What are you missing when you don’t enable global threat alerts?

Network telemetry is a reservoir of data that, if tapped, can shed light on users’ behavioral patterns, weak spots in security, potentially malicious tools installed in enterprise environments, and even malware itself.

Global threat alerts (formerly Cognitive Threat Analytics known as CTA) is great at taking an enterprise’s network telemetry and running it through a pipeline of state-of-the-art machine learning and graph algorithms. After processing the traffic data in batch in a matter of hours, global threat alerts correlates all the user behaviors, assigns priorities, and groups detections intelligently, to give security analysts clarity into what the most important threats are in their network.

Smart alerts

All detections are presented in a context-rich manner, which gives users the ability to drill into the specific security events that support the threat detections grouped eventually into alerts. This is useful because just detecting potentially malicious traffic in your infrastructure isn’t enough; analysts need to build an understanding of each threat detection. This is where global threat alerts saves you time, investigating alerts and accelerating resolution.

Figure 1: Extensive context helps security analysts understand why an alert was triggered and the reasons behind the conviction.

As depicted below in Figure 2, users can both change the severity levels of threats and rank high-priority asset groups from within the global threat alerts portal. This enables users to customize their settings to only alert them to the types of threats that their organizations are most concerned about, as well as to indicate which resources are most valuable. These settings allow the users to set proper context for threat alerts in their business environment.

Figure 2: You change the priority of threats and asset groups from within the global threat alerts portal.

Global threat alerts are also presented in a more intuitive manner, with multiple threat detections grouped into one alert based on the following parameters:​

◉ Concurrent threats: Different threats that are occurring together.​

◉ Asset groups value: Group of threats occurring on endpoints that belong to asset groups with similar business value.

Figure 3: Different threats that have been grouped together in one single alert, because they are all happening concurrently on the same assets.

Rich detection portfolio

Global threat alerts is continuously tracking and evolving hundreds of threat detections across various malware families, attack patterns, and tools used by malicious actors.

All these outcomes and detections are available for Encrypted Traffic Analytics telemetry (ETA) as well, which allows users to find threats in encrypted traffic without the need to decrypt that traffic. Moreover, because ETA telemetry contains more information than traditional NetFlow, the global threat alerts’ research team has also developed specific classifiers that are capable of finding additional threats in this data, such as with algorithms that are focused on detecting malicious patterns in the path and the query of a URL.

The global threat alerts’ research team is continuously engaged in dissecting new security threats and implementing the associated threat intelligence findings into hundreds of specialized classifiers. These classifiers are targeted at revealing campaigns that attackers are using on a global scale. Examples of these campaigns include the Maze ransomware and the njRAT remote access trojan. Numerous algorithms are also designed to capture generic malicious tactics like command-and-control traffic, command-injections, or lateral network movements.

Risk map of the internet

There are numerous algorithms focused on uncovering threat infrastructure in the network. These models are continuously discovering relationships between known malicious servers and new servers that have not yet been defined as malicious, but either share patterns or client bases with the known malicious servers. These models also constantly exchange newly identified threat intelligence with other Cisco security products and groups, such as Talos.

Figure 4: Analyzing common users of known malicious infrastructure and unclassified servers, global threat alerts can uncover new malicious servers.

This complex approach of threat detection consists of multiple layers of machine learning algorithms to provide high-fidelity detections that are always up-to-date and relevant, as researchers are updating the machine models constantly. Additionally, all this computation is done in the cloud and utilizes only network telemetry data to derive new findings. The findings and alerts are presented to users in Secure Network Analytics and Secure Endpoint.

Global threat alerts uses state-of-the-art algorithms to provide high-fidelity, unique threat detections for north-south network traffic, Smart Alerts to help prioritize and accelerate resolutions, and a risk map to provide greater context and understanding of how threats span across the network.

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Stay Flexible and Prepared with Virtual Education by Webex

There is so much more to the world than the four walls of our classrooms. Distance learning is expanding the world for students, teachers, and administrators. More educational institutions of all types and sizes around the world are turning to Cisco Webex as their remote learning tool of choice. 

