DUE to the Covid-19 pandemic, remote and hybrid working as well as the use of video conferencing platforms had grown explosively, leading to huge concerns over cybersecurity and online malware attacks.
“This brings a lot of challenges to many IT (information technology) administrators who struggle with trying to prioritise online traffic or the right quality-of-service policies.
“A lot of businesses also use many disparate security software,” said Derrick Low, Meraki product specialist from Cisco Systems Malaysia, during a recent webinar.
For the past year and more, the transition to hybrid work has forcibly accelerated and has brought into sharp focus the challenges organisations face around how to seamlessly transition while maintaining consistent connectivity, security, performance and visibility.
“Organisations want a solution which will keep things simple, has the best in-class integrated security and they want to utilise the world’s most trusted SD-WAN (software-defined wide-area network) provider out there,” he noted.
According to the IDC 2020 Global DNS Threat Report, Malaysia recorded the third highest phishing rate in Asia at 43%.
Of the 58 cases of ransomware reported to CyberSecurity Malaysia as of August this year, 30 involved companies and organisations.
According to the Cisco Future of Work study, 88% of workers in Asia Pacific, Japan, and Greater China are favouring a hybrid blend of office-based and remote work.
This means organisations are putting themselves at risk with their users accessing work applications from multiple locations – and the apps they are accessing are just as distributed and dynamic.
Low explained that Cisco approach to SASE (secure access service edge) combines leading network and security functionality in a single, cloud-native service to help secure access wherever users are located (the office, home, coffee shop, etc).
The approach can be described as Connect (seamless connection to apps from anywhere), Control (simplify security, streamline policies, and increase protection), and Converge (unite security and networking for multicloud demands).
“This is the way to go – where you will be able to reduce your operating costs and also empower your staff to do more things. We want to build the simplest network platform as much as possible, so that you can have the right driving seat to make your organisational dreams come true,” he said.
Low likened Cisco consolidated SASE story to making a meal of delicious instant noodles with the right ingredients.
“With our umbrella of solutions, we provide a single cloud-first platform to ensure that when your users are trying to connect, they will get the best user experience and stay secure, no matter where they are connecting from,” he said.
Low also pointed out that SASE is crucial for global enterprises which need singular visibility and smooth performance for online sites that run across multiple countries and regions.
“We have one of the industry’s simplest VPN (virtual private network), to make your life a lot easier,” he said.
Digital business transformation is moving security to the cloud, which drives a need for converged services to reduce complexity, improve speed and agility, and secure the new distributed network architecture.
The SASE model consolidates numerous networking and security functions – traditionally delivered in siloed point solutions – in a single, integrated offering.
Low explained that organisations would be better served by Cisco umbrella of solutions, compared with using a variety of solutions from different vendors.
Most IT organisations run an infrastructure made up of multiple vendors’ technologies.
With each added vendor, an IT team’s maintenance, management, and security workload increases.
Multi-vendor environments are inevitably siloed with often-complex integrations that yield limited visibility at best.
Low also spoke about the Cisco Talos Intelligence Group, which is one of the largest commercial threat intelligence teams in the world.
“We want to block users from assessing dangerous websites, and we have data on unsafe websites. When you put two and two together, with our umbrella of solutions, together with Meraki SD-WAN, to complete the success story, this brings the best in-class solution,” he said.
Low added that Cisco umbrella platform helps organisations to safeguard their data, as it can prevent users from accessing websites known to have malware, as well as provide visibility into usage of applications that are not business related.
Low said Cisco Meraki can provide high user quality-of-service as it is a unique end-to-end platform.
“We can ensure the best possible experience as we monitor the application performance across the internet. It is because we have a unique end-to-end platform, and the visibility that comes with it, regardless of how end-users connect via mobile devices,” he said.
“Powered from the Meraki platform, everything (network and security stacks) will work in harmony,” he added.
Low explained that users can set policies to prioritise certain applications, over other less crucial applications that might take up a lot of bandwidth and cause slowdown within the network.
“To ensure the best quality of experience, users can choose to prioritise applications such as productivity software, database and cloud services, or VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) or video conferencing tools”.
Meraki technologies are the backbone of any IT experience.
All stemming from the Meraki Platform and the technologies include next-gen access including Wi-Fi, switching and mobile device management, SASE including SD-WAN and cellular gateways, IoT (Internet of things) including cameras and sensors, and machine-learning.
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Low spoke at the “Be “Sassy” & Enable Secure Access Everywhere” webinar on Nov 16, organised by Star Media Group in partnership with Cisco.
Catch the replay of the webinar at bit.ly/cisco16nov-fb