Our Progress Towards Powering an Inclusive Recovery for All

At Cisco, our purpose is to Power an Inclusive Future for All. And in response to the realities of the past year, this must also mean powering an inclusive recovery for all, with the help of our government partners, customers, partners, communities, and employees. Throughout the pandemic, we’ve put our purpose in action – keeping people working, learning, receiving healthcare, and governing during quarantine and as they return to their workplace. With millions of people – doctors, patients, students, teachers, parents, workers, government leaders, and citizens – facing a new reality and relying on Cisco for all parts of their lives, I want to share the progress we’ve made in making this recovery an inclusive one.

We quickly understood that this wasn’t only a public health crisis, but the greatest disruptor of the way that we work and live in a century. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have contributed over $500 million in cash and technologies plus $2.5 billion in financing for COVID response that has led to remarkable achievements.

Partnering with Governments and Communities Around the World to Meet the Moment

For the past six years, Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) Program has developed strategic partnerships with governments across the globe, and the trust that was built along the way enabled us to quickly evaluate, fund, and execute 70 projects on six continents to help governments respond to the pandemic’s challenges.

Innovating and Accelerating Digital Governments.

The ability for governments to work remotely was essential to leading their citizens through this crisis, as was delivering public services in new and innovative ways.

◉ We quickly understood that legislatures around the world needed new ways to hold hearings, vote, caucus, and meet with constituents. For example, Webex enabled the United States Congress to hold critical hearings and meetings remotely and to do so in a hybrid environment. To date, the House of Representatives and Senate have held more than 8,500 meetings and hearings on Webex. We also worked with a Cisco partner out of Ireland – Davra – to develop Legislate for Webex, a specialized solution designed for legislative bodies.

◉ In Brazil, our partnership with the National Council of Justice allowed us to quickly ensure citizens across the country would still have access tothe judicial system. We built a virtual courtroom, provided collaboration technology, and conducted trainings for lawyers, judges, and other court  Thousands of witness interviews, meetings, evidence sharing, hearings, and judgment sessions have been held on our Webex-powered solution.

Powering Telemedicine’s Big Moment.

Empowering healthcare workers on the frontlines with Cisco technology has been pivotal in the fight against COVID-19.

◉ In South Africa, we worked with our partners to develop and deploy mobile medical trolleys for the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere, Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. Equipped with our collaboration technology, newer doctors and nurses were able to quickly consult with and learn from veteran physicians to best care for a growing number of patients.

◉ In the United Arab Emirates, we’re using our technology to extend telehealth into patients’ homes. Our creation of the teleMEDCARE app for iOS and Android gives patients access to virtual doctors’ appointments via their mobile phones, allowing them to receive the healthcare they need from anywhere and reduce trips to a hospital.

Providing Support for Teachers, Students, and Schools.

Many of us parents know all too well how the pandemic created new challenges for our children’s education. But behind the scenes, school administrators needed to quickly upgrade their networks and find new ways to teach and learn. So we dove in to help K12 and higher education institutions adapt to distance learning.

◉ In Japan, K12 schools struggled to expand their networks to support Wi-Fi needs during the pandemic. So we worked with education partners in the GIGA School program to develop a specialized technology package that allows teachers to easily manage, monitor, and expand the network as needed in a digital classroom environment. And it’s all powered by Webex.

◉ In Germany, the University of Lübeck went from testing Webex with 100 pilot users to 2,600 students and staff using the solution in just six weeks.

Bridging the Digital Divide

All of this work through CDA serves as a reminder that the lack of reliable connectivity is a critical societal issue. Networking and collaboration are the enablers of education, of healthcare, and of the ability to receive government services. But today, nearly half of the world remains unconnected. In the US and Canada, Cisco has worked with the cities of Dallas and Toronto, the State of Arizona, and several local governments in Michigan to provide Wi-Fi access and cloud security technology to vulnerable communities. Cisco is also working to bridge the digital divide on Tribal lands. There is more work to do to close the widening digital divide and Cisco will continue our partnership across the public and private sectors to be that bridge.

Looking Ahead

Beyond the COVID-19 recovery, I continue to see so many ways that we can Power an Inclusive Future for All in the ways that we work, develop skills, and care for the planet.

Embracing and Driving the Future of Work.

This year thrust us into the workplaces of the future. And Cisco is helping develop tools that help teams work together in a hybrid world. But how can we use these tools to help us better manage our time, mental health, and create a more inclusive work experience?