Virtual classroom doors never close, ensuring the continuity of our education systems. Whether your institution needs to serve summer school classes or wants to ensure a smooth and prepared entry into virtual education next school year, Cisco Customer Experience (CX) team is here for you.

Keep Your Students Safe and Secure

You want to make sure your remote learning platform is an enabler, not a vulnerability. Built by the pioneer in video conferencing and industry leaders in cyber security, Webex is structured on various security frameworks, including end-to-end encryption. Always-on security runs unobtrusively in the background to keep all Webex participants safe and sensitive data secure. Let us help make sure you are satisfying the most stringent remote and distance learning security requirements. 

Cisco CX QuickStart Implementation Services 

Education can’t wait. The CX team can facilitate the rapid and secure deployment of your remote and distance learning environment. So, you can go about your core business of providing education to students, even if it is via an alternate means.

Users can leverage free on-demand self-help resources to get started, including recorded training sessions, quick–start guides, tips and tricks, and IT can attend Business Continuity Ask the Expert (ATX) webinars, including a special “Enabling Virtual Education” session.

But you don’t have to go it alone. We recognize that educational IT teams are under a new level of pressure to serve their communities, students, faculty, and staff, and may not have the network infrastructure in place or be familiar with Webex solutions and tools. Our CX team offers multiple levels of QuickStart Implementation Services for smooth, simplified, and rapid deployment. 

We’ll help IT with these essential services:

1. Efficiently onboard students, faculty, and staff to a remote learning experience.  We will introduce you to the administrative portal for user provisioning, which allows you to efficiently control adding, updating, and deactivating users. Avoid the security vulnerabilities born of executing changes manually for recurring school enrollment and staffing fluctuations.

2. Seamless integration with your single sign-on (SSO) system to the Cisco cloud. This will allow users to easily authenticate with their institutional credentials (username and password), while reducing calls to your helpdesk.

3. Focused hands-on training for your staff and students. Cisco will show teachers how to successfully get started, so your team can focus on other critical IT issues.

For schools and learning institutions who want to use Webex for administrative collaboration, such as holding faculty meetings remotely, we can help with integrating your business systems such as: 

1. Hands-on help with integrating Microsoft Active Directory to the Cisco cloud. Meeting organizers can then easily look up staff from the school directory for scheduling administrative meetings.  

2. Expert assistance integrating your local calendar to the Cisco cloud. This will help your faculty and staff avoid calendar conflicts between virtual school meetings and regular activities. 

3. Leverage Cisco guidance and expertise to help with testing and overcome any technological challenges that emerge in the first two weeks after going into production, making the transition as seamless as possible.

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Accelerate Your SMB Opportunity with High Velocity Managed Services

Small and medium business (SMB)* IT trends are consistent regardless of what you read or who you talk to.  IT budgets are growing, security is top of mind, and the shift to cloud in full force. For Cisco, these trends couldn’t align better. We have the buyer interest^, product leadership, and a world-class partner ecosystem to respond to the needs of these customers. 

And we are laser-focused on improving our traction in this market with a new small business-specific portfolio and a series of right-sized partner programs launched late last year.

In this blog, I will discuss the very exciting work we are doing to accelerate the SMB opportunity with our global Service Provider Partners, using a comprehensive new approach called High Velocity Managed Services. Simply put, High Velocity Managed Services does what it says: it accelerates the build-out and launch of managed services offerings targeting smaller customers, making it easy, scalable, and efficient to reach this segment.

Major Opportunity for SP Managed Services

When it comes to where and how to buy, there is no one size fits all in SMB. Sales cycles, typically one month, are much shorter than with enterprise customers (typically months or years for similar solutions) and SMBs want to purchase solutions on-demand and often, online.

However, when it comes to IT infrastructure services like network, security, and collaboration, new Cisco research suggests that many of the same companies are interested in using managed services if the provider can make it easy, affordable, and bundle it with other services – especially security (more on this later). And if the managed services provider can expand the bundle to deliver a complete IT package, including internet, the value proposition becomes extremely favorable.

