As I graduated from university and entered the private sector, I was a math student with very low self-confidence. I thought my career likely wouldn’t be for too long, as once I started a family there wouldn’t be roles that would enable me to be both a professional and a mother.

I started at Cisco as a contractor after having my first baby, and I realized how exciting it was to have a role that fulfilled my needs as a new mother but that also gave me a sense of purpose. I loved knowing that I had the opportunity to learn from the best in the domain and through an open working environment. There were so many rich, beneficial discussions happening at Cisco.

As you can imagine, work-life balance was very important for me. And I loved that my managers did not micro-manage me. I am trusted for my expertise and skillset to get the best work done while managing my own time.

The people at Cisco are also amazing colleagues who do not just merely work as a team but see the benefit for everyone when we grow together. This has helped my confidence grow in so many ways!

Here are a few other ways Cisco has helped me grow my self-confidence:

1. Work/Life Balance is Key. My managers do not cling to my time, but to my results – so I can take care of my family and be there for my child, but also take care of my work and be there for my team. It is so important to find a role where you will be supported.

2. Find a Support System: Speaking of support – at Cisco I have been encouraged to grow, learn, and not to dwell on my mistakes. This has made all the difference in my confidence levels as I know my team and managers are there for me. They truly care, understand, and want to help me succeed. When you have this support system, you will flourish!

3. Challenge Yourself: Many young girls and women are not encouraged to become interested in technology or other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) careers. Often, they may seem scary, intimidating, or out of our comfort zone. But I am here to say that beyond our comfort zones is the greatest place to be! Technology is an exciting career for women, and Cisco has done so much for women in tech.

I have since become a full time Cisco employee and have never been happier! I am confident and know that I can help others to grow. While technology is a male dominated profession, I love seeing our workforce change and more women enter the field. I tell all my friends that technology (and Cisco especially) provides so much more opportunity for women in tech and balance for working mothers.

Ready to join us in Cognitive Intelligence? and search keywords ‘Cognitive Intelligence’ or ‘Prague’.

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Cybersecurity affects all of us, but the industry uses complicated terms that make it hard to understand. For example, what is ransomware and how does it work? What does phishing mean? Or zero trust?

Let’s discuss these cyber concepts in simple, everyday language. And let’s cover what the good guys are doing to make our online lives safer.

What’s ransomware?

Imagine if you started your laptop one day and nothing worked. It turned on, sure, but you can’t do anything. Apps, files, photos… all gone. All you see is an alarming screen that shouts, “Your files are encrypted!”

Ransomware is a special type of harmful software. It scrambles all the data on your device so you can’t access it. It locks you out. Hackers then dangle the key in front of you, demanding payment for it. Their price is usually high, but affordable; that way, you’re more likely to pay. How does $300 sound to restore your laptop right now?

Initially, ransomware attackers simply left the locked data where it was. But now some victims aren’t paying, so hackers steal copies and then threaten to make it public. Do you want your personal information published for the entire world to see? It’s evolved into a hostage situation combined with extortion: additional incentive to pay up.

What’s phishing?

In the real world, there are a lot of ways to catch fish. Bait and lures look like tasty treats, so fish naturally take a bite. Imagine their surprise when a sharp hook yanks them from the water.

In the cyber world, hackers fish for unsuspecting people to help them get inside. They need you to click a harmful link or open a malicious attachment — actions that open the door. The link downloads harmful software, or the attachment infects your device. Phishing is a simple and popular way for hackers trick and hook you.

How does it work?

Usually with an alarming or intriguing email, but sometimes through text or messaging services. “Your package cannot be delivered,” it warns, or “Your credit card is suspended!” A cleverly worded headline is the bait that preys on your emotions and curiosity, making you want to read and act on it. You don’t notice the hook.

Spear phishing is a special type. In the real world, spear fishers closely track the specific fish they want, waiting patiently for just the right moment to strike. Then they jab the poor fish instantly with a sharp stick, and it’s game over.

In the cyber world, the spear is a unique note written just for you. Before they write it, attackers learn what they can about you, like where you live or work, or the people you know. They weave that information into their message and address it to you. It looks important, relevant, and legitimate. And the extra effort is often worth it: You’re much more likely to click.

Why is there a ‘p’ in phishing?

Techies love inside jokes, and the ‘p’ comes from the term ‘pwned’ — or ‘owned’ — which is what happens when attackers are successful: They ‘own’ you. But because ‘o’ and ‘p’ are next to each other on the keyboard, slightly misspelling words like ‘fishing’ or ‘own’ with a ‘p’ is an inside joke. A bit like ‘hodl’ (hold) to cryptocurrency investors.

What’s zero trust?

The internet has always been full of bad actors, so, in the early days, it made sense for cyber defenders to focus on the boundary. They assumed everyone outside was hostile, and everyone inside was trusted, so they invested heavily in perimeter security. Today, though, the evidence is clear: Security perimeters aren’t enough. Hackers find innovative ways to get through and, once inside, they move around freely and wreak havoc. Furthermore, security borders are powerless against malicious insiders like disgruntled employees.

It made us re-think things. Today we assume that bad actors are always on internal networks, so we’re approaching cybersecurity with that in mind. It’s called “zero trust.”

Zero trust tightly controls access, no matter who you are, no matter where you are. It constantly ensures that people are who they claim to be — going well beyond age-old passwords. It restricts access based on the principle of “need to know,” which is the least amount of access that’s needed to do a specific job. Zero trust continually monitors every system and device for signs of compromise, watching for unusual or suspicious activity. And when it detects risky behavior, it automatically reduces access permissions according to security policy, sometimes disconnecting devices altogether.

What are the good guys doing about it?

Zero trust. We’re taking zero trust seriously. Organizations of all sizes are adopting it, and even the federal government is moving toward a zero trust approach. At Cisco, we’ve adopted zero trust ourselves and — this might sound counterintuitive — it’s made our lives much easier. For example, one secure sign-on connects us to multiple business applications without having to remember and re-enter passwords. We work remotely and securely on any network, anywhere. We’re more productive. And we’re helping others with our modern, Cisco Zero Trust Security solutions so they can do it too.

Phishing. We’re continually innovating with Cisco Secure Email, our modern email security solution that defends against phishing, business email compromise, malware in attachments, and ransomware. For those who use Microsoft 365, Cisco Secure Email Cloud Mailbox enhances its native security features and blocks many threats that Microsoft misses. Our Phishing Defense verifies email senders, applies advanced machine learning techniques, real time behavior analytics, relationship modeling and telemetry to protect against identity deception–based threats. We’re even educating end users to be more vigilant through Security Awareness training.

Ransomware. As discussed above, Secure Email helps to stop ransomware attacks from arriving by email. Cisco Umbrella is a critical ransomware defense by protecting users from harmful websites, even after they click. And Cisco Secure Endpoint stops ransomware from spreading if it reaches a protected device.

We covered a lot today, but I hope you have a better understanding of key cyber concepts and how the industry is taking modern threats seriously. Have a question about cybersecurity? I’d like to know, so please leave a comment below.

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

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Business needs are driving significant changes in today’s datacenters. Enterprises are not only migrating applications to the cloud from on-premises data centers, but they are developing multicloud strategies that take advantage of availability, global footprint, and cost saving structures. In fact, IDC has predicted that more than 90% of IT organizations will commit to multicloud architectures by 2022.

In addition, datacenters are running applications in a mix of heterogenous private, public and hybrid cloud computing environments, leveraging bare-metal, virtualized, and container-based workloads. Managing security control configurations for on-premises, cloud, hybrid and multicloud environments quickly becomes complex, expensive, and burdensome,

And the oldest cyber security challenge is still present in the middle of this cloud transformation journey: How to better secure applications and data without compromising agility?

