There has been an exponential increase in breaches within enterprises despite the carefully constructed and controlled perimeters that exist around applications and data. Once an attacker can access… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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There has been an exponential increase in breaches within enterprises despite the carefully constructed and controlled perimeters that exist around applications and data. Once an attacker can access the network, it becomes an “all you can eat” buffet as they move laterally around the environment, taking control, and either exfiltrating sensitive data, or locking it up with ransomware. Enterprises traditionally use two approaches to mitigate these risks: implementing intrusion detection solutions and defining micro-perimeters around their applications and data.

Cisco Secure Workload allows enterprise customers to proactively microsegment their applications in an infrastructure, location, and form factor agnostic manner. This helps to ensure that workloads communicate with only the necessary services and can significantly reduce the blast radius. Cisco Secure Workload uses the Agent software installed on application workload instances to capture telemetry, apply machine learning to determine microsegment/zero trust policies for applications and enforce these policies by programming the OS-specific firewalling layer.

Nvidia Bluefield family of Data Processing Units (DPUs), are leaders in the smart Network Interface Card (NIC) market, are hugely popular with server vendors and cloud service providers (CSPs). As customers are clamoring to offload necessary support functions such as data transfer, optimization, security, and analytics to the DPU, making the workload resources exclusively available to run their business application.

Last month, Cisco and Nvidia announced a partnership uniting their expertise to create an infrastructure powered by artificial intelligence. The goal of this collaboration is to equip enterprises with the necessary technology and know-how to effectively construct, implement, oversee, and safeguard AI solutions at scale.

With Cisco Secure Workload 3.9, we introduced the Nvidia Bluefield DPU integration which allows the offloading of Secure Workload Agent functionality from hosts to Nvidia Bluefield DPUs. The purpose of this integration was to enhance application performance, scalability, and administrator productivity. The agent deployed on the DPUs gathers the flow telemetry and enforces the policy on the DPU to achieve microsegmentation.

Under the hood, the control plane logic of the Cisco Secure Workload agent operates on the ARMv8+ CPUs. Essential telemetry, including connection tracking and the allowed/denied packet, is gathered seamlessly via the ASAP2 framework directly from the eSwitch hardware module, with minimal impact on latency and throughput. Subsequently, the agent exports summarized telemetry to the Cisco Secure Workload for thorough processing. Cisco Secure Workload then uses unsupervised machine learning algorithms to discern allow-list policies, which are rigorously analyzed against live traffic to assess their impact before deployment to the production environment. These analyzed policies are then transmitted to the agent for enforcement. Leveraging the Nvidia-provided OVS API layer, the agent programs policies into OpenFlow rules on the eSwitch, enabling hardware-accelerated traffic firewalling. This architectural design prioritizes minimal software intervention during telemetry capture and policy enforcement to avoid overwhelming the DPU’s embedded CPU.

Cisco Secure Workload and Nvidia teams are jointly exploring new capabilities and opportunities, including bolstering Cisco Secure Workload agent support for Nvidia Bluefield DPU-enabled smart switches, enhancing DPU agent capabilities to facilitate host-to-host data-in-motion encryption, and joint go-to-market with the leading CSPs offering DPU/SmartNIC as a part of their IaaS offerings.

With the support for Nvidia Bluefield family of DPUs, Cisco Secure Workload customers can now seamlessly deploy agentless microsegmentation with equivalent effectiveness to agent-based solutions across their virtualized, containerized, and bare metal hosts spanning multicloud environments. Cisco Secure Workload – Nvidia DPU integration fosters a flexible deployment approach which reduces organizational barriers, greatly enhances practitioner experiences, and accelerates the time to value. Cisco Secure Workload tackles the complexities of safeguarding legacy and ephemeral application landscapes through comprehensive visibility, precise control, and automated policy enforcement. It empowers enterprises to safeguard vital assets against advanced threats, reduce susceptibility to attacks, and ensure adherence to regulatory standards, while optimizing operational productivity.

Reserve your spot today to experience an interactive, hands-on Secure Workload virtual Test Drive.