Starting this summer, Webex will offer insights that increase and promote personal well-being as well as build better quality connections and a more inclusive work experience for all. Webex People Insights will enable individuals and teams to set and achieve goals for their meetings and their day. We’re excited to provide this intelligence to leaders and team members so they can better identify when time is well spent…and when it’s not.

Investing in Digital Skills to Power the Workforce of the Future.

The workforce is changing. It’s clear that people are looking for ways to build their IT skills. We see this in our own Cisco Networking Academy Program, a 20+ year program that has helped prepare more than 12.6 million individuals for the workforce of the future with trainings in networking, cybersecurity, and more. Enrollment in our free online classes – such as Intro to Cybersecurity and Intro to IoT – has more than tripled in the first two quarters of FY21 compared to the same period in FY20. Governments too are investing in digital skills and training for their citizens knowing that we’ve all fast forwarded into a digital future. An inclusive recovery includes providing these skills to all who need them. Together with our education and employment partners we’ve made a commitment to develop the workforce of the future and we are proud that citizens are using our Networking Academies as a place to learn and grow.

Playing Our Part in a Sustainable Future for All.

Digitization isn’t the only accelerator to come out of the pandemic. In Europe, for example, lawmakers are understanding that this moment for reinvention allows every industry the opportunity to have a more sustainable future. As the world’s largest provider of networking, collaboration, and security technologies, Cisco’s technologies not only help drive connectivity, productivity, and security, they also help reduce energy consumption and use of natural resources by buildings, cities, and communities.

As a company, Cisco has set ambitious goals to reduce our emissions by 60% by FY22, improve the power efficiency of our products, and commit to more sustainable packaging. We’re making good progress and will do our part to make sure that we’re helping shape a future that is inclusive, digital and green.

Optimism for an Inclusive Future for All

This past year has certainly been hard on all of us. But it’s also been a year of innovation and of thoughtfulness for the people in our lives and our neighbors around the world. It is this innovation and empathy that will continue to drive our work to ensure our recovery truly does benefit us all.

Source: cisco.com

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Initiatives to enable progress: Taking action during a global pandemic

Cisco employees continue to seek ways to make an impact, especially during this difficult time. We made this easier by doubling the number of paid days off available for employees to volunteer from five to 10 in 2020. In addition, we increased the annual match for employee giving and volunteering from US$10,000 to US$25,000. Disaster response campaigns launched to address specific crises are matched at US$10,000 per employee per campaign and do not count against the annual match limit.

In addition, Chairman and CEO Chuck Robbins challenged Cisco’s 77,000+ employees to make donations to global nonprofits supporting those most vulnerable to COVID-19, which were matched by the Cisco Foundation. Employees quickly achieved the initial goal of US$750,000 in giving and matching over a 72-hour period, raising US$3.2 million for more than 50 organizations by the end of the fiscal year.

In response to employee demand, Cisco also helped facilitate a menu of virtual volunteering options. Opportunities included translating texts for humanitarian organizations, volunteering for crisis help lines, providing résumé and job interview assistance, donating food and school supplies for children, and more.

Standing up for social justice

In fiscal 2020, Cisco pledged US$5 million in grants to social justice organizations, including nonprofits in our internal Fighting Racism and Discrimination Fund, which continues to provide employee donations and matching contributions to 16 nonprofits focused on social justice. A dynamic team, including Inclusive Communities members (Cisco’s version of EROs), is partnering with Cisco’s Community Impact team to determine how best to build long-term relationships with the nonprofits in the Fund.

Preventing homelessness and serving youth

Long-time Cisco nonprofit partner Destination: Home, a public-private partnership working to end and prevent homelessness year-round in Santa Clara County, California, proactively set up a relief fund designed to help families bridge the gap created by lost jobs during the pandemic. They received thousands of applications that all needed rapid review. Cisco volunteers helped accelerate the application review process and payment by receiving training and then reviewing the applications for funding.

Cisco also has a strong partnership with Covenant House International, an organization providing housing and supportive services to youth facing homelessness. In November 2019, hundreds of Cisco employees slept outside during the Covenant House “sleep out” in cities across the U.S. Sleep outs raise awareness about youth homelessness and funding to support Covenant House programs. During the event, Cisco employees generated over US$1.8 million in support for Covenant House through their donations and Cisco Foundation matching gifts.

In March 2020, Cisco employees helped the Young Professionals Sleep Out event go virtual, allowing communities across the U.S. to connect through a livestreamed Webex event. During the broadcast, participants learned just how difficult the COVID-19 outbreak has been for homeless youth already facing extraordinary challenges.