Cisco Secure Workload 3.6 addresses these critical security challenges by:

• Providing comprehensive workload protection capabilities that bring security closer to applications
• Tailoring the security posture based on the application’s behavior
• Enforcing segmentation and security policies simultaneously on Cisco Secure Firewalls

The design of Secure Workload utilizes rich traffic flow telemetry (agent and agentless data collection), advanced machine learning, and behavior analysis techniques to support the major security use cases in datacenters:

• Behavioral baselining, analysis, and identifying workload anomalies
• Zero-trust model adoption allowing list based micro-segmentation
• Detecting common vulnerabilities and exposures associated with software installation on servers
• Proactively quarantining server(s) when vulnerabilities are detected and blocking communication
• Responding to cyber threats faster – elevating the organization’s security posture

Also, Cisco Secure Workload offers one-click enforcement across multicloud data centers to reduce the attack surface and enforce the security framework using application segmentation. Secure Workload normalizes policies for each server, eliminating human intervention for further policy identification.

From the user experience, Cisco Secure Workload provides an intuitive point-and-click web UI to search information using visual queries and visualize statistics using a variety of charts and tables. In addition, all the administrative functions and cluster monitoring can be done through the same web UI.

New orchestration of Amazon Web Services

The integration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) harmonizes security configurations, coordinating AWS Security Groups North-South, East-West traffic and providing an agentless approach using AWS VPC flow logs for policy discovery and workload’s segmentation.

Equally important, the new coordinated orchestration provides the user with a simpler cloud onboarding workflow that accelerates secure application delivery and drives security infrastructure responsiveness as applications dynamically change. Also, as a part of the new functionality introduced in 3.6, Secure Workload supports automated instance inventory ingestion in a running or stopped state from an AWS region. This functionality makes the creation and maintenance of scopes and policies significantly easier.

Additionally, the integration reduces the burden of manual data sharing during policy implementation, simplifies administration, and mitigates the creation of security silos with disconnected controls that lead to inefficient and ineffective security operations.

Visibility and policy discovery for Kubernetes workloads

The need for maximizing resource utilization is making Kubernetes the market standard for container management, as it permits scaling flexibility across multiple servers in a cluster, and replication of instances or pods across different nodes.

However, running different applications on the same Kubernetes cluster may create a risk of one compromised workload attacking an adjacent workload. Micro-segmentation ensures that containers can communicate only as designed. One of the top challenges in Kubernetes deployments is creating network segmentation between pods, services, and containers. This is an inherent challenge due to the dynamic nature of container network identities, and the fact that containers can communicate both inside the same node or between nodes.

The integration of Secure Firewall with Secure Workload 3.6’s new Application Dependency Mapping (ADM) mitigates Kubernetes communications security risks. Secure Workload now discovers network policies across applications, both within and external to Kubernetes deployment tiers.

Kubernetes security is improved with Cisco Secure Workload 3.6 by a:

• Simpler process for defining scopes and policies using automated ingestion of the environment inventory
• Better administration and monitoring of Kubernetes environment resources such as nodes, pods, and services
• Possibility to deploy enforcement policies in Kubernetes resources (pods, nodes) leveraging the new automated ingestion

In summary

With Cisco’s hybrid and multicloud security capabilities, you gain unique control, efficiency, and efficacy across your networks, and closer to your applications. In your application infrastructure, you advance application workload micro-segmentation, coupled with common and coordinated policies across AWS’s Security Groups plus physical and virtual Cisco Secure Firewalls.

Additional Resources

Cisco Secure Workload website

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/tetration/index.html

Cisco Secure Workload FAQ

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/data-center-analytics/tetration-analytics/q-and-a-c67-737402.html

Cisco Secure Workload Data Sheet

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/data-center-analytics/tetration-analytics/datasheet-c78-740328.html

The Why, What, and How of Cisco Secure Workload Solution

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/data-center-analytics/tetration-analytics/datasheet-c78-740328.html

Configure Secure Firewall and Secure Workload – Unified Segmentation and Policy

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/security/firepower-management-center/217192-configure-secure-firewall-and-secure-wor.html

I distinctly remember my desktop and mobile updates that slowed my systems to a crawl.

The fine print often says something like, “May not run optimally on lower-end hardware.” Which is a pity, when a treasured custom-built system can no longer supported the latest updates, compromising its security, or a smart phone dialer needs 5 seconds to open for a phone call. But sometimes, updates are also upgrades for your existing hardware.

Secure Firewall Threat Defense 7.0 and Snort 3: The upgrade you definitely want to make

Secure Firewall Threat Defense 7.0 and Snort 3 improves security, provide more capabilities, AND simultaneously delivers enhanced performance.

For Cisco Secure Firewall 1000, 2100, 4100 and 9300 series, updating your firewall to Threat Defense 7.0 with Snort 3 delivers up to 77% performance improvement – plus a wealth of new capabilities.  

Performance improvements are across the board, with significant gains on throughput with Application Visibility and Control enabled, IPS throughput, VPN and TLS performance. These gains are realized through performance optimizations, improved scalability, and enhanced multithreading for packet processing.

For the 1000 Series, here’s a look at the performance improvements –

For the 2100 Series,

For the 4100 series –

And finally, for the 9300s –

So there you go  – a rare update that actually improves performance and delivers several new capabilities.

Don’t let this update go the way of all those updates that make you cringe with the downsides that come with them. Update for a better firewall and enable more use cases for your organization, including better visibility with Snort 3 and the ability to process Layer 7 rules on encrypted TLS 1.3 traffic.

Healthcare has been digitally transforming during the past several years, but it is now happening at such speed and scale, it is driving convergence of technology and business strategies like never before. From demands on clinicians to integrate technology into their workflows and leverage data insights in real-time, to patient expectations to use a myriad of digital tools throughout their care journey, the need to modernize healthcare is here.

Today, healthcare organizations invest heavily in infrastructure, along with multi-year network support plans. But much of these investments remain shelf ware without a roadmap for implementation and adoption. A foundational digital infrastructure is key to building a digital healthcare system – one that focuses on the outcomes of the individual, connects all areas of the organization, and provides care when, where and how it is needed, safely and securely.

To support the rising demands for connected digital ecosystems, healthcare leaders need to evaluate their current infrastructure and its ability to support future workloads. INFRAM can help.

What is INFRAM?

The Infrastructure Adoption Model (INFRAM) assesses and maps technology infrastructure capabilities required to reach clinical and  strategic goals while meeting international benchmarks and standards. The assessment is a global eight-stage (0-7) model for reviewing infrastructure adoption and capabilities maturity. By using the adoption model, healthcare providers can help improve care delivery, reduce cyber and infrastructure risk, and create a pathway for infrastructure development tied to business and clinical outcomes.

INFRAM Architectural domains and capabilities:

• Transport: Software-defined network across the hospital campus
• Mobility: High-availability wireless with services supporting data, voice, video, location, and beyond
• Collaboration: Secure, reliable video, voice, and text– enabling better clinical communications
• Security: Intelligent automation– enforcing policies for network access and device management
• Data Center: On-premises, enterprise-wide hybrid cloud application and automation

The INFRAM Value: Digitally Transformed Healthcare Organizations

INFRAM Maturity Readiness Services give healthcare leaders a clear path to assess the infrastructure needed to drive successful outcomes within their organizations. Depending on gaps identified with an INFRAM assessment, detailed design and execution plans are developed, including KPIs for measuring value and outcomes. This includes:

• Optimized Applications Experience: Experience is a new measure for defining a value-based care organization. The data that applications capture will enable transformation and using that data to optimize workflows and operations will drive growth and profitability. The more you see, the more you solve. The more you solve, the more resilient and agile your healthcare organization becomes.
• Application Enablement: This includes the development, design, and facilitation of:
  • Reimagined Applications: running in hybrid combinations (on-premise, cloud and multi-cloud environments) that allow for flexible distribution of workloads and data, based on the strategic and tactical needs of the organization.
  • Flexible and Inclusive Hybrid Work: an environment that leverages communications and collaboration platforms and supports clinical collaboration experiences​.
  • A Secure Enterprise: based on an automated, security policy-governed network, with integrated solutions for identity and access management.
  • A Cross-architecture, Integrated Infrastructure: to support transformative and consistent experiences with an end-to-end Campus, WAN and data center design and implementation, based on Software Defined Networking.

