to their abundance of sensitive, valuable information. The rapid shift to remote work places has placed a sudden strain on both security and IT teams in the university environment – just this year, UWA saw a 65% increase in cyber attacks.

The University of Western Australia (UWA) was ahead of the security curve: they had deployed an enterprise licensing agreement with Cisco more than a year before COVID-19 reared its head. That agreement with Cisco provided an integrated approach to securing critical systems and data at UWA, and formed part of a broader partnership with Cisco.

UWA and Cisco’s Security Partnership

“Our partnership with Cisco enabled us to, most importantly, instill trust – and trust in our staff that they could continue to work, and that their systems would be protected no matter where they were, and trust amongst our students that they could continue their studies with minimal disruption.”
Lee Patterson, Associate Director, Cyber Security & Technology Risk

With data no longer centralized on the campus network, UWA consistently faced risks around phishing attacks and data security. Thankfully, the partnership with Cisco allowed UWA to quickly execute against their enterprise agreement and commission a number of technologies and products that allowed UWA to minimize business disruption, while addressing the rise in cyber activity and threats. The Cisco Secure Remote Worker solution helped the security team at UWA to effectively protect the institution’s remote work and learning environments from threats by verifying user identities, securing remote access, and defending users and endpoints – devices like laptops and mobile phones.

Additionally, Cisco products enabled them to instill a trust in their staff that allowed them to continue to work, and that ensured their systems would be protected – no matter their location. Most importantly, it also established trust among their students, enabling them to continue their studies with minimal disruption.

>> Discover our new video on the Cisco-UWA partnership.

>> Learn how Cisco facilitates safety and security in higher education.

> Learn more about the Secure Remote Worker Solution (opens in a new tab)”>>> Learn more about the Secure Remote Worker Solution

How has your university been impacted by COVID-19? Discover how we’re keeping students and faculty safe, secure, and connected in higher education at this year’s virtual EDUCAUSE event from October 27-29. Register today.

The post Empowering Secure Remote Work at University of Western Australia appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Our Best Kept Secret: Calling in Webex for the New Era of Work

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 15:30:32 GMT

The Safe at the Office, Productive Anywhere series highlights new AI-driven experiences that enhance the remote experience & provide a safe return to the office

Calling at the Core – with Webex

I recently stepped into the leadership role for Cisco’s calling business, and I am amazed to see how many phone calls we power each day along with the millions of people that we connect in the most inclusive way possible – making a phone call!

Calling is at the core of how many businesses operate every single day. From the customer to business calls, all the way to the doctor, to patient, and nurse calls. We power everything from retail, to healthcare, manufacturing, and everyone in between who need to be able to reach each other consistently regardless of environment with dependable calling.

Calling in Webex touches so many lives, workflows, and businesses that are now being reimagined as the world has changed its view on remote work and what is possible when working from home, or anywhere actually.

In this new environment, we continue to help organizations of all sizes navigate their calling and communication needs to support their remote workforce. Everyone from large enterprises to small family-owned businesses who have struggled with how best to adapt. It is clear from the data that a work-from-home policy and a cobbled together set of tools does not equal a strategy for success. In fact, remote work without the right tools is simply ineffective:

“54% of HR leaders indicated that poor technology and/or infrastructure for remote working is the biggest barrier to effective remote working” – Gartner 2020

What is Calling in Webex?

Calling in Webex is the most essential way for people to connect one on one. When you make a call, it’s important not only for you to reach the person you are calling, but that you have all the tools and capabilities available at your fingertips to communicate effectively once you do. At Cisco, we understand that our customers need to work in new ways and need simplicity. So, our team has been busy unifying the complete communications and collaboration experience into the Webex app. We have brought together in one experience — calling, meetings, and team collaboration essentials for today’s remote, hybrid and onsite work experience. This minimizes the back and forth between different tools and drives overall productivity in one seamless experience.