Through Cisco’s Next Horizon Impact initiative, Cisco Chairman and CEO Chuck Robbins brought together customers, partners, and suppliers to raise tens of thousands of dollars for people in the Bay Area experiencing homelessness as the COVID-19 crisis began. Robbins led a discussion featuring Jen Loving, CEO of Destination: Home, who shared the crisis facing the region’s most vulnerable.

Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer Francine Katsoudas led a second wave of outreach and discussion with partners and suppliers, along with CEO of Great Place to Work Michael Bush, Loving, and Covenant House California CEO Bill Bedrossian. Bush shared how companies who treat communities well differentiate themselves in the market and will lead as we build a path out of the crisis and back to a thriving economy. These conversations led to an increase in awareness and key relationships as a result of Next Horizon Impact, which will lead to more resources for the homeless community.

Global Citizen impact

Global Citizen is focused on ending extreme poverty by 2030. As Global Citizen’s technology partner, Cisco is foundational to the organization’s ability to engage millions of citizens around the world—our employees among them. In fiscal 2020, over 1200 employees took action on GlobalCitizen.org to advocate for changes in policy, legislation, and leadership behavior to address the root causes of poverty. Actions included signing a petition, sending an email, or participating in social media campaigns.

Staying Earth Aware, virtually

Cisco has observed Earth Day for many years—but we also do much more, organizing a two-month employee volunteerism and awareness campaign that we call Earth Aware. During a typical year, we invite employees to practice sustainable behaviors, like biking to work and properly sorting waste in cafeterias, and host events like on-campus farmers markets. In fiscal 2020, Earth Aware went fully online, featuring virtual presentations on living a zero-waste lifestyle, environmental justice, and cleaning local watersheds, as well as a sustainability trivia event. We even gave employees a virtual tour of the new beehives at our Research Triangle Park campus.

Earth Aware 2020 also included a virtual SustainX, our thought leadership forum on sustainability. During this annual event, we invite internal executives to share what their teams are doing to reduce their environmental impact and external speakers to discuss the innovative ways they are working to improve the environment. In fiscal 2020, leading environmentalist and author Paul Hawken shared existing strategies for drawing down carbon from the atmosphere in order to reduce global warming, and a Cisco Fellow explained how our new 8000 Series routers save significant amounts of power and materials.

Living sustainably year-round

Beyond Earth Aware, Cisco has ongoing opportunities for employees to connect with peers who share a passion for sustainability—and make changes in their lives and in the workplace. Cisco Green is a hub on our internal social media site that enables employees to learn about Cisco’s environmental sustainability activities. It provides links to programs, information, and other tools. For those looking to connect with others, Cisco GreenHouse is an interactive sustainability web platform that helps Cisco employees find likeminded peers worldwide who want to lead more sustainable lives. As a core program featured in Community Impact, Cisco GreenHouse was promoted on the companywide digital portal and more than doubled its active users.

Promoting circular business models

Another way Cisco contributes to sustainability is by helping advance the circular economy. To grow awareness and inspire employees to contribute to Cisco’s circular economy transformation, we publish a quarterly circular economy newsletter, manage a circular economy Webex Teams space, and provide other opportunities to engage throughout the year. In fiscal 2020, we hosted two employee webinars on topics related to circular operations and circular design and launched an internal website with case studies on the Cisco Circular Design Principles. We also regularly convene extended team members and other internal stakeholders through a variety of workgroups, including the Circular Design Working Group, the Circular Economy Regional Leader Network, and the Circular Economy Sales Champion Network.

Connecting employees to how products are made

Launched in fiscal 2020, the Cisco Responsible Sourcing campaign is raising internal awareness of our commitment to source products ethically and sustainably. One element of the campaign is our Champions of Sustainability, a recognition program that highlights the people behind responsible sourcing at Cisco across our Supply Chain Operations and Global Procurement Services. The champions demonstrate a shared commitment to sustainability and drive social and environmental responsibility in how we source goods and services.

We also developed a supply chain human rights training to raise awareness and educate employees on how they can help follow through on our human rights commitments. More than 2400 employees have taken the training, including employees in supply chain operations, customer experience, enterprise networking, and cloud.

Source: cisco.com

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2021 Security Outcomes Study: Timely Incident Response as a Business Enabler

Cybersecurity has a set of starting signals as well, but they differ in one aspect. In the event of a cybersecurity event, the team responsible for incident response is not the initial actor. Incident response is based on the same readiness as a world-class performer; however, incident responders only start (metaphorically) after the rest of the horses have left the gate. Absent the catalyst, an active responder would be entirely out of place. This makes the cybersecurity professional the second player in a nail-biting competition.