Additionally, healthcare organizations reap other benefits by leveraging INFRAM, such as  IT and business alignment, budget planning and assistance with comprehensive strategic and readiness plans, support for acquisition evaluation and negotiations, and the ability to leverage existing product investments for quick gains.

Cisco’s Customer Experience INFRAM Program

Since the inception of the INFRAM model in 2018, Cisco has worked closely with HIMSS as a key collaborator on the pilot program, along with other organizations from around the world. So, it was only natural that Cisco was the model’s first Certified Partner, engaging and assisting our clients in advancing through maturity model stages. Today, our Customer Experience (CX) team in the Americas delivers two INFRAM services.

INFRAM Assessment

This service delivers two reports focusing on:

• Strategy and Outcome Alignment that gathers the evidence needed to create compelling business cases for investment, linking stakeholder experiences, outcomes, and technology.
• Assessment and Gap Analysis that includes an analysis and actionable project plan to identify and remediate capability gaps in the technology infrastructure.

INFRAM Planning

This offer provides strategy roadmaps aligned to a costed program delivery plan, and includes:

• A 12–36-month blueprint and investment schedule tailored to infrastructure, systems and applications transformation that aligns business strategies and outcome to technical capabilities.       

By using INFRAM as a strategic blueprint, healthcare providers can help improve care delivery, reduce cyber and infrastructure risk, and create a pathway for infrastructure development tied to rapidly evolving business and clinical outcomes. This helps ensure that healthcare organizations are better prepared to leverage fully digital infrastructures to meet the patient care needs of today and tomorrow.

Interested in scheduling a Cisco CX Americas INFRAM engagement?  Contact us at infram@cisco.com.

San Jose State recently held its first Fall 2021, fully open, football game. As we knew this was coming, we prepared the stadium for the re-opening after it sat idle for way too long. As part of the preparation, we chose to revamp the wireless network at the stadium and leverage the new Wi-Fi 6 Cisco Catalyst 9104 Stadium Antennas to service clients at 150 to 200 feet. We also upgraded to the new Catalyst 9124 Wi-Fi 6 outdoor wireless access points for shorter distances.

Outdoor Wi-Fi 6 with Mesh

We found the Catalyst 9124 to be very versatile outdoor wireless access point allowing us to tune for directional, omni or even use it with an external antenna. The mesh-ability of the Catalyst 9124 is impressive and robust. Wireless is used in concession stands, ticket scanning stations, parking entrances and beer gardens, the ability to deploy a reliable mesh Wi-Fi provides a lot of flexibility in extending wireless as needed. This is important as the requirements change from event to event.

Another must have is the ability to setup an RLAN port on the Catalyst 9124s, which allows us to connect PoE cameras or any other PoE device. This gives us the ability to add cameras at the wireless access point locations without additional wiring or power needs.

We control both outdoor and indoor wireless infrastructure with the Cisco Catalyst 9800 wireless controller with IOS-XE software version 17.6.x or higher. 17.6 is the minimum software release needed to support the Catalyst 9104 and its software configurable antennas. It’s also needed to support mesh deployments as discussed above.

OpenRoaming is changing the face of guest access

As we are a college campus we have our campus SSID and the Eduroam SSID for our students, faculty, staff and visiting teams. For non-school affiliated spectators we historically provided a captive portal requiring users to enter name, and email in order to get access to the Internet. I have always been disappointed at the relatively low take rate of users to the portal. The more I thought about it, the more I realized, this is all about the visitors and their ability to connect.

In our current time of unlimited LTE data plans, why would anyone bother with a captive portal and sign-in. However if  they could connect with a single “ok to join” request, they would be far more inclined. This is where the OpenRoaming concept works very well. When an OpenRoaming SSID is present, phones and devices prompt users that there is a public network available and asks if they want to join. And if they’ve already joined an OpenRoaming network in the past, they’ll just automatically connect.

Reducing reliance on captive portals

Captive portals have a number of good use cases, but there is an equally important case for just allowing users to connect, even if you know less about them. We can still track analytics, and the analytics are far more insightful when we have a higher connect rate, like we’ve seen with OpenRoaming. For example, with more uses on, we can estimate wait lines at concession stands, understand foot traffic patterns, and dispatch janitorial services to a restroom after predetermined number of visitors to name a few.

To test my theory of high function vs ease of connectivity, I enabled OpenRoaming in addition to the Captive Portal SSID and saw interesting findings and user behavior:

1. Out of 855 attached clients to the captive portal SSID – only 20% were authenticated, meaning they did not enter the information required to gain network access.
2. More than 2600 clients attached to the OpenRoaming network were all automatically authenticated and using the network
3. 3400 clients were on the campus SSID or Eduroam SSID.

One of my takeaways here is that even with great wireless connectivity with the latest WiFi6 technology, if you want users on your network, onboarding must be seamless!

Learn more about Cisco wireless solutions.

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When I joined Cisco in November 2020, I was a recent graduate. I had also moved from Sweden to Norway. Excited and nervous about my new city and new career as a Software Engineer on the Webex Devices team, I wonder what this new adventure would be like. How would I collaborate with my colleagues and learn everything I needed to be successful in my new role while working entirely from home?

What I quickly learned was that Cisco was the perfect place to land in such uncertain times!

What initially attracted me to working at Cisco was the job ad. You may laugh, but it’s true! I’ve come across many companies in my career search and Cisco did a great job at communicating who they are as a company and what employees can expect from them. Their message, which included different candidate profiles, was clear: be you with us, whoever you are. This gave me reassurance that I could indeed be part of the company and grow with them, while also having fun!

As a woman in tech, some companies can feel overwhelming, since many women won´t apply to a position if we can´t check every box in the requirements. I was glad that a company like Cisco, who provides so many different solutions for the entire world, was also deeply committed to promoting diversity and inclusion.

When I was offered the role, I was so excited to be joining this team and to work on incredible technology that is keeping us all connected – Webex!

Setting up a productive working environment and meeting my coworkers virtually was a unique experience. Getting the domain knowledge – that can often be found in chatting casually with colleagues at the water cooler or coffee machines in office, where you can discuss both technical and non-technical topics and get the bigger picture – took a bit longer to obtain while working from home. There is definitely an adjustment period as you can’t simply pop by someone’s office, but I’m glad to say that the positives outweighed these challenges, too.

I loved getting to know my teammates and having their support as I was onboarded and was caught up to speed. My manager and colleagues made sure I was getting time and space to explore and learn at my own pace as well, and we even created a Webex space dedicated exclusively to coding together and getting my questions answered. This has been key to keeping me motivated all these months – knowing that no matter what, my team has my back.

During this time, I have also learned to embrace change, to be a better online communicator (we all know how difficult it can be to get people’s emotions/reactions online) and to ask everything in order to connect the dots faster.

I also learned many things about my coworkers, like the fact that people are ready to help when needed and that they genuinely try to make you feel included. Working from home can be lonely, and every small gesture counts.

I think Cisco has really set an example on how to take care of employees and provide support when we most needed it. Cisco made sure we were all set-up to work remotely by providing the tools and tips needed to make our workdays smoother. There were also numerous online events to lift the spirits, mingle with other coworkers and have a good time. This is really important and enhances the sense of belonging!