Within the Webex app, our customers can start with free calling, and step up into our powerful business calling. We have the most advanced cloud application that connects to all calling architectures:

On premise PBX
Partner hosted Cloud Calling
Cisco native Cloud Calling

In my opinion, Calling in Webex is our best kept secret. To get started, simply sign up on Webex.com, download the Webex Teams app, add your internal or external contacts and start talking and collaborating with your contacts. It only gets better from here when you attach business calling to your app. Most don’t realize this, so let me say this again, our one app attaches to on prem calling, cloud calling and even partner hosted calling!

With so many people working from home – we took many of the Calling features that used to be only found on the work phone in the office and have made them available from our Webex app for more mobile usage. No matter where you are, you’ll get a consistent calling experience in the office or working remotely.

New Calling Features in the Webex app

Multiline support in the Webex app

Figure 1 – Multiline makes it easier to manage multiple phone lines from within the Webex app

Looking for an easier way to manage multiple phone lines? Now, you can use the Webex app to manage work group environments such as executive-admin, support group, or contact center. Webex supports up to eight phone lines and enables advanced calling features on each line, such as call forward, transfer, hunt group, shared lines, and voicemail. You can also assign different ringtones to each line, making it easier for you to know when calls are coming into certain lines. Finally, your administrator can turn on presence for shared lines so that line status is displayed. The soft client in Webex has reached the next level – it can replace your desk phone for advanced business calling.

Leverage your Mobile Cellular Network from the Webex app

Figure 2 – Dial-via-office allows you to make business calls using the voice network from your mobile carrier

With Dial-via-Office (DvO), you can define different call handling rules in the Webex app, based on your situation. You now have the option to make business calls using the voice network from your mobile carrier. This ensures your calls are uninterrupted, even if data is unavailable. No matter what option you choose, your work number is always used as the caller ID so people can easily identify you. Another great feature to ensure businesses always have business continuity no matter where they work from, while leveraging existing partner ecosystems like mobile cellular networks.

Call Pickup – Teamwork!

Just like when you were in the office, if you’re in a customer support role and your co-worker can’t answer an incoming call to their phone, you can help your team out by taking the phone call for them. With our in-app call pickup, you will get a notification in the Webex app if you are both in the same pickup group. You can answer their call from the notification you get in the app. You get to choose who you help from your app by joining other pickup groups. Teamwork at its best with the flexibility of remote work.

Remote control for faster results

With remote work, most IT organizations have gone from supporting a couple of offices to as many offices as there are people in their organization (aka every employee’s home). We have had to reimagine how to do support at scale into everyone’s homes.

A common problem that users experience from home is needing help diagnosing a problem from their computer. Now, end users can share their screens with a support desk agent during a call from the Webex app, with the ability to step up and grant them remote access to control their computer. This can help everyone save time trying to troubleshoot an issue.

Do more with Webex Calling integrations

We continue to add new enterprise capabilities through our technology partnership programs.

Go Integrator for Cisco Webex Calling was just introduced — so now you can now connect Webex Calling to your preferred CRM platform. This enables quick and easy call management, screen pops, and customer lookups from hundreds of leading CRM vendors including SalesForce, Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM, Zoho and many more.

Another one of our partners, PeterConnects, recently introduced a powerful new receptionist experience that works with Webex Calling. As a web-based application, PeterConnects Receptionist allows a front office receptionist to manage incoming calls for the whole team from virtually anywhere. Handling inbound calls for the whole company has never been easier. This can be easily deployed for businesses of all sizes.

Be Prepared for this New Era of Work

As you can see, we continue to innovate with our calling and Webex solutions so you can focus on being productive from anywhere and staying safe while doing it. We are making Calling easier for the remote worker, the IT manager, and everyone who needs to get their job done faster, and more efficiently. We do this while leveraging the existing trusted networks, and infrastructure we had in place when we were in the office.

For the full set of updates please see What’s new in Webex and Learn more about how your team can thrive in the hybrid workplace.

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Collaboration on social!