Cybersecurity as a first responder

One could posit that a cybersecurity incident responder is no different than any other first responder, such as a law-enforcement officer, or a firefighter. This is true, but only in a limited sense. As with all things in the virtual realm, the unseen can be much harder to respond to than a physical event. For example, a firefighter has a much easier time locating a fire than a security analyst has of locating the source of a breach. Indicators of compromise can sometimes be quite ephemeral.

Similar to other first responders, a cybersecurity incident responder must be ready at all times to jump into action at the earliest sign of a problem. The key to a successful, versus a failed incident response, is timeliness.

Timely incident response as a business enabler

Cisco’s Security Outcomes Study addresses the topic of timely incident response. By interviewing 4,800 security professionals, the importance of timely incident response became a clear gauge, not only of security success, but also business enablement. In fact, timely incident response ranked higher than vulnerability remediation deadlines.

The report emphasizes this finding, by stating succinctly:

It may seem odd at first to see incident response (IR) listed as a top business enabler. But IR isn’t just about putting out fires and cleaning up the mess. It’s ultimately about handling unexpected events with minimal impact to the business.

If you work in an environment where everything comes to a halt at the announcement of a vulnerability, and the subsequent deployment of the corrective patch, this finding is transformative. It contemplates the idea that disrupting the business operations to apply patches should perhaps take a secondary role to the ability to respond to an active exploit. This is important, as security is often seen as something that hinders the flow of business, rather than an enabling force. However, incident response, and specifically timely incident response, does not just become a new title that can be slapped onto the front door of the Security Operations Center. Incident response is a discipline, with specific phases, and approaches.

The six stages of incident response

In incident response parlance, there are six classic stages: prepare, identify, contain, eradicate, recover, and lessons learned. (It is fair to note that there are variations on this, but the general rules are all aligned along the same track.)

Which phase would you consider the most important? Consolidation to the most important is probably not the point, as that logic creates a whirlpool of conflicting interests that may be distracting towards the full goal. For instance, while preparation is a primary concern, one can never prepare for everything. The identification phase includes scoping, which is often not performed to the fullest extent that it should be, which introduces quite a number of problems, and the intentions are never realized. This becomes an exercise in circular logic, which is merely a time waster.

When you consider why a musical, or athletic performance is so transfixing, or why we all stop to watch first responders in action, it may be because we are mesmerized by the effortlessness through which these people carry out their tasks. That is the result of constant training. The most important part of incident response is reducing the dwell-time of attackers through early detection, and that, like all other aspects of the kill chain comes through practice.

Incident response is part of a complete security strategy

Timely incident response as a business enabler is surprising, and even more telling is that, among the respondents of the Security Outcomes Study, incident response also ranked highly on the list of components that contribute to a host of other progressive security initiatives, including:

◉ Overall security program success

◉ Creating a strong security culture

◉ Managing top risks

◉ Regulatory compliance

◉ Security cost-effectiveness

Security, and all of IT is often considered a cost center, meaning that it does not generate revenues. However, if we look at cybersecurity as a cost-avoidance strategy, timely incident response takes on an entirely new level of importance. One of the best metrics to demonstrate that money is well-spent in an organization is through the reduction of wasted effort that is wasted. The Security Outcomes Study indicates that there is a high correlation between a successful security program via minimizing wasted effort and timely incident response.

Security readiness is achieved through planning, practice, and continuous improvement. One of the newest components of a solid security program is incident response. It is important to note that disaster recovery is part of a response effort. However, as threats advance, incident response is rising as a leader towards a more complete security strategy.

Sadly, not all organizations are fully invested in the idea of the value of incident response. Nearly 40% of our interviewees designated that their organization did not embrace the importance of timely incident response. Given the other indicators in the report, we can only hope that this trend diminishes over time.

Incident response is not an easy task to accomplish. Imagine if you were able reduce incident response time by up to 85% with a coordinated defense to fully expose, contain, and resolve threats and vulnerabilities. Cisco Secure Endpoint simplifies investigation allowing you to get to the root cause of the incident fast, accelerating remediation.

And what’s more, the threat response feature of Cisco SecureX leverages an integrated security architecture that automates integrations across Cisco Security products to simplify threat investigations and responses. Saving you time and effort by speeding up investigations significantly and allowing you to take corrective action immediately.

Source: cisco.com

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Improving Application Experience with Full-Stack Observability

In the not-too-distant past, everything in the application and networking stack was under IT’s control. Workloads lived securely in the on-premise data center—people sat in their campus offices connected to the secure wireless network, and an MPLS service with an SLA connected branch offices to the data center.