When I think of the future of work, I think of flexibility. Flexibility to be whoever you want to be, work from wherever you are, maintaining your true self while connecting with people from all over the world and sharing ideas very easily. Knowing that our solutions at Cisco make this happen motivates me to keep learning and working to make online collaboration a great experience for everyone.

My advice if you are looking for your first role is to keep an open mind, be curious and invest in yourself. The place you choose for your first role is key and being part of a talented and supportive team can really make a difference in your career.

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Automation: The Truth About the Easy Button

If there’s one thing the last year and a half has taught us, it’s the importance of building resilience and agility into our businesses, our teams, and how they operate. It’s no wonder, then, that the same pandemic response that accelerated organizations’ move to the cloud has also intensified the automation imperative.

Automation is table-stakes for faster, more efficient IT operations and business agility — but identifying the appropriate automation paradigm and how to best implement it can still be daunting. What should be automated next? What is the right set of automation tools for my organization? Do I have the team and skillsets to scale and harness the agility that automation can provide? The truth is, there is no easy button. But done right, a technology stack that leverages automation provides very real and critical advantages to organizations who are navigating the challenges and opportunities of a hybrid, multi-cloud world. 

At the end of the day, your IT and dev teams — whether they’re building cloud-native applications, or managing these applications, workloads, or services across multiple clouds, on-prem, or the edge — want to do exceptional work that drives the business forward. Automation can free up precious resources and be a force multiplier to make that possible. But how do you provide teams with access to these capabilities in a way that is user friendly, can bridge open-source innovation with enterprise-grade resiliency, and support both contemporary and cloud-native use cases and workloads?

Cisco’s answer is Intersight, its industry-leading hybrid cloud operations platform. Intersight unifies the operations experience across clouds and on-prem through a simple and powerful SaaS platform that delivers full-stack observability and a common vocabulary that bridges Dev and Ops teams and democratizes access to the tools they need to build manage and deliver modern applications. Through this single platform, Intersight provides cloud-neutral tooling for cloud-native development and a rich set of automation options across a common set of automation paradigms. 

For companies looking to harness the advantages of automation, there are a ton of options out there, each with different purposes and strengths, and from organizations that may have very different philosophies. To hear these perspectives, I have personally invited three prominent voices and industry experts from the leading IT, data center, and cloud automation companies to our next Insider Series for Cloud webinar for a discussion about the challenges and opportunities in driving automation end-to-end across hybrid clouds. 

• From Hashicorp, a company whose mission is to help companies better operate their infrastructure in the cloud through automation, we are joined by Amith Nair, the VP of Product Marketing who is responsible for overall positioning and messaging of the entire HashiCorp portfolio. Among his previous roles, Amith was instrumental in bringing Microsoft Office365 to market. Read the HashiCorp State of Cloud Strategy Survey here. 
• From Puppet, whose solutions help automate how companies continuously deliver, make compliant, remediate, and manage multi-cloud environments, Abby Kearns, Chief Technology Officer of the Puppet Enterprise Portfolio responsible for driving the company’s product vision and DevOps strategy. Before this role, Abby was the Executive Director of the Cloud Foundry Foundation and helped accelerate the popularity and adoption of open-source technologies. Access Puppet’s State of DevOps report here. 
• From Red Hat, a leading provider of open source and automation technologies for enterprises, we have invited Richard Henshall, the head of Product who leads the strategic direction for the Ansible Automation Platform strategy. Before joining Red Hat, Richard was the lead technology architect for integrations and cloud architect at HSBC where he was a power user of Ansible. Check out AnsibleFest 2021 here. 

Together, this panel’s goal is to provide you with a good look at the automation strategies and techniques that will achieve the most impact for efficient but agile hybrid cloud operations. 

If you have had any questions about how best to use automation in your technology operations, please carve out an hour on Wednesday Sept. 28 to learn from the best and the brightest minds in the business on this topic.

ceRegister to Join our live webinar on hybrid cloud automation.

— September 28th from 10 am to 11 am Pacific Time —

The State of Hybrid Cloud Automation from Industry Leaders

It’s no secret that our customer’s security needs are continuing to evolve and change as organizations transition to the cloud – whether it’s to support sustained hybrid work posture or adopt strategies like Zero Trust or Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) – customers need end-to-end security that simplifies the experience, reduces complexity, and integrates with their existing security investments.

A foundational element to much of these initiatives is having strong firewalling capabilities to bring better visibility, unified policy control, and threat prevention.  It’s a good thing the Cisco Secure Firewall team is continuing to bring new innovations to market that help customers get real-time, unified, application workload and network security protection, helping our customers increase productivity across teams. For example, with our latest 7.0 release customers gain 30% fasterthroughput and our recently launched Cisco Secure Managed Remote Access allows customers to accelerate time to value by offloading VPN management to Cisco. . Talk about leveraging the firewall to help press the fast forward button on achieving a customer’s desired business outcomes. Also did you hear that Frost & Sullivan just named Cisco as the sole recipient of the 2021 Firewall Best Practices Market Leadership Award? This award recognizes that Cisco achieved the greatest market share in the global firewall market due to outstanding performance, products, and service.

The opportunity for you

Now more than ever, is a great opportunity for you, our partners, to position our firewall and its enhanced capabilities which will help set your customers up to meet the ever-changing demands of hybrid and multicloud environments.  Not to mention there is a massive customer install base that is out there for you to capture.  As a partner you can help get those customers receive the highest value from their firewall by refreshing legacy firewalls or at a minimum getting them up to the latest software. You can land with Secure Firewall and expand the conversation with your customer to include additional products thanks to the enhanced integration and automation powered by Cisco SecureX.  Cisco Secure has some compelling partner profitability offers to incentivize you to drive these firewall migration and competitive displacement sales motions and activate SecureX.

How can you get started?

I invite you to join us on October 12^th for our Firewall Fast Forward – Cisco Secure Partner Insights Forum.  You’ll hear from Cisco executive leadership like Cisco CEO, Chuck Robbins about Cisco’s strategic security vision and the importance of firewall as a cornerstone of Cisco’s security architecture. Plus, our Security leaders, Shelly Blackburn, Frank Lento, Shawn Yuskaitis, Chandro Prasad and the Secure Firewall leadership team, will share how you can tap into your opportunity to refresh a massive firewall install base plus win new business with our differentiated solution.

Oliver Tuszik from our Global Partner Organization will event close our event. You’ll will leave with a sneak peek of the Secure Firewall product roadmap, information on new sales and technical resources available, the promotions and offers available for you to maximize your profitability, and practical advice on how you can grow your security business with Cisco Secure. It’s an event you won’t want to miss.

Register today for our Cisco Secure Partner Insights Forum

Firewall Fast Forward

October 12, 2021 | Times vary by region

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Throughout our daily routines, we always think about the future and the possibilities of ‘what if.’ Meteorologists predict what kind of hurricane we’ll see; stockbrokers predict how companies will perform in the future, and scientists predict different hypothetical outcomes to make world-renowned discoveries. There are predictions all around us, so why can’t our network do the same?

What if our network could predict or forecast issues that may arise? What if the network could learn from past incidents and intelligently adapt? No one knows what the future will offer and considering recent events we have lived through; we really need a better model to prepare for unknown disruptions. With a predictive internet, organizations have the opportunity to shift the IT management model and completely transform their network to stay ahead of the needs of their workforce.

Join us on September 28 at 1 P.M. P.T. for a #CiscoChat where Cisco Fellow, JP Vasseur, and Sleep Number’s, Dan Kelcher chat with Senior Director of Product Marketing, Raakhee Mistry to discuss the possibilities of a predictive internet. You’ll also learn about:

1. Network issues a predictive internet can solve
2. Shifting from reactive to proactive IT management paradigm
3. How AI/ML can enable a dynamic and adaptive network
4. Impact of predictive models to improve the application experience

Learn more about this topic.

