Enhancing the China TAC Partner Enablement Program with Cisco Black Belt Academy

At Cisco, we believe in assisting our Partners 360 degrees during the entire sales lifecycle. Hence equal weight is provided to Cisco Black Belt trainings that enable our partners on Sell and Deploy, as well as post-Sales Support around our latest Cisco solutions.

Cisco Black Belt Academy offers role-based enablement to various Partner roles in a digital and scalable way without any cost. These trainings equip Cisco partners to deliver successful outcomes for our joint customers while improving customer satisfaction that leads to business stickiness.

Two years ago, the Greater China Partner Enablement team along with Greater China TAC collaborated with Black Belt Academy to up skill Greater China Partners. They were able to effectively troubleshoot customer issues themselves, resulting in reduced TAC volume along with SE post-sales efforts. The joint collaboration has created wonderful results along with many firsts in last two years that other regions can now replicate as a best practice.

During the period, Greater China TAC held a total of 13 troubleshooting sessions, welcomed more than 1100 participants, and the Black Belt team developed 12 Mandarin Learning Maps. These learning maps are designed to up skill partners’ technical expertise across Cisco Data Center, Enterprise Networking, Collaboration and Security products, as well as help the partners accelerate time to value and advance their competitive edge.

It was a true win win:

◉ Greater China Partners – Become self-dependent in troubleshooting low- to medium-complexity customer issues without opening a TAC SR every time, leading to lesser resolution time and higher customer satisfaction

◉ Greater China Partner Organization – Gets to leverage Black Belt engine to provide enablement on-demand and at scale to Greater China partners, free of cost

◉ Black Belt Academy – Gets ready-to-use Mandarin content to include in our Black Belt learning maps, which is the latest information and comes straight from the TAC SMEs

◉ Greater China TAC – Gets lesser low-complexity cases to handle from Partners with Partner Support Services (PSS) contracts, reducing unnecessary case volume

Black Belt Support tracks assist Cisco Partners in managing and troubleshooting the latest Cisco technologies. With the right training, partners can effectively help and support our customers in managing their Cisco Solutions.

Source: cisco.com

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Cisco Innovation for Payment Solutions

No matter what century you research, you’ll find innovative people doing things to make everyday life easier. Think of the Roman Aqueducts built more than two thousand years ago to move fresh water into the more populated areas. Or, consider the Wright Brothers in 1905 inventing their first powered aircraft that could sustain both flight and navigation.

These examples made life easier for the people at the time and for those who came afterward. At Cisco, our renewed focus on supporting Small and Midsize Businesses has given us a drive to also make it easier for them to take full ownership of how they pay for their Cisco hardware, software, and services over time.

Cisco Capital

Cisco Capital, through Cisco, offers partners and customers flexible payment solutions in how they purchase the needed tech to achieve the business outcomes they want. We never want budget to hold you back from getting the Cisco technology to help your business thrive.

Cisco Capital solutions help you:

1. Bundle everything from hardware to services into a single payment

2. Spread payments over time with less cash up front required

3. Simplify your software license purchases

4. Lock in costs, including renewals, for multi-year service agreements

Flexible Payment Solutions

There are multiple choices for how customers can pay for their solutions. From lifecycle management, consumption models, to traditional leasing or loans, there’s a financing solution that will best suit your budget needs. For our Small and Midsize Businesses, there is one that I’d like to feature.

Cisco Easy Pay

Through Cisco Easy Pay, customers can spread their expenses for Cisco hardware, software, and services over time into a single, predictable payment. Cisco Easy Pay enables customers to:

◉ Spread payments over 3 to 5 years

◉ Enhance cash flow and save capital

◉ Access to below market rates

◉ Provide full ownership of the equipment at the end of the term

For partners, Cisco Easy Pay lets you provide customers with a competitive, low-rate payment solution. This allows you to streamline selling motions with an offer that is easy to understand and manage. Lack of capital or budget no longer needs to hold customers back from accessing the right hardware, software, and services they need. With no upfront costs, customers can invest in other business priorities, innovate sooner, and accelerate their IT projects.

Source: cisco.com

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10 Solid Reasons to Pass Cisco 300-735 SAUTO Exam

One of the certifications offered by Cisco, known as the Cisco Certified DevNet Specialist - Security Automation and Programmability certification, is connected to the 300-735 exam. This exam is included in the Cisco Certified DevNet Professional qualifications. Opting for this test is wise because it assesses your expertise in creating advanced security solutions for networks. Successfully passing the 300-735 SAUTO exam will immediately grant you a specialist-level certification. Regarding professional-level qualifications, Cisco advises candidates to have three to five years of experience implementing security solutions or software development.