Obviously, this means our global service provider ecosystem is in a great spot to better serve small business customers. They already market and deliver connectivity to SMBs and can use that scale to layer in new value-added services these buyers are looking for. No brainer, right?

Upping the Game with Managed Services

Yes, trends and business models suggest that service providers are poised to capture more managed services revenues. But this needs to be done with a few key tenets in mind:

◉ First and foremost, an acknowledgment that enterprises and SMB are very different. Sales and go-to-market processes need to be simplified to reach SMB buyers.

◉ For winning service providers, this comes with the recognition that SMBs can’t be served with enterprise offerings at a reduced price.

◉ Rather, solutions need to be tuned for this space by delivering the right set of features that solve the broadest set of customer pain points (with optional add-ons for vertical customers) messaged with a set of specific personas and business outcomes in mind, and set up for easy cross-sell.

Born in the cloud, Cisco Meraki delivers a simple value proposition for managed service providers – and is where the High Velocity journey starts. Providers can easily create a Meraki service template (i.e. offering) that suits a majority of customer needs, use platform APIs to connect to backend services, and then sell and provision with turnkey speed. This plug and play model can be used to deliver a secure WiFi offering all the way to a full managed network/LAN solution for rapid deployment and serviceability of desk phones across the WAN. All with a brandable end customer portal to provide important solution visibility that comes out of the box or customized through application development partners such as Encapto.

Security is King

71% of SMBs who are very interested in purchasing managed services from their service provider ranked security as the top value proposition of such a solution – higher than streamlined support and reporting tools.

With Meraki integrations with Cisco’s security products such as Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) and Umbrella, partners can lead with a value proposition centered on keeping out malware and ransomware that can cripple business productivity. Backed by the world’s most comprehensive threat intelligence research entity in Cisco Talos, providers can further showcase how well the solution covers the complex and evolving cyber threat landscape. For companies investing in collaboration, the Webex platform also delivers top-end security. Together, providers can market the complete suite of IT infrastructure services with security as the lead message.

More than Just a Product Pitch

As partners shift from niche managed services players to leading digital service providers, they need to adapt their own go-to-market programs and resources. It is not an overnight shift to start selling network security, SD-WAN, and complete IT infrastructure bundles. Nor is it sufficient to just start selling a managed service without thinking about the right product set, target segments, and packages as mentioned previously.

To help providers with the High Velocity Managed Services opportunity, we’ve built an arsenal of best-practice go-to-market resources to assist with sales and marketing enablement. We’ve developed these assets across the offers depicted above, and they can be used off the shelf or tailored to a provider’s specific campaign goals through a Cisco-led engagement.

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The Future of Meetings in 2030

Meetings of the Future

What excites me about working on the bleeding edge of technology is not the technology itself, but what it enables. Everything we do in Cisco’s Collaboration organization is to build the best tech we can to bring people together. Our technology should never be at the forefront of the interaction. If we’re doing our job right, you shouldn’t even notice it’s there. What I find truly exciting is the experience we’re creating. The feeling of togetherness.

Humans have been communicating and working together since the beginning of time. We smile, gesture, use our eyes, hands, and posture to communicate meaning. We come to life when we meet face to face. We share. We bond. We dream. We explore. We create.

Closing the Gap Between Digital Data and the Physical World

How do we replicate that experience—not the exactness of it, but the essence of it—in a fully connected, ambient experience that draws on the best, fluid blend of physical and virtual elements?

Perhaps the best way I can share this is to describe what I want a typical meeting to be like in 2030:

It’s 9:28 am. My amorphous intelligent agent, Kodi, reminds me that I have a meeting in two minutes. I turn away from the blank wall I was just looking at that held a digital representation of my work area and face the couch and couple armchairs in my bright, sunlight home office. The wall behind me reverts to a lazy afternoon view of Venice from the viewpoint of an apartment window overlooking a quiet canal. My brain-computer interface detects my upbeat mood and changes the view to overlook the bustling Grand Canal. Sensors register my reactionary microexpressions and switch to an aerial backdrop of New York’s financial district and the brisk moving pedestrians in the rising sun of morning rush hour. I smile. Infrared sensors also detect my slightly elevated heartbeat and swap the dark roast in my espresso maker for decaf as it percolates a fresh cup.