Today, workforce productivity depends on cloud and SaaS applications that often rely on the public cloud infrastructure, which in turn depends on the internet as part or all of the WAN connectivity which in turn depends on a multitude of ISPs, CDNs and advanced network services. Hybrid and native clouds applications are mostly containerized, so performance can be affected by the communication paths among the microservices, both in the data center and cloud. The total application experience as perceived by the workforce is dependent on the performance of all the components of applications and network connections acting in concert. If one element falters, the whole experience can be impacted.

NetOps and DevOps need to understand the interdependencies among the component applications and tune the enterprise network and internet paths accordingly. A unifying view can only be provided by the network fabric that monitors and analyzes the full stack of interlacing components: from the foundational network data layer to the software-defined WAN to application containers in the cloud. With the workforce accessing applications from literally everywhere, all the time, IT requires pervasive, real-time monitoring of network, internet, and application performance with auto-healing capabilities. This is Full-Stack Observability, driven by software-defined controllers and network analytics that enable ​action, policy, and automation.

Observability Begins with a Deep Historical View

To improve application experience, IT needs tools to record, analyze, and report on network and application activity at a massive scale to build a deep historical data set against which to apply AI and Machine Reasoning tools. Hybrid and cloud applications consist of multiple micro-components connected by east-west traffic in the data center or cloud service. Continuous monitoring and analysis are needed to optimize application experience because many inter-application communication issues are transitory and difficult to replicate. Application performance needs to be recorded for machine analysis to determine recurring issues and root causes. Full Stack Observability from the perspective of the application requires:

◉ Application end-user experience as measured by ThousandEyes, NetFlow, or AppDynamics;

◉ Dependency graph to the underlying composite application services and infrastructures;

◉ Comprehensive availability and performance data on each of the supporting components such as composite application services, public cloud services, ISPs, networking devices, compute and storage infrastructure.

The irony of having mountains of telemetry and activity logs awaiting analysis by overworked IT teams is that there is too much noise in too much data for humans to deal with in a timely manner. When the volume of data is beyond human scale and below human sensitvity, machine reasoning (MR) automates the analysis of trillions of bytes of switch and router telemetry, wireless radio fingerprints, and network access point interferences to uncover patterns in the chaos, and turn the findings into actionable insights and automated mitigation actions.

Automated Observability with AI Nework Analytics

To make full use of the deep historical and real-time data, IT can take advantage of an Analytics Stack that can:

◉ Use purpose-built applications to augment human engineers in NetSecOps with Insights into network performance and security vulnerabilities

◉ Leverage machine-speed analytics and knowledgebase-driven Machine Reasoning Engine (MRE) to unburden NetSecOps from mundane monitoring tasks to focus on proactive digital transformation projects with DevOps.

◉ Achieve massive collection, storage, and parsing of diverse data lakes—collections of anonymized network and application telemetry based on volume, velocity, and variety of data to compare performance and security metrics.

For several decades, Cisco has been building a data lake of worldwide, anonymized customer telemetry in parallel with a knowledgebase of expert troubleshooting experience, both of which are available to machine reasoning algorithms under the command and control of Cisco DNA Center. With Cisco AI Network Analytics, NetOps can, for example, be forewarned of increases in Wi-Fi interference, network bottlenecks, uneven device onboarding times, and office traffic loads in the more traditional data center and campus network environments.

Observability for cloud-based applications, however, needs a different approach as much of the application infrastructure is not under direct control of IT. Direct internet connections to clouds can be unreliable—especially for latency-sensitive applications—unless they are monitored and automatically tuned using cloud onramps.

Observability into Cisco Cloud OnRamps for each of the major cloud services—Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud, as well as colocation, and SaaS platforms—provides the ability to monitor and set performance parameters that are automatically applied to maintain the proper quality of service based on the type of application and cloud provider. Paths are calculated by tracking characteristics including packet loss, latency, and jitter in the data plane tunnels among cloud workloads and edge devices. Cisco AppDynamics and ThousandEyes provide application layer observability for inter-cloud and intra-cloud dynamics that enables NetOps and DevOps to monitor and identify factors affecting application experience.

Network Analytics + Software-Driven Controllers = Full Stack Observability

AI Network Analytics working in conjunction with Software-Driven Controllers enables Full Stack Observability. Operational intents and security policies defined in software-driven controllers are compared with telemetry and operational anomalies detected by an MRE to automatically adjust operations or isolate rogue devices. Always-on AI Analytics watch over the distributed workforce and workloads at machine-speed, making automatic adjustments or sending alerts with suggested remediations to appropriate levels of IT personnel or to SIEM applications to log and kickoff trouble tickets. Over time, NetOps and DevOps can fine-tune application performance using a consistent flow of insights from analytics to adapt to changes in workloads, workforce, and workplace.