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Safe at the Office, Productive Anywhere with Webex 10X Better Experiences

What’s new in Webex: October 2020

Catch up on all of Lorrissa’s blogs

Resources

Best Practices: How to Work Remotely [Online Class]

Moving UC to the Cloud [Webex Calling Demo]

The Best Practices for Moving to Cloud Collaboration at Your Own Pace [Nemertes Whitepaper]

The post Our Best Kept Secret: Calling in Webex for the New Era of Work appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Healthcare Cybersecurity: What’s at Stake?

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 15:15:49 GMT

Today, healthcare organizations are more connected than ever before.

The number of internet-connected devices in healthcare are rising, and the average hospital room is equipped with 15-20 connected medical devices.¹ With this proliferation of devices comes both clinical benefits and security risks.

In the past two years, 63% of healthcare organizations experienced a security incident related to unmanaged and IoT devices.² Couple this with the fact that last year, more data breaches were reported in healthcare than any other year on record.³ These breaches have the potential to cause significant harm to healthcare organizations, especially if critical clinical machines are infected.

Care delivery models are also changing. As a direct result of the pandemic, telehealth and virtual visits have increased exponentially. Patients now expect secure healthcare on-demand, from any location. This year alone, the growth of virtual visits is up 124%⁴, and we believe that telehealth will become the new normal in healthcare.

Plus, more clinicians and care teams are working remotely, which means they need secure access to the operational domain and to electronic health and medical records (EHR/EMR). According to healthcare executives in this PwC poll, 70% are prioritizing improving the remote work experience (compared to 49% across other industries) and 67% plan to make remote work a permanent option for roles that allow it (compared to 54% across other industries).⁵

With all these connections, just think of the volume of healthcare data being transferred and stored every day. All of this data requires a strong defense to enhance patient safety and protect organizations from cybersecurity breaches.

So, what’s at stake?

Healthcare organizations are under great pressure to protect sought-after digital assets, intellectual property, financial information, and patient data.

The financial costs associated with a healthcare organization’s failure to protect confidential patient data can be severe.

In addition to financial burdens associated with poor security, network downtime and loss of critical server and application operations can also be a consequence. Network downtime can interfere with a provider’s ability to treat patients and impact patient safety.

And, possibly the greatest consequence is loss of patient and partner confidence. A healthcare organization that has been the victim of cybercrimes may lose trust and loyalty amongst their patients, insurers and clinical partners.

How can you protect your healthcare organization?

Between managing BYOD access policies, IoT and applications (including more applications and legacy medical devices), access to EHRs and ecosystem partner cloud offers, protecting patient data, fragmented security policies and balancing outside vendor support, the complexity in healthcare continues to grow.

Healthcare providers need an integrated, unified, end-to-end security portfolio to help address patient privacy requirements, improve threat detection, and reduce management complexity, ultimately saving time, money and putting the emphasis back on care delivery.

With Cisco Secure, you can realize the benefits of unified visibility, automation, and stronger defenses. And, with the new Cisco SecureX platform, our products combine to help safeguard your network, users and endpoints, cloud edge, and applications.

As the industry continues to see shifting sites of care, remote work and new care delivery models like telehealth and virtual visits, healthcare organizations need to ensure that their voice and video collaboration tools are secure and protect patient privacy. Healthcare providers need collaboration technology with security built in, not bolted on.

With Cisco Webex, data security is of the utmost importance, and we are dedicated to providing world-class collaboration that is simple, scalable, and designed to meet your HIPAA compliance needs. On top of that, Webex Teams, Webex Control Hub and Webex API have achieved HITRUST CSF Certification, the world’s most widely adopted security framework in the healthcare industry.

Healthcare organizations know no “next time” when it comes to protecting patient data and securing their network, users, endpoints, cloud edge and applications. Now is the time to develop a holistic security strategy to help protect what matters most.