The 300-735 SAUTO exam, also known as the Automating and Programming Cisco Security Solutions exam, has a duration of 90 minutes and is linked to several certifications, including CCNP Security, Cisco Certified DevNet Professional, and Cisco Certified DevNet Specialist - Security Automation and Programmability. This exam evaluates a candidate’s understanding and ability to implement automated security solutions. It covers the following topics:

• Network Programmability Foundation (10%)
• Network Security (35%)
• Advanced Threat & Endpoint Security (30%)
• Cloud, Web, and Email Security (25%)

Reasons to Pass Cisco 300-735 SAUTO Exam

Cisco certifications are highly valued in the industry, and passing the 300-735 SAUTO exam can open up numerous opportunities for you. Let’s explore some benefits of passing this exam and how it can enhance your professional journey.

1. Unlock New Career Opportunities

One of the significant advantages of passing the Cisco 300-735 SAUTO exam is the potential to unlock new career opportunities. This certification demonstrates your expertise in implementing Cisco’s automation solutions. Many organizations across the globe rely on Cisco technologies, and having the skills to automate their networks can make you an invaluable asset to them. Passing this exam can lead to job roles such as network automation engineer, network architect, or automation consultant.

2. Stay Ahead in the Evolving Networking Landscape

Networking is continuously evolving, and automation is becoming an integral part of it. Passing the CCNP Security 300-735 SAUTO exam proves that you possess the knowledge and skills required to work with modern network automation technologies. This certification ensures that you stay updated with the latest trends in the networking industry and empowers you to implement automation solutions effectively. As businesses increasingly adopt automation to streamline their operations, your expertise will be in high demand.

3. Enhance Your Technical Skills

Preparing for the Cisco 300-735 SAUTO exam requires a deep understanding of network automation concepts, tools, and technologies. As you study for this exam, you will develop a strong foundation in automation frameworks, protocols, APIs, and scripting languages like Python. These technical skills are not only valuable for passing the exam but also for your professional growth. They equip you to tackle real-world networking challenges, automate repetitive tasks, and optimize network performance, making you a proficient networking professional.

4. Validate Your Expertise

Cisco certifications are widely recognized and respected in the industry. By passing the CCNP Security 300-735 SAUTO exam, you validate your expertise and proficiency in network automation. This certification proves your skills to potential employers and clients, giving you a competitive edge. It demonstrates your commitment to continuous learning and professional development, making you a trusted professional.

5. Join the Cisco Certified Community

Becoming certified in Cisco technologies opens the door to a vast community of networking professionals. By passing the CCNP Security 300-735 SAUTO exam, you become part of the Cisco-certified community, which offers various benefits. You gain access to exclusive resources, forums, and events where you can engage with experts and like-minded professionals. This community provides opportunities for networking, knowledge sharing, and career growth through interactions with industry leaders and peers.

6. Cisco 300-735 SAUTO Exam Increases Your Earning Potential

Passing the Cisco 300-735 SAUTO exam can significantly impact your earning potential. Cisco certifications are highly regarded, and employers often recognize the value of certified professionals. With this certification, you position yourself for better job prospects and higher-paying roles. According to industry reports, Cisco-certified professionals earn higher salaries than their non-certified counterparts. Investing in your skills and obtaining the 300-735 SAUTO certification can yield long-term financial rewards.

7. Gain Confidence in Your Abilities

Successfully passing the CCNP Security 300-735 SAUTO exam can boost your confidence in your networking abilities. As you conquer the exam challenges, you gain a sense of achievement and assurance in your skills. This confidence translates into your work as you take on complex networking projects, troubleshoot issues, and implement automation solutions. The knowledge and experience gained through the exam preparation process instill in you the belief that you can tackle any networking task with confidence and expertise.

8. Stay Relevant in a Competitive Industry

In the fast-paced world of networking, staying relevant is crucial. Passing the Cisco 300-735 SAUTO exam ensures you remain up-to-date with the latest advancements in network automation. It demonstrates your commitment to continuous learning and professional growth. As businesses increasingly embrace automation to enhance their efficiency and agility, professionals with the skills to implement and manage automated networks will continue to be in demand. By staying ahead of the curve, you position yourself as a valuable asset to your organization or clients.