The next shift is using AI and MRE to “personalized” recommendations on updates and patches for controllers. Upgrading controllers carries a certain risk given the complexity and many differences among existing network configurations. Knowing in advance what affect an update can have—and even if it applies to the existing configuration—can bring peace of mind to the process. Does a specific configuration warrant a patch if that issue is not relevant? If not, then there is no reason to force an update that is not required. Are controllers running an OS version with active PSIRT vulnerabilities? NetOps is alerted to put a higher priority on upgrading those specific controllers. Automation and observability go hand in hand to make operation teams more efficient so they can spend time on more valuable tasks.

Observability Provides Operational Simplicity and Serviceability

Full stack observability is the foundation of a new network and security operating model that ensures application experience and trust. The ultimate outcome of attaining full-stack observability is to make all the operations teams—NetOps, SecOps, DevOps and CloudOps—able to work together to raise the levels of serviceability across the application infrastructure. Automations that support full-stack observability simplify operations as well by eliminating many of the time-consuming and tedious tasks of network monitoring and troubleshooting.

Source: cisco.com

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How Agility Has Become The Ultimate Superpower For IT

Many CIOs and IT professionals are feeling between a rock and hard place right now, battling the disruption caused by the global pandemic while facing immense pressure to accelerate their digital journeys.

Yet out of the crucible of these opposing forces, remarkable opportunities have emerged, along with new learnings and new innovations.

I recently had the pleasure of moderating a roundtable discussion with the CIOs of three large customers. I also spoke with two of my colleagues — Jeetu Patel, SVP and GM of Cisco’s Security and Applications business, and Todd Nightingale, SVP and GM of Cisco’s Enterprise Networking and Cloud business.

The disruption our CIOs faced was unprecedented. In the early days of the pandemic, one of them — a large health care system in northeastern United States — sent 1,000 back-office employees home within the space of a week. Many had never worked remotely before. Even today, only about 25 staff members are allowed back on site at any given time. And with 75 percent of workers set to remain remote, there appears to be no going back to the old ways.

Another, from a federal government department in Australia with responsibilities including immigration and customs border policy kicked off 2020 with the triple-whammy of massive wildfires, freak hailstorms, and the pandemic. With travel plummeting, the agency faced steep declines in revenue, even as the number of people accessing its network remotely soared from 500 to 20,000. This CIO’s team was asked to do more with less — and quicker.

Our third CIO — from a multinational technology company — said business continuity shot to the No.1 priority as markets went into lockdown. In India, that meant 200,000 people going remote almost overnight. This meant beefing up the network and VPN to keep mission-critical processes up and running.

Todd Nightingale said much of his focus is on ensuring our customers’ infrastructure is ready for these types of massive transitions. That means pushing critical resources, systems and functions to the cloud — such as Cisco’s Webex collaboration platform — and making them available everywhere, whether people are working from home, at critical sites or walking down the street.

“There’s this real need for everything we could have done from an office to now be doable from anywhere,” Todd said. “It’s an amazing transformation and it’s driving a ton of what we do.”

Jeetu Patel, who oversees our Webex collaboration platform, said that a major focus is providing digital experiences that are 10 times better than in-person interactions. For example, the new noise reduction feature in Webex, courtesy of Cisco’s BabbleLabs acquisition, eliminates the need for phrases like “Can you put yourself on mute?” or “Can you stop typing, please?”

Advice for becoming future-ready

Our CIOs stressed the importance of thinking outside the box, as well as upgrading talent to be ready for the huge opportunities they see emerging post-pandemic. For example, contact tracing is an opportunity to bring IoT (Internet of Things) to life. Given the vast amounts of data that will be collected, it’s also a time to think about security differently — not just as a function, but as a mindset.

They also cited four success factors for achieving greater resilience: agility, scalability, speed, and innovation. Among their recommendations: embracing the concept of the MVP (minimum viable product), rapid innovation, flattening organizational structures, and creating task forces.

Cisco’s Todd Nightingale said that the pandemic showed organizations how fast they can move if they need to, calling agility “the ultimate superpower for IT.” Agility is the core value driving Cisco’s focus on providing a “cloud onramp” through our platforms strategy.