Have questions? Join us for the event and our panelists will answer your questions in real-time! We hope to see you there.

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Earlier this year, Cisco completed its acquisition of imimobile, adding an enterprise-grade CPaaS platform to Cisco’s industry-leading collaboration and contact center solution portfolio. Our guest blog this week comes from the imimobile team.

The rise in eCommerce driven by changes in consumer shopping behavior as well as the pandemic, has meant that retailers have increasingly turned to digital messaging channels to engage with customers. Research has forecasted that mobile business messaging traffic for the retail sector will grow by 20% this year, with volume increasing from 336 billion in 2019 to 408 billion in 2020.

Customers want choice – they want their interactions with businesses to be personal, relevant and conversational. They want to engage using the channels they already use every day. Forward-thinking brands have understood this and are using the latest digital channels to build exceptional experiences for their customers.

Over the last few years, Google, Apple and Facebook have launched asynchronous business messaging channels for brands to use – Apple Business Chat, WhatsApp Business, Google’s Business Messages as well as RCS Business Messaging. These messaging channels have rich app-like features that make interactions with customers more intuitive, engaging and valuable for your business. All delivered in an environment that is familiar to users and optimized for mobile. Retailers must embrace these channels for a variety of different use cases across customer service, marketing and operational notifications.

At imimobile, we help some of the largest enterprises in the world embrace these new channels – but why should retailers specifically be interested in them?

Meet customers where they are

For many years, businesses have dictated the terms for how customers can contact them – relying on website FAQs, phone helplines and live chat. Often these communication methods can result in a frustrating experience for the customer, who often ends up waiting in a queue on hold. The latest digital channels provide a better option for customers as well as businesses.

Billions of phone calls to businesses originate from Google searches every year – using Google’s Business Messages customers searching for your business can start a conversation with just one click. Business Messages is embedded within the Google Search and Maps applications to make it easier than ever for customers to get the information they need. Consumers are already communicating with their friends and family via third party messaging platforms like WhatsApp, so businesses must start embracing them too. Putting customer preferences and convenience first will ultimately lead to higher customer satisfaction for your brand.

Higher sales and conversions

For marketers, these new channels offer new ways to promote products and services to customers. Rich messaging helps to create a more engaging post-ad experience for mobile users. Images and videos can be easily shared to showcase branded content that promotes, educates and piques the interest of customers. The use of buttons and quick replies adds a level of interactivity and allows brands to guide their customers through a purchase journey.

This is about more than sending just a blanket message out to all customers – Are you interested in a new phone? Ok – which one? Now – let’s find your closest store and arrange an appointment. That’s all booked for you – would you like us to add this to your calendar?

We all have short attention spans, and consumers want fulfillment on-demand, and this is where rich messaging can truly help brands stand out. End-to-end ecommerce journeys can easily be enabled through features like list pickers, time pickers and integrated payments to make the purchase experience as seamless as possible. Happier customers will ultimately lead to higher sales and conversions. In addition, deeper insights can be gained through these new channels with in-depth analytics to further optimize conversion rates – marketers can monitor which content is engaged with and how long was spent on an image.

Brand recall & loyalty

Clearly, customers will not convert every time. However, even if they don’t, they still build brand recognition through rich messaging channels. Verified business profiles, UI branding, content and tone of voice all help to project an identity that resonates with a target audience. The quality of the experience and initial interactions will help to build trust and brand authenticity, and the customer should be able to get back in touch with a ‘hi’ at any time.

Traditional marketing channels for retailers like email and SMS have long been used for promotional materials – however customers either get overwhelmed by the number of messages they receive from businesses that they ignore them, or they are suspicious of certain messages in case they are fraudulent. Creating targeted, personalized marketing campaigns that build trust through branding & verified profiles should be high up on a retailer’s agenda.

If you want to find out how to redefine the purchase journey, check out imimobile’s retail solutions via their website here.

Earlier this year in a blog post, I shared a bit about our Auth-DoH idea. In case it’s not top of mind, let me help refresh your memory. Auth-DoH is essentially a safer way to publicly advertise private services. It’s a forward-looking idea to improve DNS security.

Another forward-looking idea is Discovery of Designated Resolvers (DDR).  DDR allows for upgrading from insecure DNS to secure DNS. I am proud to say Cisco Umbrella is the first to implement support of the new IETF protocol. And there’s more. We are extending an open invitation for vendors to test their DDR solution against our production systems and report any issues.

As the pioneers of secure DNS, Cisco Umbrella is once again at the forefront of policy enforcement and interoperability – ultimately making DNS more secure. Don’t just take my word for it, you can test it out yourself in our open interop. After you try it, be sure to tell us what you think.

DDR Interop Details
If your network DHCP settings are configured to provision 146.112.41.5 or 2620:119:fc::5 as the IP address of the DNS Resolvers for your network, the DDR protocol will allow DDR-complaint devices to automatically upgrade from traditional DNS (Do53) to the more secure DNS over HTTPs (DoH) protocol on the same IP address automatically.

If everything works as expected you should see a response from our resolvers that look something like the following:

The new DDR protocol capability allows for two important things to occur. First, the network still acts as a policy enforcement point and secondly DNS is more secure for both the enterprise and end user.

DDR & DoH provide for an end-to-end privacy-preserving secure DNS solution and Cisco is a strong advocate of leveraging Encrypted DNS technologies. In fact, Cisco Umbrella has offered Encrypted DNS capability using the DNSCrypt protocol for more than a decade. With the addition of DDR, DoH can now provide many of the same capabilities found in the Cisco Umbrella DNSCrypt solution.

We have enabled DDR on the following Cisco Umbrella systems for interop testing:

<IPv4>             /  <IPv6>             ·   <domain>_________________ 

146.112.41.2 / 2620:119:fc::2 · doh.opendns.com

146.112.41.3 / 2620:119:fc::3 · doh.familyshield.opendns.com

146.112.41.4 / 2620:119:fc::4 · doh.sandbox.opendns.com

146.112.41.5 / 2620:119:fc::5 · doh.umbrella.com

What’s Next
Please feel free to try one or all the options above and send any feedback to ddr@cisco.com. We look forward to the interop engagement and continued work in IETF in support of Encrypted DNS capabilities at Cisco.

As part of our strategy to enhance application awareness for SecOps practitioners, our new Secure Firewall Application Detectors portal, https://appid.cisco.com, provides the latest and most comprehensive application risk information available in the cybersecurity space. This advance is important because today’s applications are not static.

In fact, applications are continuously evolving as new technologies and services emerge. This dynamic space creates new cybersecurity challenges like continuous changes to application relationships and hierarchies. This unstoppable dynamic creates blind spots that often increases risk.

Secure Firewall users are entitled with their base license to Application Visibility & Control for:

• Network traffic discovery with application-level insight
• Analyzing and report on application usage
• Classify and manage application sessions (including web browsing, multimedia streaming, and peer-to-peer applications)
• Monitor application usages and anomalies
• Build reporting for capacity planning and compliance
• Enforce quality-of-service (QoS) policies and service guarantees for latency-sensitive applications (such as voice over IP [VoIP] and interactive gaming)
• Implement fair-use policies and manage network congestion by optimizing application-level traffic

The unique capabilities available in Secure Firewall Application Detectors provide insight into application protocols such as:

• HTTP and SSH, which represent communications between hosts.
• Clients, like web browsers and email applications, which run on endpoints.
• Web applications, including MPEG video and social media, which comprise content or requested URLs for HTTP traffic.