Cybersecurity Magazine, Patient Insecurity: Explosion Of The Internet Of Medical Things
Armis, Medical and IOT Device Security for Healthcare, 2019
HIPAA Journal: 2019 Healthcare Data Breach Report
Frost and Sullivan: Telehealth: A Technology-Based Weapon in the War Against the Coronavirus in 2020
PwC COVID-19 CFO Pulse Survey, 2020
Ponemon 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report
2019 HIMSS Cybersecurity Report

The post Healthcare Cybersecurity: What’s at Stake? appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Partner Summit Digital: What Partner Marketers Need to Know

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 15:00:40 GMT

As marketers, we’ve all faced challenges this year, unlike anything most of us have ever seen in our careers. The way we work must constantly adapt or it will become obsolete. And this is all happening at a time when we’re more physically apart than ever before. In many ways, we have all been challenged with creating messaging that forges deeper and more meaningful connections than we have in the past.

These changes in and of themselves aren’t inherently bad. It’s more that the reason for the changes was sudden, unavoidable, and made very, very real around the world as we were forced to retreat from our social norms. Some of us might be able to adjust faster than others, but we’re all still trying to figure out the best ways to balance business goals with being empathetic to our team while managing our way through a global pandemic.

Heading into Partner Summit Digital, I’m more aware of the current state of the world—and the role that Cisco, our partners, and marketing—play in it than ever before. Unlike previous years, we won’t be gathering in-person for a couple of fun- and learning-filled days. Instead, we’ve pivoted to a virtual only conference – where we have now extended invites to all of our partners (previous invites were limited at physical events), and you can watch the sessions live or on demand from the comforts of your workspace.

I’m also excited as we intend for this approach to be as fun and insightful as the Partner Summit we have all come to love. The team here at Cisco has been working tirelessly to put together a one-of-a-kind experience filled with business impact sessions, innovation talks, on-demand sessions, amazing guest speakers and more.

For our partner marketers specifically, please join our innovation session “Marketing with Disruption: How Agility Can Make You Future Ready.” This will feature a discussion between myself and Devin Hood, Cisco’s Director of Digital Customer Experience Marketing – on key learnings around how we have been adapting our marketing practice, further integrated sales and marketing, and leveraged data during COVID-19. I encourage you to add INT12 to your session schedule now—you won’t want to miss it!

If you haven’t registered yet, don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to join us next week. Register now and ensure you’re Future Ready!

The post Partner Summit Digital: What Partner Marketers Need to Know appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Bringing DevOps Practices to Network Operations

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 15:00:17 GMT

Software development teams were the first out of the gate. Responding to the speeds and needs of modern business, they spurred agile development methodologies and DevOps practices that forever altered the role technologies play in support of an enterprise – and the pace in which they are delivered, expanded and optimized.

Cloud providers quickly followed suit, offering foundational technology resources on demand, empowering the aforementioned development teams and further accelerating the rate of change and progress.

Corporate IT teams have been playing catch-up ever since, and many have struggled to straddle the fine lines between control and enablement, risk and speed. But this is changing thanks to software-defined automation and DevOps practices, which have made their way into the multi-cloud data center and hybrid cloud.

Countless IT teams are implementing Infrastructure as Code and offering compute, network and storage resources on demand – just like cloud providers. But they’re doing it with a consistent set of policies, security and visibility that span on-premises, branch office and cloud environments.

Source: “Accelerate: State of DevOps 2019,” Dora/Google Cloud

Societe Generale, one of Europe’s largest financial institutions, is using Cisco ACI and Cisco ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator (MSO) to standardize network policies, accelerate infrastructure deployments and increase operational efficiency across multiple regions.

“We needed our infrastructure to catch up to compute in terms of agility,” said Thomas Mouilleseaux, Global Head of Network Architecture, Security, Reliability and Automation at Societe Generale, “so we introduced DevOps principles to the data center networking team.”

With the help of Cisco Customer Experience (Cisco CX), Societe Generale deployed Cisco ACI in its UK data center and later connected multiple data centers in France using a Cisco ACI Multi-Site design. The financial services company is now in the process of extending the network architecture to its regional data centers in the Czech Republic and the United States.