Equally vital to agility, said Todd, is Cisco’s cloud automation strategy, which helps organizations transform their infrastructure “with a few clicks.” He also stressed the importance of monitoring network and application performance in order to ensure the best user experience. Cisco’s recent acquisition of ThousandEyes is critical to this, as it extends our end-to-end visibility capability into networks our users don’t necessarily own.

My closing message for the roundtable was this: Disruption is here to stay. Acceleration of digitalization is inevitable — we have to do it. And in many ways, the technology is the easy part. The hard part is breaking down the barriers to be able to respond with the required speed and agility. In that sense, the pandemic has actually helped organizations move faster, innovate more quickly and face into disruptions. The opportunities are here — it’s up to us to seize them.

Source: cisco.com

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New Cisco 500-450 Exam: UCCEIS Sample Questions | UCCEIS Exam Info

Cisco UCCEIS Exam Description:

This exam tests a candidate's knowledge of installing and deploying Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (Cisco Unified CCE) solutions. Cisco Unified CCE is part of the Cisco Unified Communications application suite, which delivers intelligent call routing, network-to-desktop computer telephony integration (CTI), and multichannel contact management to contact center agents over an IP network. Skills assessed include install, setup, configure, and troubleshoot the solution.

Cisco 500-450 Exam Overview:

• Exam Name:- Implementing and Supporting Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise
• Exam Number:- 500-450 UCCEIS
• Exam Price:- $300 USD
• Duration:- 75 minutes
• Number of Questions:- 65-75
• Passing Score:- Variable (750-850 / 1000 Approx.)
• Recommended Training:-
• Administering Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise Part 1 (AUCCE1) 2.0
• Administering Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise Part 2 (AUCCE2) 2.0
• Deploying Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (DUCCE) 2.0
• Exam Registration:- PEARSON VUE
• Sample Questions:- Cisco 500-450 Sample Questions
• Practice Exam:- Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise Specialist Practice Test

Related Article:-

Passing Cisco 500-450 UCCEIS Exam is Now Easy in First Attempt

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Threat Trends: DNS Security, Part 2

Part 2: Industry trends

In our Threat Trends blog series, we attempt to provide insight into the prevalent trends on the threat landscape. Our goal in giving you the latest info on these trends is that you’ll be better prepared to allocate security resources to where they’re needed most.

Knowing the larger trends can help in this pursuit, particularly when it comes to the most common threat types. This is what we covered in part one of this Threat Trends release on DNS Security, using data from Cisco Umbrella, our cloud-native security service.

However, different industries sometimes have different levels of exposure to certain threat types. For example, those in the financial services industry may see more activity around information stealers; others in manufacturing may be more likely to encounter ransomware.

This is what we’re going to cover in part two. We’ll focus on specific industries, looking at two things: the top threat categories they face, and the categories that they’re more likely to encounter when compared to other industries. In this way, you’ll be better armed knowing which threats you’re more likely to encounter within your industry.

As in part one, we’ll be looking at data covering the calendar year of 2020. This time we’ll be comparing yearly totals of DNS traffic to malicious sites, by industry. While we do this, we’ll occasionally drill down to the monthly level, or look at endpoint data, to highlight items of interest. All of this gives us a window into the categories of threats that generate the most traffic for various organizations.

So, without further ado, and in no particular order, here are the industry trends:

Technology

The vast majority of DNS traffic in the Technology sector—the sector involving the development and/or distribution of technological goods and services—can be attributed to two categories: cryptomining and phishing. These two categories alone accounted for 70 percent of the traffic for organizations in this sector.

Unsurprisingly, the Technology sector saw far more cryptomining traffic than any other industry. While much of this activity can be attributed to bad actors, it’s possible that more knowledge surrounding cryptocurrencies could lead workers in this field to attempt to install miners on their company computers, triggering DNS blocks in Umbrella due to company policy violations. In comparison, Financial Services—an industry where workers are more likely aware of the risks of running cryptomining software on company devices—had one of the lowest levels.

Interestingly, the Technology sector saw the second-highest level of ransomware-related traffic, primarily driven by attacks involving Sodinobiki and Ryuk. However, the incredibly high proportion of cryptomining pushed the overall percentage down, coming in a six percent. trojan activity was also high, given that Emotet and Trickbot were used to distribute Ryuk, as previously discussed in part one.

Financial Services

Phishing resulted in the highest levels of malicious DNS traffic in the Financial Services sector. In fact, this sector saw 60 percent more phishing than the next-closest sector, Higher Education. It’s possible that this sector is targeted by attackers through phishing more often than others simply because of its proximity to many bad actor’s end goal: money.