At 9:30 am a pleasant bell tone sounds and my colleague, Cullen, materializes as a photorealistic hologram seated on the couch in front of me and we exchange hellos as another tone sounds and our mutual colleague, Jia, materializes standing next to the armchair to my right. I walk over to Jia’s outstretched hand and feel the sensory feedback of resistance and pressure as we haptically share a virtual handshake. Jia and Cullen’s holograms nod to each other in greeting and Jia’s hologram takes a seat in the armchair.

As we begin talking, Kodi captures key takeaways from the meeting and cycles 2 displays of information that continuously update and refresh as the conversation evolves. The first, visible to all three of us, is a constantly updating array of resources cycling across the surface of the coffee table between us showing past meeting notes, actions, and related research and news articles. The second array is visible to me only and floats at the periphery of my view with more personally attuned information—recent conversations I’ve had or notes I’ve taken, calendar updates, and my biometric readings as well as data aggregated from the three of us reflecting the tone and mood of the room. It also indicates that my coffee is ready, so I switch from full-form mode to face-only mode and Jia and Cullen can continue to see my facial expressions in real-time as my hologram remains seated facing them, but I physically get up to grab my coffee refill. As I sit back down in my armchair I toggle back to full-form mode as I shift positions in my chair and take a sip.

As we discuss an upcoming event, my calendar flicks to the foreground of my view showing the event details and surrounding events and locations before and after. I push this view into the middle of the room which enables Cullen and Jia to see my calendar view as well, but in moving from private to shared, the details of my appointments are masked. A moment later, the shared view updates to include Jia and Cullen’s schedules as they push their views into the shared space as well. Based on the context of our conversation, Kodi overlays major industry events over the top of our calendars. Jia points out a gap in activities about a week prior and suggests we target that date for our announcement. Kodi registers from the content that we will need a final review meeting and 3 potential meeting slots highlight on our shared calendar 3 days prior. We agree on the best one and our respective calendars are updated with the invite including key takeaways from today’s meeting and links to prior discussions on the same topic.

As we’re wrapping up, Cullen mentions he has an updated version of the prototype we are planning to announce. The object materializes in front of us as Cullen enables his share feature. On Cullen’s side, he is holding the physical object, but Jia and I see an identical virtual replica as Cullen points out the changes he’s made. He then shifts from physical share to virtual share and explodes the object out to the size of the room so we can see the updates at the internal component level. I get up and walk closer to Cullen, stepping inside the object, which I can then reach out and touch to manipulate, highlight, or edit. The changes look great and I turn and give Cullen a haptic high-five.

As our conversation wraps up, I see the actions and updates Kodi has added to my calendar and to-do list in my periphery. I wave goodbye to Jia and Cullen and they fade out of my room. It’s 10 am, and according to Kodi, it’s a good time for a morning break.

Combining AR in the Collaboration Space

Okay, some of this may still be out there on the time horizon, but some components are becoming a reality today. The above experience relies on a seamless mesh of natural language processing, adaptive algorithms, connected sensors, non-invasive biometrics, brain-computer interfaces, extended reality, and haptics. While some fields, like brain-computer interfaces and haptic feedback, are still in early stages, other areas like machine learning and natural language processing are becoming table stakes today.

Extended reality (augmented, virtual, mixed) is one area I’m particularly excited about. At Cisco, our Collaboration group has been fairly vocal about enabling augmented reality experiences with our Webex and Webex Teams APIs, specifically for a remote expert use case. Where we’ve been less vocal is what mixed reality can bring to the collaboration table, but we’ve been building something in stealth mode for the last couple of years which is truly exciting.

Proof of Concept for Three-Dimensional Collaboration in Real-Time

We’re not quite ready to share what we’ve been prototyping, but it’s been exciting challenging the current concept of what a meeting is and could be. We’re tapping into our internal knowledge of hardware, software, and networking, and we’ve been working behind closed doors with industry vendors at the top of their game—paradigm shifters who are opening up a whole new world of possibilities for creators, inventors, and dreamers everywhere.