In addition, you can leverage the relevant application data available within the portal to write and tune effective security policies based on specific application identification fields. For each application listed, the user can find the following details distributed across six fields:

• Application Name
• Description – A brief description of the application.
• Categories – A general classification for the application that describes its most essential function. Example categories include web services provider, e-commerce, ad portal, and social networking.
• Tags – Predefined tags that provide additional information about the application. Example tags include webmail, SSL protocol, file sharing/transfer, and displays ads. An application can have zero, one, or more tags.
• Risk – The likelihood that the application is used for purposes that might be against your organization’s security policy. The risk levels are Very High, High, Medium, Low, and Very Low.
• Business Relevance – The likelihood that the application is used within the context of your organization’s business operations, as opposed to recreationally. The relevance levels are Very High, High, Medium, Low, and Very Low

Furthermore, the new Secure Firewall Application Detectors website offers web application sorting capabilities, providing insight on relationship/hierarchy between applications and an intuitive advanced searching engine using any of these existing fields, or the simplicity and flexibility provided by keyword searching.

The new site is publicly available from any device with internet browsing capabilities, and assists users with rapid identification of web applications as key artifacts leveraged for security operations use cases such as:

• Detection of malicious or abusive use of applications, protocols, ports.
• Ability to research across applications using similar protocols, ports, or behaviors.
• Initial layer for a defense in depth strategy providing protection for web applications (XSS, CSRF, etc) based on network artifacts.
• Securing vulnerable applications whose source codes are not reviewed properly or are unpatched and may leave an open door for communication exploits.
• Applying hot fixes for newly discovered vulnerabilities in applications that are using unexpected communication ports, protocols.

Cisco Secure Firewall Application Visibility and Control is constantly adding application detectors through the Cisco Vulnerability Database (VDB). VDB is a central repository of known vulnerabilities, as well as fingerprints for operating systems, clients, and applications. The Secure Firewall Application Detectors website is powered by VDB and assists users in quickly determining if a particular application increases the risk of compromise.

The accuracy and maintenance of VBD is advanced by the new portal, as users can easily submit new application detector requests and add customized applications into the database, or even dispute the risk categorization of already registered applications. The submission request is easily accessible from the website.

Additional resources:

• Learn more about Cisco Secure
• What is new in Firewall Threat Defense?
• Release Notes
• New Application Detector Request
• About Application Detection

What is the Cisco DNA Expansion Pack?

The Cisco DNA Expansion Pack is a more flexible way to purchase Cisco ISE, Cisco DNA Spaces, Secure Network Analytics (Stealthwatch), ThousandEyes and other licenses, appliances, and services all in one convenient “point and click” ordering menu. Just as you look forward to the latest expansion pack for your favorite video game to help you level up and get the most out of your investment, the Cisco DNA Expansion Pack will enhance your Cisco DNA solutions experience in areas such as SD-Access, Zero Trust solutions, Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA), location analytics, and assurance. You can add the pack to your Cisco DNA software licenses and choose the license count and options that fit your needs.

Why are we replacing Cisco DNA Premier?

Cisco DNA Premier was the lead offer since we launched our Cisco DNA subscriptions, but it had some limitations, specifically limited availability of license options and quantities. The new offer includes all license options and quantities, as well as physical or virtual appliances and quick start services so you can build the complete solution. Moreover, the licenses include a volume-based pricing mechanism whereas the more units you buy, the cheaper the price per unit. A unit, in this case, could be an endpoint session, such as in the case for Cisco ISE, or flow, such as in the case for Secure Network Analytics.

What are the benefits?

As mentioned above, the Cisco DNA Expansion Pack provides a way for you to conveniently buy what you need for a full Cisco DNA solution. In addition to the security licenses, you can also purchase Cisco DNA Spaces for location analytics and ThousandEyes for network visibility. All of these licenses would

co-term. You can add this expansion pack to your Cisco DNA Advantage or Essentials licenses, but you do not need Cisco DNA licenses to purchase the pack.

Furthermore, If you choose to move to an Enterprise Agreement, your investment would be protected.

For more details, contact a Cisco sales or Cisco registered partner.

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Cisco Meraki is a complete cloud-managed networking solution that integrates hardware, software, and cloud services. Besides its products, another distinct aspect of the Meraki business unit is that its employees are deeply engaged in community impact and volunteerism.

Charlie Gebhardt is a program manager who guides business transformations for Cisco Meraki. I recently sat down with him to learn more about his inspiration to support communities, his involvement with the Meraki Gives leadership team, and how the Meraki team is using technology for good.

Can you tell us more about your job responsibilities at Cisco?

 Charlie: I am a program manager who helps to guide business transformations for the Cisco Meraki business unit. That means I help our employees to be ready, willing, and able to embrace change. There are specific ways that those changes manifest, such as a new platform or tool that we’re using or a policy change. I work on projects that require a higher level of behavior change. For example, helping people understand how they will benefit from the change, and giving them the tools and support they need to make the transition as seamlessly and painlessly as possible.

Can you tell me more about your life before Cisco and your volunteer and nonprofit experience? 

Charlie: Volunteerism is something I’ve been passionate about from an early age, and I actively volunteered in high school. But I think my giving back experience really started when it came to serving in the Peace Corps. I was inspired to join because my brother modeled giving back by also serving in Thailand.

As part of that experience, I lived in a rural village in Botswana for a little over two years. In particular, I loved lifting people up by giving them the confidence and resources to create positive change. The biggest project that I worked on during my time in the Peace Corps was a grant that we got through the U.S. embassy to build a preschool center. It was an incredibly enriching experience, and I learned a lot.

When I finished my service and returned to the Bay Area, I worked for a nonprofit for about a year in a fundraising department, which was a good way to see what it was like to support communities in a domestic context. Still, I wanted to continue growing my professional skill sets for an organization with well-defined strategic goals while impacting communities in a positive way. I feel like I got that when I joined Cisco Meraki in 2018. I have all these opportunities to improve my community while working at a job where I feel like my professional skills are growing exponentially. I’m always being stretched a little bit beyond my comfort zone and I love that.

An essential part of Cisco’s CSR efforts is to use “technology for good.” How can Cisco technology, like Meraki, be used to help others?

Charlie: 826 Valencia is a nonprofit organization in San Francisco dedicated to helping children and young adults develop writing skills. Cisco Meraki gave a product donation that enables them fully manage their network. Our technical support department was able to give them the expertise and thought partnership they needed to be able to deploy their network. Unfortunately, they had been experiencing some break-ins at their site. As a result of our donation, they gained the security they needed through our Meraki Vision cameras. These are security cameras they can rely on, and they can manage them through a platform that they’re already familiar with and that they use every day. Our donation was able to bring them secure internet access, a secure local area network, and video security to help keep them physically safe.

Can you tell me more about the Meraki Gives leadership team?

Charlie: The Meraki Gives leadership team looks at what our employee base is passionate about and creates activities to encourage them to take action.

My responsibilities include building partnerships across Cisco to support our volunteering and donating efforts, driving data and reporting on these activities, and supporting giving back events as needed.

These efforts include organizing, structuring, and encouraging employees to participate in volunteering experiences, whether virtual or in-person pre-COVID. We also encourage people to donate to organizations that they’re passionate about.

We also create flashpoint opportunities for people to get more excited about donating. One of our most successful events this past fiscal year was a large trivia contest where people had to donate to participate, then were encouraged to donate throughout the experience. We raised enough money through that event to donate 20,000 meals to local food banks in San Francisco and Chicago.

What other community impact efforts are you part of at Cisco

Charlie: I am a volunteer with the Cisco Community Impact Grant Program, through which I am an “employee champion” for 826 Valencia. I grew up in the Bay Area, and part of my passion for giving back started when I participated in 826 Valencia as a student from middle school to high school. So, I transitioned from being a beneficiary to being a volunteer throughout college, and then to being more involved as a champion for them as a Cisco employee. I got to experience the benefit directly, and now I get to enable this for others. As an employee champion, I helped them get their product donations and helped them with the process of identifying technologies that would be valuable for their programmatic work.