9. Expand Your Knowledge Horizons

The process of preparing for the Cisco 300-735 SAUTO exam is an opportunity to expand your knowledge horizons. It allows you to delve deep into network automation concepts, explore different tools and frameworks, and gain insights into best practices. The knowledge gained during exam preparation goes beyond the exam and can be applied to real-world scenarios. It broadens your understanding of networking and equips you with the expertise to design, deploy, and manage automated networks effectively.

10. Cisco 300-735 SAUTO Exam Boost Your Professional Credibility

A Cisco certification carries significant weight and enhances your professional credibility. The CCNP Security 300-735 SAUTO exam is designed to assess your skills and knowledge in network automation. Passing this exam demonstrates your competence in implementing Cisco automation solutions. This certification serves as evidence of your capabilities and gives your professional profile a boost. It validates your expertise in the eyes of employers, clients, and peers and helps establish you as a trusted authority in network automation.

Cisco 300-735 SAUTO Exam: Preparation Options

Having a suitable structure and a comprehensive study schedule is crucial when getting ready for this certification test. Consequently, there are multiple ways to effectively prepare for it. Below are a few options you can consider:

Enroll for and complete the official training course

Learn from a Study guide

Join the online Cisco community

Take the practice test

Acquire hands-on experience

Conclusion

In conclusion, passing the Cisco 300-735 SAUTO exam can benefit your professional journey. From unlocking new career opportunities and staying ahead in the networking landscape to enhancing your technical skills and boosting your earning potential, this certification opens up a world of possibilities. It validates your expertise, connects you with a vibrant community, and keeps you relevant in an ever-changing industry. So, if you’re considering taking this exam, embrace the opportunity to supercharge your networking career. Good luck!

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Revolutionizing IOT to deliver an end-to-end solution

Recently I was looking for some research around IOT to assist our partners to understand the gravity of the market opportunity for the next decade.  According to IOT Analytics the IOT device market is growing by 16% right now. This IOT growth data is inspiring as we think about the tools, tech, and innovations we can offer to our customers and for our partners to bring new solutions and build opportunities to keep up pace with the pace of growth expected over the next decade.  All of this IOT device growth wouldn’t be possible without a great network, great wireless connectivity and great lifecycle planning from our partners, but there is more.  There is a need to address three major concerns we are seeing:

1. Complexity: is high with OT/IT and management of various systems, vendors and devices are is difficult to scale and manage. A great opportunity for our partner community to assist in this area.

2. Cybersecurity: IT teams don’t have visibility into what assets are connected in OT environments or what are the security risks. Partners have the opportunity to work with Cisco to secure infrastructure and manage all of the various unmanaged and unsecured devices.

3. Lack of Skilled Resources: Limited IT teams covering OT environments where it is hard to securely and efficiently managed connected assets.

To help address those challenges, at Cisco Live Amsterdam in February we announced new cloud services for a new way for IT and OT to collaborate on managing and securing the network via our Catalyst Industrial Routers. With our cloud-delivered IoT Operations Dashboard, customers can use Cyber Vision to provide visibility into OT assets and their security posture, as well as leverage Secure Equipment Access for safe remote access to machines.

This past week at Cisco Live US we expanded our cloud services to our Cisco Industrial Ethernet switching portfolio in alignment with our Networking Cloud announcements. Now, customers can leverage their existing Catalyst Industrial Ethernet Switches and quickly realize the benefits of these cloud-driven software functionalities since there’s no additional hardware needed. This further enables our customers to use their network as a platform for IT to simplify, innovate, and deliver unified experiences to their customers. And it’s a key part of our Cisco Networking Cloud vision.

These OT services will be available on IE switches (Cisco IE3x00, Heavy-Duty Series Switches and Catalyst IE9300 Rugged Series Switches) independent of the network management platform used to manage the IE switches. This means that your customers can manage the industrial network through Cisco DNA center while benefiting from the simplicity and scalability of the cloud to meet the needs of OT.

What ‘s in it for you as the partner? The possibility to expand or unlock new industries such as roadways, manufacturing, and many others meaning … new industries, verticals, and businesses opportunities. For your customers, this allows different industries and industrial network architectures to leverage these OT services, bringing simplicity and scale to their organizations.