Supporting this idea is the fact that the Financial Services sector also saw more information-stealing threats than any other industry. While not known to generate high volumes of DNS traffic (only 2 percent), Financial Services saw five times as much traffic in this category than any other industry.

Financial Services also saw the second-highest amount of traffic in a number of categories, such as trojans, botnets, and remote access trojans (RATs). The breadth of malicious traffic seen in this industry could speak to how attractive a target it is to bad actors.

Healthcare

The Healthcare industry saw more trojans than any other sector, as well as higher numbers of droppers. Most of the trojan-based activity can be attributed to Emotet, as healthcare organizations were hit hard by the threat in 2020. Close to seven out of every ten trojans seen within the healthcare sector was Emotet. Throw Emotet’s close cousin Trickbot into the mix, you’re looking at 83 percent of all trojan-related traffic.

It likely comes as no surprise that ransomware also made its presence known within the Healthcare sector. Ryuk was particularly active, no doubt associated with the high activity surrounding Emotet. The Healthcare sector was also narrowly edged out of the second-highest place for ransomware, coming in only 1.5 percent lower in overall DNS traffic.

Manufacturing

Like the Technology sector, cryptomining activity was also high in the Manufacturing industry. It saw roughly half the activity seen in the Technology sector, but interestingly, there were almost three times as many endpoints in the Manufacturing sector involved in cryptomining. In short, more machines resulting in less DNS activity leads us to believe these endpoints were less powerful when compared to those in the Technology sector. It’s possible that the machines compromised are involved in the manufacturing process itself, even IoT related. In these cases, cryptomining would likely have been slower, but could still impact production speeds.

It turns out that the Manufacturing sector is also the most likely to be impacted by ransomware. This industry saw almost as much ransomware-related traffic as the next two closest industries combined (Technology and Healthcare). This appears to be a clear indication the industry is regularly targeted by bad actors, likely through big game hunting and the potential payout bad actors could receive.

Higher Education

The COVID-19 pandemic closed campuses worldwide in 2020. As classes moved remote, many malicious activities that would have been blocked on campus would have occurred on student’s home networks. This resulted in drop-offs in malicious activity for this sector in many categories from March onwards, and much lower overall numbers in 2020 than in previous years.

That’s not to say that activity dropped off a cliff, as certain activities that would require access to campus resources did register their share of DNS activity. For instance, phishing activity managed to put Higher Education in second place when comparing across industries. Cryptomining outfits also frequently target the Higher Education sector in an attempt to siphon off computing resources, or student-discounted cloud computing credits, to run their miners.

Government

Of the industries that we’ve examined, the Government sector appears to be the most evenly distributed across the top categories highlighted in part one of this series (Phishing, Cryptomining, Ransomware, and Trojans). The Government sector even saw a fairly even distribution for each of these categories when looking at them month-on-month.

The sole exception to this trend was cryptomining, which saw low numbers in the first three quarters of the year, only to jump in October as cryptocurrency values reached a high for the year and continued to climb. However, the month-on-month numbers didn’t fluctuate through the last quarter of the year, remaining at largely the same elevated level each month.

Preventing successful attacks

As mentioned earlier, the data used to show these trends comes from Cisco Umbrella, our cloud delivered security service that includes DNS security, secure web gateway, firewall, and cloud access security broker (CASB) functionality, and threat intelligence. The malicious activity shown here was stopped in its tracks by Umbrella.

Umbrella combines multiple security functions into one solution, so you can extend protection to devices, remote users, and distributed locations anywhere. Umbrella is the easiest way to effectively protect your users everywhere in minutes.

Picking your battles

There is no doubt that examining trends on threat landscape can reap benefits. Knowing where attacks are occurring can make it easier to decide where to dedicate your resources to defend against them. Cryptomining and phishing are commonly seen these days, as are trojans like Emotet and Trickbot, used to deploy ransomware such as Ryuk.

Of course, different sectors are impacted by different threats in different ways, so it helps to understand the specific trends surrounding the sector you find yourself within. For instance, it would be wise for someone in the Financial Services sector to keep a close eye on phishing trends, while someone in the Manufacturing sector may want to take a closer look at ransomware.

Ultimately designing a defensive strategy combining the larger trends and those of your specific industry, can bring you a long way towards protecting your assets.

Methodology

We’ve followed the same overall methodology in this blog that we did in part one, with a few changes in representation. Pie charts are based off DNS query traffic to malicious sites. Any category comprising more than one percent of traffic for a particular industry is represented in the charts. All categories below one percent are combined into the ‘All Others’ group in the charts.

Source: cisco.com

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