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"}]]  Discover the powerful partnership between Cisco and Nvidia, offering an AI-driven enterprise security solution with Cisco Secure Workload 3.9 and Nvidia Bluefield DPUs. Learn how machine learning and microsegmentation can protect your network and data.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Your Managed Services opportunity with Cisco is exploding, with a total addressable market of $161 Billion by 2027. Within that, the SMB segment is growing 1.6 times faster than other segments.… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Your Managed Services opportunity with Cisco is exploding, with a total addressable market of $161 Billion by 2027. Within that, the SMB segment is growing 1.6 times faster than other segments. However, you may not realize how quickly and easily we can help you capture more of this market. Here’s how the Cisco Partner Program and incentives help:

Differentiate yourself from your competition by earning more Cisco Powered Services Specializations and pave your way to Gold-level advantages.
Use your market development funds for business development, demand generation, funding headcount, and internal training.
Leverage ready-made marketing kits and templates and get access to experts to help you grow your business.
Earn greater pricing incentives and discounts that help you reach your revenue goals faster. Cisco continuously updates and adds marketing resources, so you can maximize your earning potential as your sales grow.

Growth drivers

Customers want speed and flexibility when achieving their targeted business outcomes, and with managed services as part of your value proposition, you can deliver both. Organizations across all industries face a common set of business challenges: lean IT staffs in complex IT environments, IT skills gaps, and a lack of resources needed to manage, optimize, and automate their networks. On top of that, security issues can arise when policies do not encompass both on-prem and cloud environments. Often, traditional on-prem consumption models do not align with cloud solutions and marketplaces. As a managed service provider, you can close these gaps, address your customer’s business challenges, and help them achieve their goals.

Greater Together

By working together closely and partnering to create unrivaled value for customers around their needs, we can capture more managed services opportunities. Building on Cisco’s industry-leading platforms and technologies like Cisco Powered Services, you can create and deliver your own innovations that help customers accomplish their specific business outcomes. We can achieve more innovation faster than ever across platforms, networking, security, collaboration, and optimized applications. Together we have a unique advantage, the ability to serve customers of every size and industry segment solving their biggest technology challenges.

Create marketplace differentiation with Cisco

With Cisco Powered Services specializations, you can elevate your organization above your competition. These recognized technology credentials help you build greater demand for your services and win new customers. They showcase your ability to build, provision, manage, and support managed services using industry-leading Cisco technologies that deliver the business outcomes your customers need. Grow your organization’s skills efficiently by building repeatable and scalable managed services. In addition, Cisco Powered Services give you:

Proven blueprints: Validate your competency in areas including Power Hybrid Work, Secure the Enterprise, Transform Infrastructure, and Reimagine Applications.
Quicker path to advancement: Meet specialization training requirements with up to 40 percent cost reductions. Role-share using CCIEs and CCNPs helps you meet Provider-level requirements faster.
Showcase capabilities: Once you achieve these specializations, you gain access to industry-recognized logos and exclusive go-to-market resources to build successful solutions and services for Managed SD-WAN, Meraki, SASE, FSO, and many more.
Sales acceleration: Expand your Cisco Powered Services portfolio and earn greater rewards within the Provider role, including exclusive upfront discounts and market development funds.

New resources available

You don’t need a large marketing team to reach current and potential customers. Cisco provides a variety of marketing materials and creative assets to help you highlight your unique capabilities. These ready-made materials will help you build targeted campaigns quicker and reach your customers faster. Newly added assets within Marketing Velocity Learning include a video and a companion guide with step-by-step guidance to help you grow your managed services business more quickly.

Showcase your managed service expertise!

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"}]]  Cisco Provider Partners can more quickly capture the explosive growth in Managed Services by differentiating themselves from their competition and using GTM materials from Cisco. Earning technology specializations showcases partners’ skills on our industry-leading platforms.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is a critical component to increase productivity and reduce risk in today’s hyper-distributed environments. Cisco Secure Access provides a modern form of zero trust a… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is a critical component to increase productivity and reduce risk in today’s hyper-distributed environments. Cisco Secure Access provides a modern form of zero trust access that utilizes a new architecture to deliver a unique level of security and user convenience.  