I also sit on the Cisco Foundation Employee Advisory Committee (EAC), which includes a rotating group of early to mid-career Cisco employees who help inform the Foundation’s strategy and policies to create an inclusive future for all.

Cisco UCS X-Series was designed to be modular, expandable, and blur the lines between the efficiencies of blade servers (cable reduction and power & cooling) and the expandability of rack servers (storage & PCIe). It all starts with the Cisco UCS X210c Compute Node.

The Brains

The Cisco UCS X210c M6 Compute Node is based on 3^rd Gen Intel^® Xeon^® Scalable processors. With 8 to 40 powerful cores and a wide range of frequency, feature, and power levels it is the only data center CPU with built in AI acceleration, these processors are ready for the most demanding workloads. A full chassis of X210c M6 servers can have 600+ cores.

Memory

Supporting 32 DDR4, 3200 MHz DIMMs (16 per socket) provides a huge memory footprint. With standard memory, the X210c M6 supports up to 8TB. When paired with Intel Optane Persistent Memory 200 Series modules, the server supports up to 12TB of memory. In the past, applications like in memory databases that required a large amount of memory were run on 4-socket servers. Now many of those applications can run on 2-socket servers like the UCS X210c with its larger memory footprint. A full chassis of X210c M6 servers can have 96TB of memory.

Local Storage

With up to six NVMe/SAS/SATA hot-plug drives and capacities of up to 15.3TB, the X210c can meet many of the storage needs that previously required a 1RU rack server. Additionally, two M.2 boot drives, with optional RAID, can be used for the hypervisor or OS. Soon, the capacity will be expanded with 30TB drives offering more than 1PB of storage in a single chassis.

Cisco 14000 Series VICs (Virtual Interface Cards)

More than a NIC, VICs have always been the secret sauce for UCS servers. They provide the Unified Fabric (Ethernet for data, FCoE for storage, and management) connectivity for all modular servers and UCS C-Series rack servers.

The UCS VIC 14425 mLOM provides up to 50Gbps of bandwidth per IFM (Cisco UCS 9108 25G Intelligent Fabric Module; our next blog!). With two IFMs per chassis, that is 100G of bandwidth per server. If that’s not enough, add the VIC 14825 mezzanine adapter for up to 200 Gbps per blade. The VIC 14825 will also provide PCIe connectivity to future UCS X-Fabric modules.

What does this mean for your applications? If it needs maximum bandwidth, a single virtual NIC (vNIC) can be allocated 25Gpbs. And you can have more than one! If the application is more balanced and needs access to Fibre Channel storage (think FlexPod or FlashStack) you can have multiple vNICs & vHBAs allocating that 200Gbps to ensure all the traffic gets the resources it needs.

What’s Next

Come back next week as we discuss the Unified Fabric and the IFM. Can’t wait until then, check out the links in the blog for more information on X-Series.

Resources:

• At-a-Glance – UCS X210c M6 Compute Node
• Data Sheet – UCS X210c M6 Compute Node
• Spec Sheet – UCS X210c M6 Compute Node
• Solution Overview – Cisco Unified Computing System
• Web page – Cisco UCS X-Series Modular System
• Series Blog #1 – UCS X-Series Unbox the future today
• Series Blog #2 – The power of innovation – Cisco UCS X9508 Chassis

We are excited to announce that Gartner has again recognized Cisco as a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure. Cisco SD-WAN solutions enable customers to deliver a secure, predictable digital experience for today’s hybrid workforce, build dynamic, smart workspaces, and secure multi-cloud environments, accelerating the transition to a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)-enabled architecture.

The workloads placed on today’s networks are more dynamic and distributed than ever before, and the requirement to support these radical new use cases are most acutely felt in the WAN. IT must provide connectivity to a new class of hybrid users, mission-critical cloud applications, and a vast array of connected devices, while also ensuring an optimal experience for every interaction. These bridges between internally hosted, IaaS-hosted, and SaaS applications require end-to-end security and governance to protect enterprise data across sites. And as more application traffic migrates outside corporate borders, these teams need better solutions for visibility and automated troubleshooting across the digital experience. And this trend towards distributed complexity is only accelerating.

Cisco SD-WAN: Seamless, Secure and Optimized

To provide our customers with a trusted platform and technology leadership, Cisco SD-WAN offers capabilities that go beyond the traditional software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN). From enabling multicloud access, to securing infrastructure against the latest threats, to delivering optimized insights, in our opinion Cisco is the expert who can best help businesses deliver exceptional network experiences, across locations.

Cisco SD-WAN enables us to securely leverage AWS as a worldwide transit network. The time to connect can be very fast … reduced to the time to send the router to the remote site, which is less than a week.” – Adrien Geniller, Lead Network Architect, ENGIE

Seamless Multicloud Access:  To start, Cisco SD-WAN provides the industry’s leading multicloud integrations, delivering unified policy across all major clouds, an optimal experience for SaaS applications, and automated, cloud-agnostic branch connectivity with cloud interconnect. Our extensive cloud integrations with providers like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Megaport, and Equinix enable customers to automate seamless connectivity to any site-to-cloud, site-to-application, and site-to-site configuration with flexibility, security, and scale.

Security your way: Next, Cisco SD-WAN solutions provide integrated security and network policy controls for on-premises and cloud-native SASE environments integrated with cloud-delivered Cisco Umbrella®, to protect against security blind spots and cyberthreats. These solutions leverage Cisco Talos, Ò the industry’s-leading visibility, actionable intelligence, and vulnerability research group that drives rapid threat detection and protection for Cisco customers. Across our Viptela and Meraki SD-WAN portfolio, we help customers secure their cloud edge and support flexible, high-performance and consistent policy management across on-premises or cloud-managed solutions.

Optimized with Insights: Finally, the integration of Cisco ThousandEyes with Cisco SD-WAN delivers enhanced visibility that goes beyond the traditional network boundaries into the Internet, cloud, and SaaS.  ThousandEyes enables customers to quickly pinpoint the root cause of network issues, correlate app behavior with underlying network performance, and translate real-time data into actionable insights that matter.

Cisco SD-WAN: The cornerstone of SASE

“Cisco SD-WAN Security delivers simplicity and automation so that we can apply the right security controls where needed, when needed. We are excited to bolster that solution with the Catalyst 8000 Edge Platform solution.” – Joachim Sinzig, Dir Product Management , Riedel Networks

At Cisco, we are uniquely positioned to help customers by providing solutions that include the consolidation, ease of deployment, and management that you need to scale your business and provide effective security for users anywhere they choose to work – without a degradation in speed, performance, or user experience. As SASE architecture evolves, each organization will travel their own unique journey when implementing SASE. For many organizations, their journey towards a SASE (Secure Access Services Edge) strategy starts with Cisco SD-WAN. While the success of a SASE implementation rides on multiple factors, from architecture, performance, and experience requirements, the fastest path to an effective SASE implementation are unlocked by working with a single vendor who can bring together best-in-class networking, security, and observability—while offering the flexibility and investment protection to transition to the cloud at your pace. Cisco provides all the building blocks of a SASE architecture today, brought together in a single offer.

Cisco is proud to be named a 2021 Magic Quadrant Leader for WAN Edge Infrastructure by Gartner. We are delivering our vision to combine our best-in-class networking, security, and observability capabilities to deliver seamless, secure access to any application, over any network, anywhere users work.

• Gartner, Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure, Jonathan Forest, Naresh Singh, Andrew Lerner, Evan Zeng, 20 September 2021
• Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved
• Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
• This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Cisco.

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As each day passes, wireless security becomes even more critical to the day-to-day operations of organizations. Several factors contribute to the growing need for reliable security. With the introduction of Wi-Fi 6, many organizations are shifting from a primarily wired infrastructure to one that focuses on worker mobility through wireless connectivity. While the CAPEX and OPEX savings are compelling, increasing wireless traffic provides a larger attack surface – and greater opportunity – for hackers.

