Jeetu Patel (Cisco)
Cisco has expanded security portfolio capabilities to provide additional layers of value to partners, enhancing offerings linked to zero trust, networking and data protection.
Unveiled during Cisco Partner Summit 2022 in Las Vegas, the upgrade is aligned to Cisco Security Cloud which operates as a platform unifying management and policy administration.
The end-to-end play is designed to better safeguard users, devices and applications across public clouds and private data centres, in addition to removing the threat of public cloud lock-in.
“Security is no longer optional,” said Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager of Security and Collaboration at Cisco. “It is critical to every major initiative an organization may have.
“We are committed to delivering more value for our partners by continuing to drive innovation and making it easier to do business with Cisco. Partners can land key products and then expand across the Cisco Secure portfolio to increase profitability while enabling customers to securely achieve their digital transformation goals.”
Specific to zero trust, Duo Passwordless Authentication is now available for customers to protect single sign-on (SSO) applications. This will allow users to login without any password by leveraging biometrics (Windows Hello and Mac touch ID) and security keys.
The vendor is also adding the Duo Mobile app as a new option for passwordless authentication, with the aim of simplifying implementation and lowering the total cost of ownership for customers.
“Passwordless authentication reduces the risk of phishing attacks and their ability to utilise stolen passwords or as we’ve seen more recently, MFA fatigue,” added Dave Lewis, global advisory CISO at Cisco.
“As cyber attacks continue to move closer to end-users, there is a huge opportunity to embrace low-friction authentication methods that ensure only trusted users and devices gain access to applications and corporate resources.”
Within the context of networking, Cisco is also introducing the newest addition to the Secure Firewall 3100 Series, tailored specifically for hybrid work.
Supporting the upgrade is Cisco Capital which is now offering Cisco Lifecycle Pay for Secure Firewall - a fixed term subscription payment solution - to provide a financial incentive and lower total cost of usage. This will initially launch in the US before rolling out on a global basis.
According to Cisco, customers can receive a 10 per cent replacement incentive when returning existing firewall hardware and upgrading to the latest firewall technology.
In addition, the vendor is also enhancing Umbrella with stronger data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities, including unified policies and reporting across API-based out-of-band DLP, and real-time inline DLP.
Umbrella is a foundational component of Cisco+ Secure Connect, the vendor’s unified secure access service edge (SASE) solution. Partners can now achieve SASE specialisation to help customers securely enable cloud development and deployment, remote work and edge computing.
“Our strategy and our innovation roadmap are all designed to set our partners for long-term success,” said Shailaja Shankar, senior vice president and general manager of Security Business Group at Cisco. “We are committed to helping partners deliver more value to customers and become more profitable.”
As outlined by Shankar, partner enablement linked to security will centre around increased simplification, new promotions and awareness investment.
“We are taking active steps to simplify the ease of doing business with Cisco Secure in ways that accelerate velocity and scaling our growth through the channel,” Shankar explained. “We are continuing to invest in our partners’ programs, offers, and expanding our routes to market so that our partners can be more profitable with Cisco Secure.”
Specific to new offers and promotions, a recent examples include “One Year on Us” that the vendor expanded to include the entire software-as-a-service (SaaS) and recurring software subscription portfolio. Partners can offer customers preferential pricing with one-year free with a three-year subscription purchase.
“We want customers to ask for Cisco Secure by name, so we are aggressively investing in brand awareness,” Shankar added. “This includes a new secure the enterprise campaign “if it’s connected, it’s protected” designed to strengthen Cisco’s market perception as a world-class security solutions provider.
“We are also planning to back this up by investing more than $50 million in paid digital marketing specifically for security over the next year.”
James Henderson travelled to Cisco Partner Summit 2022 in Las Vegas as a guest of Cisco.
