Enabling Innovation in Customer Experience while Optimizing the Multi-Cloud: Part One

Digital Experience is the Brand

We live in a world where customers expect a digital experience. That experience makes or breaks brands today. According to The App Attention Index, people today are far less tolerant of problems with digital services than they were just two years ago, and they’re now far more likely to take decisive action – deleting apps, turning to the competition, and sharing their negative experiences far and wide.

The index gives us some key insights into these changes in consumer behavior:

◉ An average person used 34 digital services every day

◉ 61% admit they reach for their mobile phone before talking to anyone else when they wake up

◉ 55% can only go without a mobile device for up to 4 hours before they find it difficult to manage tasks in their everyday life

◉ 71% admit that digital services are so intrinsic to their daily lives, they don’t realize how much they rely on them

It’s evident that the penalty for poor application experience is very high, with over 49% of surveyed users stating they have switched suppliers due to poor digital experience. Not to mention, a 100ms delay in load time resulted in a 7% drop in conversion, which when compounded, substantially impacts the bottom line.

The digital experience is not just scanning a document or having a video call with a regional manager; it means actually doing an end to end transaction completely digitally. Today, application loyalty is the new brand loyalty, meaning that consumers are loyal to the brands that deliver digital experience perfection. In the same report, 70% of consumers said they want digital experiences to be more personalized than those that happen face-to-face. Furthermore, 50% stated that they would be willing to pay more for an organization’s product or service if its digital services were better than a competitor’s.

The Pandemic’s effect on Customer Experience

As the pandemic has hit us, it pushed all age groups towards extreme digital adoption. This is no longer a gen x or gen y statement; it is true across all ages, making it far more important to act upon than ever before.

In a recent McKinsey & Company study, interesting demographics emerged during these pandemic times, which led to some key observations:

◉ Digital preferences of older Western European consumer cohorts (ages 51-64 and 65+) aligning for the first time with those of younger demographics for most banking services

◉ Declines across markets in consumers’ desire to visit branches for transactions—shifts that may stick for the long-term

◉ Digital is expected to become the default channel for most customers and the sole sales and service channel for many

Because of this scenario, users don’t just compare one bank’s app experience with another bank’s app experience, but as the apps on their phones sit next to the apps from other industries (Amazon, Facebook, Uber, etc.) subconsciously, the expectation is set in that the banking app should be as good in the experience as the others, if not a leap ahead: That is the bar we are measured against.

The good news is that the technology to not only meet the app experience bar set by these companies, but to surpass them is available, and our development teams are always keen to get their hands on them and embed them within our customers’ journeys towards making the app experience exceptional. But as the customer experience simplifies, there is a multifold explosion in application complexity:

◉ Businesses are investing in making things better, easier, and more engaging for their customers

◉ This innovation is driven by investments that only increase complexity

◉ Highly distributed, multi-cloud, micro-services, APIs, containers, IOT environments, and relentless code releases that introduce constant change

◉ And all of this is happening at a staggering scale

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Industrial IoT: Top 3 trends for 2021

After 2020’s twists and turns, here’s hoping that 2021 ushers in a restored sense of “normal.” In thinking about what the upcoming year might bring for industrial IoT, three key trends emerge.

Trend #1: Securing operational technology (OT)

IT will take a bolder posture to secure OT environments.

Cyber risks in industrial environments will continue to grow causing IT to take bolder steps to secure the OT network in 2021. The CISO and IT teams have accountability for cybersecurity across the enterprise. But often they do not have visibility into the OT network. Many OT networks use traditional measures like air gapping or an industrial demilitarized zone to protect against attacks. But these solutions are rife with backdoors. For example, third-party technicians and other vendors often have remote access to update systems, machines and devices. With increasing pressure from board members and government regulators to manage IoT/OT security risks, and to protect the business itself, the CISO and IT will need to do more.

Success requires OT’s help. IT cybersecurity practices that work in the enterprise are not always appropriate for industrial environments. What’s more, IT doesn’t have the expertise or insight into operational and process control technology. A simple patch could bring down production (and revenues).

Bottom line? Organizations will need solutions that strengthen cybersecurity while meeting IT and OT needs. For IT, that means visibility and control across their own environment to the OT network. For OT, it means security solutions that allow them respond to anomalies while keeping production humming.

Trend #2: Remote and autonomous operations

The need for operational resiliency will accelerate the deployment of remote and autonomous operations – driving a new class of networking.

The impact of changes brought on in 2020 is driving organizations to increasingly use IoT technologies for operational resiliency. After all, IoT helps keep a business up and running when people cannot be on the ground. It also helps improve safety and efficiencies by preventing unnecessary site visits and reducing employee movement throughout facilities.