Lastly, we continue to expand our industrial networking portfolio to ensure your customer success for a variety of deployment scenarios and locations, including:

◉ Cisco Catalyst IE9300 Rugged series switches: 5 new models that enable more high-wattage and high-bandwidth devices to be connected in settings such as manufacturing, utilities, roadway intersections, transportation including train stations, seaports, and airports, and smart communities.

◉ Cisco Catalyst IW9167I Heavy Duty access point: a new Wi-Fi 6 access point with integrated antenna for outdoor and industrial deployments, so your customers can be ready for Wi-Fi 6E.

These announcements complement our comprehensive industrial networking portfolio giving you the opportunity to deliver an end-to-end solution to your customers with enterprise and industrial use cases.

Source: cisco.com

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Make Your WAN Connectivity an Extraordinary Experience

Alan Dapré, author of more than 60 children’s books said, “Why be ordinary when you can be extraordinary?” You may be thinking that “extraordinary” is not a term commonly associated with network connectivity. Shouldn’t it just be like water coming out of the faucet? A utility that is … well … ordinary?

Extraordinary is an enhanced experience. And the Cisco Networking Cloud vision enables you to create an enhanced experience that your users refer to as extraordinary. With our latest SD-WAN product enhancements, we’ve made it easier for you to deliver that exceptional experience to them.

SD-WAN: New name and additional deployment option

At Cisco Live in Las Vegas, we announced the rebranding of the Viptela technology solution from Cisco SD-WAN to Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. The Catalyst brand has always stood for the industry’s most powerful switching, wireless, and routing platforms. This name change not only provides consistent alignment with the Catalyst brand of our routing hardware, but also with our access, data center, and cloud solutions—and drives brand simplification. Cisco’s SD-WAN portfolio includes both Catalyst SD-WAN and Meraki SD-WAN fabrics to provide the most versatile solutions regardless of your use case.

Deployment options for SD-WAN connectivity

Until now, Cisco has offered two ways for you to consume Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. First, an on-premises deployment would reside in your own data center or a managed service provider’s data center. The second option was to deploy in a Cisco hosted environment with either an AWS or Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure.

A third deployment option is now available. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN can be cloud-delivered to align to your infrastructure strategy. Why cloud-delivered? We recognize that operating models are changing. Organizations demand simplicity, agility, flexibility, and scalability. Cloud-delivered Catalyst SD-WAN provides a cloud-first experience with automated, rapid on-boarding and single sign-on.

Cisco provides zero-touch life cycle deployment and management of the infrastructure via Cisco’s Cloud Operations team. Customers will experience end-to-end service delivery, providing automated provisioning of the SD-WAN fabric. Cisco provides the management, monitoring, upgrades, and backup and restore. We’ve included access to end-to-end actionable insights that measure, predict, understand, and remediate potential issues, so there’s no need to implement it later. You can now consume SD-WAN with a flexible subscription model that scales to your needs and enables more precise OpEx planning and lower TCO.

Elevating the application experience

Nary a business has been unaffected by the need to support hybrid work requirements. The importance of delivering an exceptional experience to your users has risen with this trend, and the accelerated adoption of digital services has transformed enterprise IT. Unless every one of your users work from the office and all applications they access are on premises, you no longer fully control the end-to-end infrastructure, yet you are still accountable for delivering optimal digital experiences. These new capabilities and solutions help you elevate the application experience.

ThousandEyes Service Assurance helps your organization ensure top-notch digital experiences through end-to-end network visibility and proactive insights that empower you to pinpoint, troubleshoot, resolve, and optimize performance across every network domain that matters to them—whether on premises, the internet, or cloud.

Cisco is announcing expanded support with ThousandEyes, providing visibility into public cloud networks, internet routing, and enterprise sites with new vantage points from Meraki MX (and Webex RoomOS) devices. You’ll enhance operations with automated event detection and problem isolation, and unmatched insights of your cloud connectivity.

As organizations adapt to hybrid work, IT is expected to support workers at the branch, campus, and remotely. The Meraki Z4 gateways allow IT teams to securely provide connectivity to remote workers and simultaneously manage SD-branch infrastructure across global locations on a unique cloud platform that consolidates security, SD-WAN, access, and IoT.

Simplifying IT

Technology should never get in the way of conducting business and has two essential requirements: work as expected and be simple to use.