“Cisco ACI is supporting roughly 1,000 leaves on a number of large underlay fabrics, and all of the policies are consistent,” said Vivien Strady, Global Head of Data Center and Network at Societe Generale, noting the fabrics host physical server, private cloud and big data environments. “That type of standardization and software-defined automation is important for operational efficiency, knowledge sharing and business agility – on a global scale.”

Adopting DevOps practices and delivering Infrastructure as Code takes time and effort, especially in the beginning stages. It also requires changes to an IT team’s culture and everyday processes. But when done right, data center automation can greatly increase the speed and consistency of IT while expanding the possibilities for business enablement.

Learn how to prepare your infrastructure and organization for DevOps with Infrastructure as Code, and see how the developer community is getting involved on Cisco DevNet.

Explore Cisco Data Center Networking case studies.

The post Bringing DevOps Practices to Network Operations appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Distorting the truth: The roots of online political disinformation campaigns

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 14:16:19 GMT

Security Stories Podcast

On today’s episode of the Security Stories podcast we discuss the history of online manipulation campaigns, and how they’re used today to try and influence political elections.

To do that, we welcome back Theresa Payton, the first female CIO of the White House and author of ‘Manipulated: Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth’.

Also joining us is Nick Biasini. Nick is a threat researcher within Cisco Talos and recently published a paper called ‘The Building Blocks of political disinformation campaigns’. The paper is part of Talos’ hands on research into election security.

We chat about some of the things that shocked Theresa when she was doing her research into manipulation tactics. And Nick talks about the amplification methods that are being used to spread certain lies online. Plus, we talk about what can be done to curb these campaigns with only a few weeks to go until the United States general election.

This is a really fascinating discussion, and whilst it highlighted the huge challenges that we’re facing at the moment, Nick and Theresa shared a lot of great information on how we can overcome them.

Also in this episode, Ben Nahorney shares his latest research on current threat trends. This time we rank the Indicators of Compromise that organizations have encountered grouped by particular topics, including ransomware, credential stealing, and looking at the top operating system IoCs.

Episode time stamps

0.00 Intro
03:01 Discussion on disinformation campaigns with Nick Biasini and Theresa Payton
42:45 Threat trends with Ben Nahorney
52:09 Closing remarks

Play the episode

You can listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you normally get your podcasts from! You can also listen right here and now:

Further resources:

‘The Building Blocks of political disinformation campaigns’

Manipulated: Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth’

The post Distorting the truth: The roots of online political disinformation campaigns appeared first on Cisco Blogs.

Deploying World-Class Rural 4G/5G Networks Just Got a Lot Easier

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 14:03:57 GMT

Rural areas need fast, reliable mobile connectivity just as much as cities. As service providers know, actually delivering that is far from simple. With new service opportunities that come with 5G, the demand picture for new rural investment is more attractive than it was with 4G. However, with sparse populations and long distances between population centers, making the numbers work is still challenging.

If you’re a service provider serving rural regions, that’s the baseline you’re starting from. Now, add a need to overhaul existing infrastructure or add new cell sites, and things get even harder. At least, that’s how it used to be. Now, Cisco is making it much easier to bring 4G/5G connectivity to rural subscribers—even for service providers who’ve never dealt with mobile networks before.

With the Cisco Cloud Services Stack for Mobility, we’re providing best-in-class mobile packet core solutions that are pre-integrated, validated, and ready to deploy. You can expand your mobile footprint much more quickly and cost-effectively. By working with Cisco, you can ensure your network is secure, reliable, and delivering the performance your subscribers expect.

Overcoming Complexity

Service providers may have any number of reasons for updating rural infrastructure. Maybe you need to replace your existing technology stack. Maybe you’re preparing to roll out new 5G services. Maybe you’ve historically focused on wireline services, and you’re looking to 5G or CBRS as a cost-effective option to bring fixed-access broadband to residential customers.