In 2021, we will see more deployments aimed at sophisticated remote operations. These will go well beyond remote monitoring. They will include autonomous operational controls for select parts of a process and will be remotely enabled for other parts. Also, deployments will increasingly move toward full autonomy, eliminating the need for humans to be present locally or remotely. And more and more, AI will used for dynamic optimization and self-healing, in use cases such as:

◉ autonomous guided vehicles for picking and packing, material handling, and autonomous container applications across manufacturing, warehouses and ports

◉ increased automation of the distribution grid

◉ autonomous haul trucks for mining applications

◉ Computer-based train control for rail and mass transit

All these use cases require data instantly and in mass, demanding a network that can support that data plus deliver the speed required for analysis. This new class of industrial networking must provide the ability to handle more network bandwidth, offer zero latency data and support edge compute. It also needs security and scale to adapt quickly, ensuring the business is up and running – no matter what.

Trend #3: Managing multiple access technologies

Organizations will operate multiple-access technologies to achieve operational agility and flexibility.

While Ethernet has always been the foundation for connectivity in industrial IoT spaces, that connectivity is quickly expanding to wireless. Wireless helps reduce the pain of physical cabling and provides the flexibility and agility to upgrade, deploy and reconfigure the network with less operational downtime. Newer wireless technologies like Wi-Fi 6 and 5G also power use cases not possible in the past (or possible only with wired connectivity).

As organizations expand their IoT deployments, the need to manage multiple access technologies will grow. Successful deployments will require the right connectivity for the use case, otherwise, costs, complexity and security risks increase. With wireless choices including Wi-Fi, LoRaWAN, Wi-SUN, public or private cellular, Bluetooth and more, organizations will need to determine the best technology for each use case.

Cisco’s recommendation: Build an access strategy to optimize costs and resources while ensuring security. Interactions between access technologies should deliver a secured and automated end-to-end IP infrastructure – and must avoid a “mishmash” leading to complexity and failed objectives.

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The Why of AI and ML

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have been in the spotlight. I think by now folks understand that neither are some strange form of technological magic, but rather a science and some working knowledge of the domain is now well understood. However, up to this point, the question has been “what are AI and ML?”  But what I want to take some time to ask, is why? Why do we need them? Why will they still be a part of products and services; not just in security but throughout our digital lives?

The short answer is because we can no longer operate at human-scale to be competitive. It is necessary that we operate to some degree at machine-scale and this is where advanced computer science techniques become valuable. AI and ML are just a few of these techniques and to maximize their benefits, we must know how to use them safely and effectively. Like any advanced technology, they can be used for good or for bad or maybe I should say that it could be used for your benefit or your demise.

There is a pattern that joins humans to machines, machines to machines, machines back to humans, and humans to humans. We have hundreds of years of social science that we can use when examining human to human patterns. Machine to machine includes a multitude of well-known patterns in computer science discussed on a daily basis. So for now, let’s concentrate on the patterns that integrate humans with machines and vice versa.

Human-to-machine communication is largely based on the human’s ability to communicate their “intent” to the machine. This is done via a model that the machine can process and that the human can express and understand. The precision of this model is critical to the overall success. A model that is too coarse limits the machine’s accuracy in its automation; while a model that is too precise may lead to humans making errors in their expression or just be too tedious to maintain. A great example of a model done well is cloud-native orchestration like Kubernetes. The admin can specify his/her intent for production in a model and Kubernetes orchestrates these microservices in an adaptive manner depending on future demand of the environment – scaling up and down depending on criteria.

One last thing to add about these models that sit in-between human-to-machine is that in the example above, the initial model may have been instantiated by the human, but over time, machines via their observations, can create their own models at scales well beyond human perception. You could say that these machine derived models are “machine-learned.”

The machine-to-human pattern is largely constrained by human cognition and human understanding. No matter how fancy your machine learning system may be, if the human cannot understand how the machine arrived at an answer, it cannot be trusted. Machines must “explain” their findings and analytical outcomes in a way that humans can understand. Failing to do so means that automation is not being safely managed and should not be coupled with actions that are critical to human life or to the business. To operate at machine-scale effectively and safely, machines must be able to communicate their operational integrity and analytical outcomes in ways that their human steward can comprehend. This is challenging because in some cases, machines are interfacing with experts and in some cases, non-experts. In the end, you must design systems that are observer-centric and accommodate for the different personas that use the system.

Getting this right means that we can leverage machines as tools that help us go beyond human perception and even what is humanly possible to build as a workforce. This would not have been such a useful capability if it were not for the Internet. Because of the Internet, businesses are asked to understand questions that are global in scale, that deal with petabytes of data, quantities of data processing that are just no longer at human-scale. Businesses are also having to operate with dynamic ranges never experienced in our recorded history: On Monday you may have to service 30,000 customers, on Tuesday THE ENTIRE INTERNET SHOWS UP, and on Wednesday 20,000 customers. Without the help of machines, we could not take advantage of these opportunities.