I have the pleasure and privilege of leading initiatives for our innovation team where we are asking questions like: What if you could have real-life interactions that are better than what is currently possible in real life? What if conferencing didn’t have to be limited to a 2-dimensional plane? What happens when “real” and “virtual” are no longer distinct ideas?

There’s a lot to figure out and we’re not quite ready to tell the world what we’re building, but I can tell you, you’ve never experienced anything like this before because it’s never been done before! Stay tuned; you won’t want to miss it. These are exciting times to be a dreamer because, yes, dreams really do come true.

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Do the Impossible: Deliver the Best Collaboration Experience and Secure Sensitive Data with Cisco’s Extended Secur …

Security is Paramount, and Cisco Webex is the Market Leader

Security is critical for any collaboration deployment because employees inevitably share sensitive data and intellectual property. Building out security is hard as it’s not a standalone feature that can be built in isolation. It is a platform-level capability that needs to be designed for every component and every feature support must comply with it to be effective.

Cisco has security in its DNA from the network to devices to the cloud. Cisco Webex was architected with a 360 approach to security. We looked at the full attack surface and possible threat vectors to build controls and mitigations while providing the best user experience, and enabling users to securely collaborate with users outside of their companies and support their personal devices.

Customer Challenges

Users are increasingly using collaboration tools to do their job – and it often involves sensitive data – whether it’s intellectual property, personally identifying information or financial information. Line of business executives and IT administrators are concerned about data loss especially when their users are collaborating externally. As an open platform, Webex has an events API and one of the largest compliance and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) partner ecosystems in the industry to address these concerns.

However, many of our customers do not have a central DLP solution deployed and this stalls rollout of modern collaboration tools. Even if some customers deploy these tools, IT admins end up blocking collaboration with external users and use of personal devices in order to mitigate these data loss risks.

Not only does this impact employee adoption of these tools, it increases data loss and malware exposure as users start using non-sanctioned consumer collaboration apps to get the job done.

Extended Security Pack Solution

I am thrilled to announce a new Collaboration Flex add-on offer – the Cisco Webex Control Hub Extended Security Pack – a Cisco-on-Cisco best of breed solution to this customer problem that packages full functionality Cisco Cloudlock for Webex Teams with native Webex anti-malware capabilities powered by Cisco Talos ClamAV in Webex Cloud.

The new Extended Security Pack is available now and enables our customers to safely and securely rollout modern collaboration with best user experience.

Cloudlock DLP policies follow your employees even when they collaborate with external users. And our anti-malware solution will block infected files from being downloaded and malicious URLs will not be expanded and clearly marked for end-users.

Peace of Mind Through Industry Leading Webex Teams Security

We firmly believe that every customer is different and there is “no one size fits all” security model, and therefore IT Admins can choose Webex Control Hub policies to match Webex security to their risk profile. We are announcing new controls to manage 3rd party integrations like JIRA, Box, and Smartsheet into Webex. The ability to manage bots and whitelist external domains for collaboration will be available in October. In addition, Control Hub now supports active directory groups for automatic license assignment based on your geography, role or other criteria.

We are very excited to partner with ThetaLake to support AI-based archiving, eDiscovery, and supervision for Webex Meetings recordings with automated detection of compliance risks in audio and visual content, including screenshares.

The new Control Hub search and extraction tool is available now and will support large lawsuits and investigations by allowing hundreds of users in one query. In addition, a simple EML export mechanism will allow faster integration into eDiscovery tools and quick viewing of extracted content for internal investigations.

Trust and Protection You Can Count on 

Webex has tight controls on privacy and personal identifiable information and supports various cross-border frameworks and is GDPR compliant. ISO 27018 is the first certification to focus on privacy and PII controls and Webex Meetings and Teams have passed the ISO27018 audit.