We’re proud to announce that our innovative security service edge (SSE) solution, Cisco Secure Access, has been named an Overall Leader in the KuppingerCole Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) Leadership Compass. The report highlights Cisco as a leader in all four of the evaluation categories: overall, product, innovation, and market leadership. 

Why is ZTNA so important? 

Security leaders play a critical role in empowering organizations to connect and protect teams from anywhere, without compromising on security or convenience. ZTNA uses least privilege principles, contextual insights, and client or clientless-based methods to deny access by default and only allows access to apps or resources as appropriate.   

“Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is becoming increasingly essential as organizations adapt to remote work, cloud adoption, and the growing sophistication of cyber threats. Unlike traditional perimeter-based security models, ZTNA treats every user, application, or resource as untrusted and enforces strict security, access control, and comprehensive auditing to ensure visibility and accountability of all user activities.”-Alejandro Leal, KuppingerCole 

Zero trust stands at the forefront of cybersecurity strategies, particularly as organizations navigate the complexities of remote work and increased cloud adoption. Cisco Secure Access offers a security service edge solution that embodies agility, connectivity, intelligence, and strength. 

What sets Cisco Secure Access apart? 

Recognizing the shift towards distributed and hybrid work models, Cisco Secure Access is engineered to modernize cybersecurity strategies, enabling organizations to implement zero trust with zero friction. It’s forward-looking security architecture that stands resilient against evolving threats.  

“Cisco Secure Access is a compelling case for workforce access, remote work, and hybrid scenarios. It stands out as a leading solution in the realm of Zero Trust for workforce security. Overall, Cisco can deliver remote access security in on-premises, hybrid, and cloud formats. ZTNA capabilities are also available in Cisco Secure Connect, their unified SASE solution which provides the combination of both security and networking functionality.”-Alejandro Leal, KuppingerCole 

KuppingerCole’s identity and security analysts have acknowledged the transformative power of Cisco Secure Access, highlighting its comprehensive approach to ZTNA. But Cisco Secure Access is a holistic solution that includes industry-leading ZTNA capabilities and much more, including:  

Security convergence in the cloud: Get core SSE capabilities, including ZTNA, secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), and firewall as-a-service (FWaaS) along with multimode data loss protection (DLP), VPN as a service, DNS security, remote browser isolation (RBI), experience insights (DEM) and sandboxing, all delivered from one dashboard and client.  
Defense for users and resources from malware: Secure web gateway inspects web traffic, including encrypted, for protection. Files are scanned, known malicious content is blocked, and unknown files are sandboxed and analyzed. Controls can block specific activities and destinations that violate policy.  
Insights that expose shadow IT and protect sensitive data: CASB functionality discovers and controls SaaS cloud apps in use, including generative AI, and reports reputation, compliance, and risk scores. DLP protects against data exfiltration, and cloud malware detection removes infected files.  
Traffic monitoring and inspection: Firewall as a service with IPS examines non-web traffic at layers 3–7 and blocks threats. The DLP module identifies and blocks inappropriate ChatGPT prompts and replies. Experience insights (DEM) tracks the performance of endpoints, networks, and core SaaS apps for faster issue detection and remediation. 
Talos threat intelligence: Cisco Talos, a leading provider of cutting-edge security research globally, analyses 100s of billions of DNS requests and other telemetry data daily. It continuously runs AI, statistical, and machine learning models against this massive database to provide insight into cyber threats and improve time-to-detection. This helps security practitioners uncover malicious domains, IPs, and URLs before they’re used in attacks and prioritize incident investigations. 

Find out more about the leading edge of ZTNA 

With Cisco Secure Access, the future of cybersecurity is already here. Join us on this journey and discover how Cisco Secure Access is not just responding to the call for simpler, stronger cybersecurity—it’s answering with a definitive, authoritative voice that resonates across the industry. 

The KuppingerCole ZTNA Leadership Compass report can equip decision-makers with a deeper understanding of how ZTNA and Cisco Secure Access can amplify their security posture, reduce risk against sophisticated threats, and shape a robust security strategy for a distributed workforce.  

Download the report and see firsthand how Cisco Secure Access is redefining the ZTNA landscape with unmatched capabilities that safeguard your organization’s digital future.  