The Challenges of Wireless Security

As might be expected, there has been a significant increase in the number and complexity of cyberattacks. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks alone are up 33% from last year, with a 37% increase in attack bandwidth.

One of the challenging aspects of wireless security is that communications can be captured passively. For example, when a client connects to an access point utilizing WPA, there is a 4-way handshake that takes place. Because the handshake occurs wirelessly, an attacker can passively listen in and capture this handshake. Due to the nature of wireless communications, there is no way to detect or prevent passive capture.

The next stage for the attacker is to use offline resources to attempt to brute force or wordlist attack the handshake to determine the passphrase. The attacker can then use this passphrase to de-authenticate the original client and connect with the access point in its place.

Advanced Security for Advanced Threats

Cisco’s Advanced Wireless Intrusion Prevention System (aWIPS) and Rogue Management is a fully infrastructure-integrated solution that constantly monitors radio spectrum to detect, analyze, and thwart attacks. By incorporating signature-based techniques, traffic analysis, and anomaly detection, the aWIPS and Rogue Management solution is able to provide an intuitive Wi-Fi threat detection and prevention system designed to solve the critical security needs of modern networks. Together, Cisco’s aWIPS and Rogue Management provides security against a plethora of attacks like DoS attacks, management frame attacks, tool-based attacks, and more (see Figure 1).

While it is not possible to detect or prevent the passive capture of a handshake, the system is able to detect when an attacker tries to use a passphrase to de-authenticate an already connected client. At this point, aWIPS identifies the de-authentication attack and creates an alert so IT and the network can take action. For example, the Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could apply policies for downgrading the trust score of the device launching the de-authentication attack to prevent access to the network and minimize its impact on operations.

Independent PEN Testing and Certification by Synopsys

The wireless team at Cisco has extensive experience understanding, identifying, and preventing wireless attacks. Our security solutions are tested to the latest threat standards. However, we have not relied solely on our own internal testing to verify that aWIPS and Rogue Management provide best-in-class wireless security.

Recently we engaged Synopsys to perform a wireless network penetration test to assess the functionality of aWIPS and Rogue Management. The test system consisted of Cisco C9130 and Cisco C9120 access points connected to a Cisco Catalyst 9800 Wireless LAN controller.

Synopsys assessed how the aWIPS and Rogue Management system identified common attack vectors over a three-week period. The test used a timeboxed approach of passive reconnaissance, active exploitation, and targeted manual penetration. The test assessed how the Rogue and aWIPS systems identified a wide range of attacks, including:

• WPA2/WPA3 attacks
• De-authentication attacks
• AP spoofing attacks
• Authentication attacks

Among its findings, Synopsys verified that Cisco’s Rogue Management was successful at preventing other access points from operating in the vicinity of the access points under test. This was achieved reliably by sending de-auth packets to the other access points’ clients and effectively preventing multiple access points and multiple clients from communicating simultaneously.

Synopsys also showed that Cisco’s aWIPS technology triggered an alert whenever a de-auth packet was sent against an aWIPS-enabled access point by another station (i.e., an unauthenticated client). Again, the passive nature of these attacks makes it impossible to prevent them. However, aWIPS successfully identified attacks so that risks to the network would not pass unnoticed.

Securing the Future

The shift to an increasingly mobile workforce continues to increase the complexity – and the necessity – of keeping the network secure. To keep peace of mind now and into the future, organizations need a security solution they have confidence in.

Learn more about how Cisco’s aWIPS and Rogue Management solution can protect Wi-Fi and wireless security for your organization. For a comprehensive demo, reach out to your Cisco sales representative.

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Today is an exciting day, as our partner Qwilt, just announced Cisco’s investment in the company.

Two years ago, Cisco and Qwilt set forth on a journey to jointly solve a growing pain point all Communication Service Providers (CSP) have: delivering ever-increasing volumes of media and web content without overwhelming their networks. Using a modern, global content delivery platform with cache nodes inside the carrier network, we are now in a position to cost-effectively deliver an unprecedented level of quality at scale, in partnership with select carriers across the world. Our CAPEX-free model combined with a direct revenue share allows CSPs to maximize operational efficiency with very little business or financial risk while participating more actively in the content delivery value chain.

Following our early success and growing momentum with both CSPs and Content Providers (CP), we are now at an inflection point in our joint ambition. Today’s announcement of Cisco’s investment in Qwilt will help accelerate our joint go-to-market and the ongoing development of our content delivery solution based on Qwilt’s innovative Open Caching technology and Cisco’s Edge Compute infrastructure.

This investment shows our commitment and trust in the potential of the partnership, and we are very excited about our future together. Content delivery, as the first carrier edge application, has already proven its inherent benefits; it is also a critical foundation to implementing a broader set of edge use cases that will positively impact businesses across many industry verticals – creating ample revenue-generating opportunities for CSPs. More importantly, Qwilt’s expertise in content delivery, together with Cisco’s edge computing knowledge and unrivaled expertise in service provider infrastructure, will help CSPs maximize these opportunities.  These are indeed exciting times, and we look forward to serving and meeting the needs of our customers.

If you have any questions about the announcement or our solution, please free feel to reach out to us by contacting your local Cisco account team.

IT Professionals Day is a day to celebrate us ─ the fixers, the doers, the behind-the-scenes operators who ensure all networks and systems operate flawlessly! Each year on the third Tuesday of September, IT professionals around the globe should take time to pat ourselves on the back and recognize the hard (and often thankless) work we do each day to connect, secure, and automate the world around us! It’s only fitting that today is the day we post our VERY FIRST Cisco Learning blog post ─ dedicated to each of you!

Thriving in a new, hybrid work world

If there’s ever a time to celebrate the IT industry, it’s now. The new hybrid work world required us to pivot, adapt and rise to the occasion when the world needed us most! Information technology experts like you have been critical factors to so many hospitals, transportation platforms, personal protective equipment manufacturers, government officials, pharmacies and families who depend on our secure networks each day. It would be impossible for me to itemize all the ways the IT industry has impacted this new hybrid world, but I know I am proud to be here. I’m proud to be part of the generation that transformed the IT industry into the innovative powerhouse it is today. Information Technology is home to the brightest minds, dreamers and status-quo disrupters, and I’m so excited for the future of IT!

In the spirit of celebrating, I hope you’re able to take time today to celebrate your victories, invest in your future and sign up to win our IT Professional Day Giveaway drawing for a free Cisco certification exam voucher! We know you’re a rock star with a superhuman technology skillset, but I’d love to tell you about Cisco certifications and how they can put you on the fast track to success.

IT skills that scale and streamline infrastructure

Today’s need for automation and technical skills has never been more critical to an organization’s success. It is no secret that companies are scaling and streamlining their infrastructure, which requires you ─ the technology wizards of the world ─ to stay competitive and sharpen your skills.

According to IT managers and professionals in a worldwide survey by the DevOps Institute — Upskilling: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report, 2021 — 72 percent said automation is a must-have skill, and 65 percent said technical skills are critical.

Understanding fully automated networks is part of a gradual process that requires you to learn and develop new skills. Cisco courses, like Programming for Network Engineers, can provide you with the tools to create automated solutions for your networking environment using Python. Being Cisco certified is the best way to set yourself apart and show hiring managers that you’re the bee’s knees.

Want to become Cisco certified or continue your learning journey? Enter the IT Professionals Day Giveaway drawing for a free Cisco certification exam voucher!

Today is about celebrating ourselves and this amazing industry. Invest in yourself. Invest in your future. Join the thousands of Cisco certified professionals that have made lifelong learning a top priority!

Cheers to us!

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Use #ITProDay to celebrate with the Cisco learning community!