Webex is adding new built-in mobile application management (MAM) capabilities to set up a timeout for Teams mobile client with application PIN lock and an ability to block notifications with message content on lock screen. In addition, we are proud to announce a common mechanism for customers to wrap all Webex mobiles apps (Meetings, Teams and Jabber) using their favorite MAM SDK starting October 2019.

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Turbocharge Your Next Webex Teams Proof of Concept and Demo Development

Use this Script to Turbocharge Webex Teams Bot Development

When I first started developing Webex Teams bots, I immediately was drawn to ngrok for its simplicity and power. It allowed me to rapidly start prototyping my bot and to do quick demos. It was simple to setup up very quickly and has a great Client API set that allowed me to dig into the details if I needed to troubleshoot.

Because of the ephemeral nature of the ngrok tunnels, though, it is somewhat of a nuisance to develop your bots because every time you tear down an ngrok tunnel and build it back up at a later time, you end up with a different URL for the webhook. If you’ve prototyped or demo’d a Webex Teams bot before, then you know that you then have to update the webhook with the new URL. This means going to the developer site and modifying the webhook by hand. The process goes somewhat like this:

1. Bring up an ngrok tunnel
2. Go to the Webex Teams website
3. Update your webhook to the new URL that ngrok just gave you.
4. Run the demo
5. Shut down your demo
6. Rinse, lather and repeat every time you need to bring up the tunnel!

The same basic process is applies when beginning to prototype your bot. Bring up a tunnel, update the webhooks, develop/test, tear down the tunnel, rinse and repeat. Don’t forget that you need to use your bot’s token rather than your developer token for #3 above. Plus you need to make sure that you don’t make any copy/paste mistakes, etc. Yucky, manual work!

Fortunately we can mashup the ngrok Client and Webex Teams API’s to do this in a more elegant and automated fashion.

Solution

So the process for automating this is relatively simple, so let’s dive in. Typically it is as simple as this:

First, bring up the tunnel using ngrok:

./ngrok http 80

You will end up with something along these line as output in the terminal.

ngrok startup output showing status and your new web hook URL.

We then run the ngrok-startup.py with two arguments. The first is the port you want the tunnel to be listening on and the second is the name of the new tunnel.

python3 ngrok_startup.py 443 "super_awesome_demo_bot"

which will result in a series of status messages describing what the script is doing:

Expected status messages from ngrok-startup.py.

And we are done. The script used the ngrok Client API to tear down the existing tunnels, create new ones and then update your bot’s webhook. Now you able to iterate your bot PoC and then demo it live without going through all those manual steps a bunch of times.

The Code

I know a wall of text isn’t very interesting, but you may not be familiar with these specific APIs. So I’m going to walk through the five core functions.

So let’s take a looksie at some interesting API nuggets. Since ngrok automatically creates a set of tunnels at startup, in order to start with a clean slate, we will tear those down and create a new set.

The ngrok client API couldn’t be easier to use. We start by first getting a list of the open tunnels.

def get_tunnels_list(ngrok_base_url):

    print("get_tunnels_list start")

    error = ""

    active_tunnels = list()

    print(" Getting the list of tunnels...")

    tunnel_list_url = ngrok_base_url + tunnels_api_uri

    r = requests.get(tunnel_list_url, verify=False)

    print(" ...Received List of Tunnels...")

    # get the json object from the response

    json_object = json.loads(r.text)

    tunnels = json_object['tunnels']

    if r.status_code==200:

        for potential_tunnel in tunnels:

            active_tunnels.append(potential_tunnel)

    else:

        error=" Unable to list of tunnels"

    print("get_tunnels_list end")

    return active_tunnels,error

As you can see above, we send an http GET request to the local ngrok client. If successful, we get a list of the currently open tunnels.