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

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This post was authored by Inês Lille, a Project Specialist Intern on the Project Support Office EMEA Team.

When I started interviewing for Cisco, I was overwhelmed. Since I was a teenager, I dreamed … Read more on Cisco Blogs

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This post was authored by Inês Lille, a Project Specialist Intern on the Project Support Office EMEA Team.

When I started interviewing for Cisco, I was overwhelmed. Since I was a teenager, I dreamed of joining the company, so I put a lot of pressure on myself to land this role. I didn’t believe I was the number one candidate for a project management internship, as I was a telecommunications bachelor graduate and was studying computer science. I felt like an impostor among people with business and management degrees whose skills and educational background fit the role description.

However, I took a leap and went for it.

I knew I had enjoyed an optional university course — Introductory Project Management — and did not want to pursue a highly technical professional journey. I was overjoyed when I got the news that I got the role! It was a dream come true. And you might be asking yourself, “Why was Cisco your dream, even as a teenager?”

Well, I have seen firsthand how my mom’s feelings and perspective on her work changed before and after landing a role at Cisco. I learned about all the amazing feats Cisco has accomplished and the culture and values it so avidly fosters. I got to see my mom in the middle of workdays as she could work at home. I volunteered alongside her and learned how Cisco matches each hour spent with a $10 donation to the cause. I even stole some Cisco goodies from her and have worn “my” Cisco cap basically every single day of the summer.

Of course, the reality of achieving something you’ve longed for is always different. When I first started this internship, I went through the onboarding journey with an amazing facilitator. I had a lot of fun and met so many incredible people. Then, I had a week reviewing Cisco technical architectures, along with another week of soft skills training. I felt ready to take on anything!

I started working on small tasks, found a mentor, attended meetings shadowing my colleagues, and realized that I understood 10%, maybe 15%, of what was said during those meetings. That’s when I started to truly grasp how big Cisco really is.

I began writing down every single piece of information I heard, even if I did not understand it. I used CTRL+U to quickly underline the words for technologies or acronyms I wasn’t sure were right, and later searched for everything that I could not understand on our incredible SharePoint knowledge database and tidied up the notes to make them legible. If I still needed to understand something, I would ask someone. My team is mostly made up of interns with less than a year’s experience, so I was lucky that everyone on the team had been through this very recently and had the patience to explain things, sometimes more than once, to help me understand.

Before I knew it, I was doing tasks on my own, taking requests from our pipeline at the Project Support Office, where we support project managers, and I started working on customer-facing projects with the support of my mentor.

Diving headfirst into challenges that initially intimidated me, I volunteered for various roles, such as being a facilitator for the Project Management Office All-Hands only a month after joining Cisco and as a panelist for My Onboarding Journey. Currently, I’m in the process of creating a PowerPoint design and animation workshop for the PMO, as I truly enjoy making presentations and have learned a lot along the way on how to enhance them. Additionally, I have joined local Cisco university engagements, embracing opportunities that push me out of my comfort zone.

I’ve even leaned on my technical background to support our team’s transition from a sunsetted tool to Microsoft platforms. This involved working on automations to streamline requests from project managers directly into our pipeline. I’m also developing an automatic availability tracker for our team and have contributed to the Project Support Office SharePoint website.

And finally, I fully embrace Cisco’s commitment to continuous learning, seizing opportunities to expand my knowledge through online courses on learning platforms.

Beyond my role, I’ve had the chance to volunteer for different causes, now proudly contributing as part of the Cisco team. On one of these, I got to work with my local cohort and a very special guest — my mom!

All of these opportunities and activities have helped me evolve in different ways: I’m making progress on my learning journey, doing a better job at presenting, I’m more confident in my work, I’ve met amazing people, and I’m continuously motivated as I feel like I am bringing value to the people I work with and the company.

I have never been someone who has been very passionate about what they did, but just like with my mom, that all changed with Cisco. My education was a lot of hard work and tears. So, I never thought I would be the person to say this, but I truly love what I do, I love the people who work here, and I love where I work.

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"}]]  Project Specialist Intern Inês L. grew up watching her mom work for Cisco and dreamed of doing the same. See how she took a leap to love where she works.  Read More Cisco Blogs