In all cases, you’re likely looking at a virtualized solution—deploying mobile core components via cloud software running on general-purpose hardware. There are big benefits to this approach; it’s much more scalable, flexible, and cost-effective than buying and maintaining dedicated appliances. But, as service providers have discovered in recent years, assembling all the components and integrating them into your environment can be enormously complex. Here’s what you’re looking at:

Design and build your solution. Do you have the expertise in house to select and assemble all the right components? How long will it take you to test everything (not just at the component level, but as a complete system) for functionality, security, scalability, and performance? Keep in mind, there’s a good chance you’re using a unique combination of products and software versions that no one else has used before.
Plan your deployment. Will you be working with multiple vendors? Will they be able to automate and accelerate your rollout? If you run into issues, will you be able to call one vendor for help, or will you be playing phone tag with half a dozen or more?
Strategize how you’ll maintain and evolve the solution. Do you have the resources in-house to manage roadmaps for all the components in your stack—across potentially dozens of combinations of products and software versions? If issues crop up (and they inevitably will), how long will it take you to isolate which vendor’s product is causing the problem and get it fixed?

For all these reasons, rural service providers are shying away from the “DIY” route, looking instead for pre-integrated mobile core solutions. A number of vendors now offer them, and some even claim their solutions are “pre-integrated” with other vendors’ products. Even in those cases though, there is no guarantee that the vendor has a roadmap for that solution that it plans to manage. Nor can you be sure that integration testing has been conducted on the most current versions of all software components.

The vendor may have plugged some version of these components together and confirmed that they worked. They may have successfully deployed some variation of this solution in the past. But, unless they’re providing a formal reference architecture—with every component thoroughly tested and validated to operate as a single, secure solution—you’re taking a big risk. That could entail blown timelines, extra costs, and frustrating delays in your rollout. In the worst case, it could mean exposing your network and subscribers to a serious security vulnerability.

Introducing the Cisco Cloud Services Stack for Mobility

Now, Cisco is bringing rural service providers a pre-integrated, ready-to-deploy mobile core solution that’s fully tested and validated by the industry leader in network security. It’s the Cisco Cloud Services Stack for Mobility, and it’s changing the game for deployment-ready mobile connectivity in rural regions.

This cloud-based “packet core in a box” combines best-in-class components from Cisco—designed by Cisco experts, pre-integrated and validated as a secure building block for 4G/5G mobile core networks. The solution includes all the foundational components (SAE gateway, CUPS, MME, 5G non-standalone architecture) to run 4G and deploy new 5G NSA-based services. It’s the fastest path to offer new services such as fixed wireless access (FWA). And, the best part: it eliminates the long list of tasks and risks you’d have to worry about when building out the solution on your own—such as those illustrated in the table below.

Simplify and Accelerate Your Rollout

With a complete, validated mobile core stack, you’ll be able to bring new 4G/5G services to rural customers much more quickly, with less risk and lower costs—both upfront and over the life of the solution. At the same time, you and your stakeholders can move forward with confidence, even if this is your first foray into mobile services. By working with Cisco, you’re getting:

A proven reference architecture for your mobile core, designed and integrated by the market leader in network security
A comprehensive, feature-rich solution used in the world’s largest (T-Mobile USA) and most rapidly deployed (Rakuten) mobile networks
A platform to underpin your end-to-end mobile network solution—not just the core—via the Cisco Open vRAN Ecosystem
Expert assistance automating and accelerating your rollout from the Cisco Customer Experience team
Single-point-of-contact support for your entire solution—no matter where the problem resides—from the award-winning Cisco Technical Assistance Center

Just as important, Cisco understands exactly what rural service providers are up against and what they need to succeed. In the United Kingdom, we have invested in the world’s most ambitious rural 5G trial to date, 5G RuralFirst (a project I’m happy to note that I kick-started back in 2018!). No other vendor comes close to this level of investment in rural networks.

Bottom line, mobile core technology may be complicated, but your network rollout and operations don’t have to be. Reach out to your Cisco account manager today. Let’s work together to bring next-generation services to your rural subscribers and accelerate your 4G/5G success.

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