Next we delete all the tunnels on the list. There should only be two, but we iterate through the entire list we get anyways.

def delete_active_tunnels(tunnel_list, ngrok_base_url):

    print("delete_active_tunnels start")

    errors=list()

    tunnel_delete_base_url = ngrok_base_url + tunnel_delete_uri

    print(" beginning delete of tunnels...")

    for tunnel_to_delete in my_active_tunnels:

        tunnel_name = tunnel_to_delete['name']

        tunnel_delete_complete_url = tunnel_delete_base_url + tunnel_name

        delete_request = requests.delete(tunnel_delete_complete_url, verify=False)

        if delete_request.status_code != 204:

            errors.append("Error Deleting tunnel: {}".format(tunnel_name))

    print(" ...ending delete of tunnels...")

    print("delete_active_tunnels end\n")

    return errors

Again, pretty self explanatory. We take the list of tunnels we received from the previous code snippet and delete each tunnel with an HTTP DELETE request.

Next we create a new tunnel, using the tunnel name provided in the second argument of the ngrok_startup.py command.

def public_tunnel_for_name(tunnel_name, tunnel_port, ngrok_base_url):

    print("public_tunnel_for_name start")

    errors=list()

    public_tunnel = ()

    create_tunnel_url = ngrok_base_url + tunnels_api_uri

    # make sure you change the port!!"

    print(" creating new tunnel...")

    tunnel_json = { 'addr' : tunnel_port, 'proto' : 'http', 'name' : tunnel_name}

    create_tunnel_response = requests.post(create_tunnel_url,json=tunnel_json,verify=False)

    if create_tunnel_response.status_code != 201:

        errors.append("Error creating tunnel: {}".format(create_tunnel_response.status_code))

    else:

        jsonObject = json.loads(create_tunnel_response.text)

        public_tunnel = (jsonObject['public_url'],jsonObject['uri'])

    print(" ...done creating new tunnel")

    print("public_tunnel_for_name end\n")

    return public_tunnel,errors

To create the tunnel, we just send an HTTP POST request to the ngrok client with a JSON snippet containing the port, the protocol, and a name for the tunnel. If all goes well, the ngrok client sends back a JSON payload with a new URL that your bot can use as its new web hook.

With the new tunnel URL in hand we can start working with the Webex Teams Webhook API’s. It’s important to note that you need to have your bot’s authorization token in the headers of all your Webex Teams API requests. In the script, this and other variables are set via environmental variables and stored in a python dictionary as follows:

dev_token = os.environ.get('SPARK_DEV_TOKEN')

webhook_request_headers = {

    "Accept" : "application/json",

    "Content-Type":"application/json",

    "Authorization": "Bearer {}".format(dev_token)

}

The first thing we do is delete the existing webhook.

def delete_prexisting_webhooks():

    print("delete_prexisting_webhooks start")

    errors=list()

    print(" deleting existing webhook...")

    webhooks_list_response =requests.get(webhook_base_url,headers=webhook_request_headers, verify=False)

    if webhooks_list_response.status_code != 200:

        errors.append("Error getting list of webhooks:  {}".format(webhooks_list_response.status_code))

    else:

        webhooks = json.loads(webhooks_list_response.text)['items']

        if len(webhooks) > 0:

            for webhook in webhooks:

                delete_webhook_url = webhook_base_url + '/' + webhook['id']

                delete_webhook_response = requests.delete(delete_webhook_url,headers=webhook_request_headers)

                if delete_webhook_response.status_code != 204:

                    errors.append("Delete Webhook Error code:  {}".format(delete_webhook_response.status_code))

    print(" ...Deleted existing webhooks")

    print("delete_prexisting_webhooks end\n")

    return errors

As you can see from the code block, first we need to get a list of webhooks and then iterate through the list. Sending HTTP DELETE requests as we go. This could be somewhat problematic if you have multiple webhooks for the same bot. But we are only using this script to help us automate our basic PoC/demo bot where we would probably only have a single webhook firing.