The term Machine Learning has been used synonymously with Artificial Intelligence when in reality, ML is a child of AI. So, if AI is the parent of ML, does ML have any brothers and sisters? The answer is yes and over the years, we will move beyond the data science-biased ML as we meet and get to know these new siblings that will help us humans operate safely and securely at machine-scale.

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Forget the New Normal. Experience a New Difference With The All New Webex

Staying Connected and Getting Work Done with the All New Webex

The rapid uptake of remote working has led to a parallel increase in use of Webex as businesses key collaboration tool for colleagues to stay connected and get work done.

The power of the all new Webex is the ability to bring together everything you need to see a project through to fruition – One easy-to-use and secure app to call, message, meet and make exceptional work happen. As a result, you may find yourself operating within one app for most of your working day.

With this in mind our Cisco Collaboration team have been brainstorming ideas that not only help you complete your work, but also represents your style and personality.

In this new release we are excited to introduce:

1. Fresh new color themes

2. Backgrounds for your profile, contact card and spaces

3. Cobranding options to reinforce your corporate brand

Fresh New Color Schemes

First up, we have added 3 new color themes to reinvent your Webex experience. You now have a choice between Jade, Lavender and Bronze – each available in light and dark mode on your desktop and mobile app. Easily transform your app color theme within the ‘Appearance’ tab in the app settings.

Expressive New Backgrounds

Next up, you can now add fun and a splash of personality to your Webex app with new backgrounds for your profile, contact card and spaces. Backgrounds can also act as great way to help you differentiate between each of your workflow spaces.

Backgrounds are easily accessible in your app settings. You can now pick from a select number of designs to change a standard space into a fun and visually appealing work area. But stay tuned, as custom backgrounds are coming soon!

The Power of Webex with Your Own Brand

Finally, we have introduced the ability to co-brand Webex with your own company brand. Your brand is your company’s identity, it has value, gives you direction and customer awareness.  And, now you can include that within your Webex experience by adding your company colors to the app header and your company logo on the side panel bar.

Color themes, backgrounds and co-branding are just the start in the Webex journey to bring yourself to your virtual workplace.

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What’s in a name? ”Catalyst” 8000 “Edge” Platforms

On October 20, Cisco announced the new Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms Family, to help customers deliver secure connectivity to hybrid and multicloud applications across cloud, data center and edge locations. The new Portfolio transforms the WAN edge so customers have secure access, agility and the best experiences when connecting to applications anywhere. These new platforms support customers’ move to a SASE architecture by converging cloud-managed SD-WAN and cloud-delivered security (Cisco Umbrella) into one solution.  Customers will also have access to the full SD-WAN security stack for on-prem deployments.

As part of launching the new Catalyst 8000 family, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a number of industry analysts, media, channel partners and customers.  I would like to address a few questions that have come up in my briefings.

Why extend “Catalyst” brand to the WAN?

With the new Catalyst edge platforms, we are meeting the requirements of the WAN edge, and providing another foundational piece of our intent-based network strategy that spans every domain of the network.

Cisco launched its Intent Based Networking (IBN) initiative targeted for enterprises a few years ago. This initiative was meant to address the complexity that spans campus, wireless and WAN, by transforming the usually static network fabric into a controller-led architecture that captures business intent and translates it into policies that can be automated and applied consistently across the network. The programmability of the fabric combined with integrated analytics allows it to be agile and elastic to help deliver desired business outcomes.

The Catalyst 8000 family was given the “Catalyst” name because as we continue to grow and build upon our intent-based networking (IBN) portfolio it is important that there is product, branding and messaging alignment across Access (LAN) and WAN and that customers view the IBN portfolio as a set of products that unify their enterprise networks and provide software-defined capabilities via a common IOS-XE operating system. With the new naming, the Catalyst brand is now part of the Intent Based Portfolio along with Catalyst Switches and Catalyst APs.

Why is the new portfolio called an Edge device and not a Router?

Enterprise WANs have transformed over the last decade. As Enterprises across various industry segments are looking at digitalization for gaining business advantage, Cloud, IOT, 5G and Edge Compute are quickly becoming key pillars of their digitalization strategies.

The WAN edge hence has become critical to digital businesses, particularly the edge of the WAN where the traditional black-box router no longer serves the needs of the modern enterprise. Speeds and feeds remain important, but today’s networks require a WAN edge platform that is agile, flexible, and open to host multi-service edge functionality.

We are calling these devices “edge platforms” versus “routers” because the definition of a router has evolved over the past few years to be more of a WAN edge device; providing connectivity from distributed locations to both data centers and the cloud, service flexibility for on-prem or cloud deployments as well as containerized hosting of local network services and business applications.

How is a new hardware portfolio a relevant, differentiator, when the WAN world is going software-defined?