Finally, we create the new webhook. Using the super handy Webex Teams API’s we can easily create a new webhook.

def update_webhook(webhook_request_json):

print("update_webhook start")

    webhook_creation_response = requests.post(webhook_base_url, json=webhook_request_json,

                                              headers=webhook_request_headers)

    if webhook_creation_response.status_code == 200:

        print(' Webhook creation for new tunnel successful!')

    else:

        print(' Webhook creation for new tunnel was not successful.  Status Code: {}'.format(

            webhook_creation_response.status_code))

    print("update_webhook end\n")

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5 Things You Need to Know about Webex Meetings

Webex has come a long way. We recently unpacked a lot of great innovation in the new meetings experience. The great thing about Webex Meetings is that it’s a full video and content-sharing cloud solution that you can join via desktop, mobile, browser, and video devices. Webex Meetings is more powerful than ever before. Bring meetings to the way you work, not the other way around.

We recently announced a whole new level of collaboration, bringing meetings and team collaboration together on a single platform. Now, everyone who uses Webex Meetings also has access to Cisco Webex Teams (formerly Cisco Spark), helping everyone collaborate, even after the meeting ends.

We’ve integrated the latest artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning technologies into the meetings experience to keep participants engaged. Webex Meetings can automatically detect background noise to remove distractions. The video delivers optimal views of people and content. Core functionality like start/join a meeting, attendee rosters, and more are at your fingertips no matter how you join.

Simple to join on any platform

I appreciate being able to join a scheduled meeting simply by pressing the big green button on my desktop, mobile device, or Cisco video device. Cisco is the only vendor to offer a single, consistent one-button join across devices and apps. We’ve simplified things. You don’t have to figure out how to join — the green join button comes to you.

Webex has the most comprehensive, browser-based meeting experience on the market today. If you are invited to a Webex meeting, all you need to do is click the big green button in the invitation and it takes you right in. This is especially important for first-time users. There’s nothing to install, plug in, or download to join from Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari browsers. And joining from a browser doesn’t mean you have to compromise on features. Hosts and participants get the rich video and application screen-sharing of the desktop version. You have full control and can see everyone participating.

Plays well with others

We’ve also made sure that Webex works with your preferred collaboration tools. Webex not only works across our own hardware and software but also with third-party solutions. You can join or a start a meeting from Webex or do it from  Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Workplace by Facebook. It also works with calendars like Google Calendar. Support for Microsoft Office 365 is right around the corner. These integrations mean you do less switching between apps and have a more efficient workflow. You get the trusted, seamless, and reliable Webex features in the environment that you choose.

The best mobile meeting experience

Several enhancements make it easier be more productive and engaged – even on the road. For a long time, it was hard to see the other people in a meeting if you joined from a mobile device. Likewise, functionality like content sharing and scheduling weren’t options. We’ve turned the experience around and used the latest technologies to make significant improvements that help mobile users get an equal seat at the meeting table.

We’ve optimized the interface for better viewing. Pinch-and-zoom technology makes it easier to see who’s in the meeting and what they’re sharing. You’ll get native screen sharing and the easiest scheduling on the market. If you are an Apple user, you can now use voice commands, Touch ID, and Face ID.

Unparalleled speed and bandwidth

All Webex products use the Cisco network backbone, regardless of how attendees join. It’s a trusted, worldwide IP network built over the last 10 years with interconnects around the world. No other company can do this. Webex connects with both public cloud providers and our own data centers. Regardless of how you join, traffic hops off the Internet as soon as possible and enters the Webex backbone, minimizing latency, bandwidth, jitter, and packet-loss issues that happen so often on the public Web.

Grows with your business needs

Several options for using Webex let you mix and match between services as your business evolves. In addition to a free trial, there are several Webex Meetings subscription models for individuals, teams, departments, and, of course, companies. The offers are competitively priced and flexible so that you can choose a buying model based on your current requirements. Market-leading, secure, innovative Webex Meetings, plus team collaboration, unlimited VoIP, global PSTN audio services, technical support, customer success, and even analytics are all included so you always get the best features and services Webex has to offer.

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Better design for simpler, more effective security

Few will contest the notion that security is complex.

Evolving threats.  Clever, motivated attackers.   And all too often, vendor-inflicted complexity of managing security from the mismatched consoles from dozens of vendors.

In this case, not only must users jump between consoles but the actions that become familiar in one console are not at all helpful or relevant in another.  Each new console amounts to a new security management process – adding to greater complexity.

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