With its IBN initiative, Cisco has significantly inverted its development model to be a software led model first with user experience as a key focus area.

The Catalyst 8000 family includes the Catalyst 8000V Edge Software, a virtual platform for anyone that wants to deploy Cisco routing as a virtual network function (VNF) on a general-purpose hardware or in cloud deployments. For environments outside of cloud, our customers, however, prefer a customized solution from Cisco to deliver software innovations for better performance, scale, security, reliability, and flexibility.

High-end aggregation deployments need performance and scale which cannot be fulfilled with a general-purpose CPU architecture. Cisco’s investment in the custom ASIC (QuantumFlow Processor 3.0) allows us to deliver industry leading performance, SD-WAN tunnel scale, and 40/100G interfaces in a compact, one rack unit form factor for the Catalyst 8500 Series Edge Platforms.

In keeping with the industry trend, Cisco’s access portfolio leverages an x86 architecture that gives us flexibility to run containerized services, while also providing the choice of connectivity and flexibility much needed in a global deployment. The new Catalyst 8300 Series Edge Platforms provide 70+ different interface choices including network interface cards, cellular interface cards, voice modules (industry’s only SD-WAN solution that offers support for IP telephony), switch modules, service modules as well as an edge compute module to host local apps and service VNFs. This flexibility is much needed in customer environments to address a variety of deployment needs.

The hard reality of today’s deployments are that most SD-WAN vendors focus on the software functions of building WAN overlays but have been missing out on addressing the underlay needs – variety of interfaces, transport choices with associated protocols, performance, scale, flexibility to add services. Thus, these solutions often end up becoming an add on to an existing Cisco router for the underlay. This adds cost to the overall solution which is often missed in the analysis.

In closing, with the Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms Family, we are helping you adapt to the requirements of the new WAN edge and providing another foundational piece of our intent-based network strategy that spans every domain of the network — campus, branch, WAN and DC/cloud.  ​The Catalyst 8000 family is the best-in-class platform for SASE, SD-WAN, and 5G in the future; built to address today’s most pressing WAN edge issues, and flexible enough to tackle the challenges of tomorrow.

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300-715 Exam Practice Questions | Cisco CCNP Security Exam Info

 

Cisco SISE Exam Description:

The Implementing and Configuring Cisco Identity Services Engine v1.0 (SISE 300-715) exam is a 90-minute exam associated with the CCNP Security, and Cisco Certified Specialist - Security Identity Management Implementation certifications. This exam tests a candidate's knowledge of Cisco Identify Services Engine, including architecture and deployment, policy enforcement, Web Auth and guest services, profiler, BYOD, endpoint compliance, and network access device administration. The course, Implementing and Configuring Cisco Identity Services Engine, helps candidates to prepare for this exam.

Cisco 300-715 Exam Overview:

• Exam Name- Implementing and Configuring Cisco Identity Services Engine
• Exam Number- 300-715 SISE
• Exam Price- $300 USD
• Duration- 90 minutes
• Number of Questions- 55-65
• Passing Score- Variable (750-850 / 1000 Approx.)
• Recommended Training- Implementing and Configuring Cisco Identity Services Engine (SISE)
• Exam Registration- PEARSON VUE
• Sample Questions- Cisco 300-715 Sample Questions
• Practice Exam- Cisco Certified Network Professional Security Practice Test.

Related Article:-

• Avail CCNP Security 300-715 SISE Certification to Enhance Your Career

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EDR. NDR? XDR! … is it more than just marketing?

As is often true with new security concepts, vendors are quickly adopting the new terminology to showcase their products’ capabilities. This is where things get confusing and tricky. Some vendors are using XDR (Extended Detection & Response) as a marketing strategy for their existing EDR (Endpoint Detection & Response) or NDR (Network Detection & Response) products, others are launching new products or just rebranding existing products explicitly as “XDR”. Some vendors have built both EDR and NDR, others sell one and partner for the other — yet both approaches claim to be XDR. With the same term being used in multiple ways it can be hard for buyers to understand what XDR actually requires and the security outcomes that should be achieved by it.

So, we want to cut through the noise and provide some clarity on XDR:

◉ Understand the needs driving XDR adoption

◉ Explore Gartner’s definition of the category

◉ Learn how Cisco delivers XDR use cases with our solutions

◉ Discover ways to start your XDR journey

Get the details in our eBook

10 ways Cisco delivers XDR capabilities today

Here’s a sneak peek into 3 of the 10 use cases. Click on the images to see in greater detail.

Use Case #2: Reduced detection times

Detect even subtle or hidden attacks via insider, unknown, or encrypted threats:

Use Case #3: Enriched alerts

Enriched alerts with cross-product context that streamline operations due to the simplicity, visibility, and lowest false positive rates:

Use Case #4: Root Cause Analysis

Visualized root cause analysis from execution to access, lateral movement to exfiltration, and more:

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