The latest enhancements in SD-WAN management and analytics include new Circuit and SecOps dashboards—along with step-by-step configuration templates to expedite the implementation and management of security policies. They include enhanced visibility into circuits and traffic patterns with a visual interface. An enhanced topology view has been added, and real-time tracking of network and path conditions by application-aware routing provides faster brownout detection.

We are introducing closed-loop automation capabilities to Predictive Path Recommendations (PPR). As an integral component of Cisco predictive networks, PPR delivers a predictive network solution, enabling IT personnel to proactively improve application experience. Leveraging advanced algorithms and predictive models, PPR determines the performance and policy compliance of the paths carrying the site application traffic. When performance is below historical benchmarks or SLA, PPR can make recommendations to the IT personnel and automatically implement corrective actions—before impacting users.

Granular Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) enables service providers to offer a robust co-managed SD-WAN service. Both service providers and their tenants can share or split responsibilities while maintaining accountability via auditing functionality in managing an SD-WAN overlay.

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN now supports Cisco Umbrella’s multi-org integration, allowing customers to easily manage multiple child organizations or regions from a single Umbrella dashboard. This enables the integration of multiple Umbrella organizations with a single-tenant Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN deployment by configuring the Umbrella API integration for DNS and SIG on a per-device basis. By creating customized security policies tailored to specific needs of different regions or organizational units, customers can simplify the security management process, improve network security, and reduce the risk of security breaches. A centralized view of multiple networks reduces the time and effort to manage multiple networks and improves the user experience.

Cloud and middle-mile connectivity

Cisco SD-WAN Cloud Hub with AWS Cloud WAN provides a dynamic WAN service that allows building of a global network in a simplified and fully automated manner, within minutes. The solution delivers a secure, on-demand, flexible, and highly available middle-mile, leveraging the global AWS backbone, intent-based network management, and advanced security through a central policy framework.

Our multicloud solutions start with our enhanced cloud router—the Catalyst 8000V—a virtual router that is optimized for scale and performance for compute instances across the cloud and backbone providers. You can consume this software from public cloud marketplaces with pay-as-you-go (PAYG) licenses or bring your own license (BYOL), purchased directly from Cisco.

During Cisco Live, we announced a network-as-a-service consumption model for middle-mile services with Megaport. This PAYG model allows customers to be billed by Cisco according to the usage of their Megaport services. We also announced the availability of Megaport Ports on Cisco’s Global Price List (GPL). Customers will be able to purchase ports globally for private connectivity to Megaport Virtual Edge and for provisioning global backbones through Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. With PAYG and Megaport Ports, you gain private connectivity to virtual edges from your data centers or sites. PAYG is important for customers because you only pay if you use them. There is no upfront commitment and no overage.

Efficiency and cost savings for service providers

Cisco Multitenant Edge for Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN platforms enables providers to securely host multiple tenants on a single physical or virtual SD-WAN platform. It simplifies and accelerates SD-WAN design and deployment, while also providing CapEx and OpEx savings. This also helps you meet your sustainability goals by powering fewer WAN appliances.

Clearly, network connectivity is no longer just an ordinary, basic utility. As we continue to build on our vision for Cisco Networking Cloud, we are enabling elevated experiences that allow you to provide connectivity experiences for your users that are truly extraordinary.

Source: cisco.com

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Launch of Cisco FSO Platform Unifies and Secures Digital Experiences at Scale

Today at Cisco Live, we announced the Cisco FSO Platform, an open and extensible, API-driven Full-Stack Observability (FSO) platform built on OpenTelemetry and anchored on metrics, events, logs, and traces (MELT). Advancing our Cisco Full-Stack Observability strategy, it provides AI/ML driven analytics as well as a new observability ecosystem delivering relevant and impactful business insights.

With digital experience increasingly considered a key performance indicator (KPI) at the boardroom level, the ability to unify and secure those experiences at-scale is now at the heart of all business interactions, which are now the touchpoint that companies use to connect to customers and end users. Simply put, today applications are the business.

Amid the growing reliance on applications, IT teams are feeling the pressure to ensure problems at the network or application layer do not lead to security or performance issues down the line. Developers are expected to create flawless applications and use application programming interfaces (APIs) that are secure and functional, with little room for error. For teams meeting these expectations consistently and at scale, however, is extremely challenging. Tool sprawl is real. In a just released study by IDC, with input from over 2000 organizations around the globe, they found that teams can use anywhere between 10 and up to 100 different monitoring and observability tools. This is a big barrier to collecting, managing, understanding, and sharing data. This results in delayed issue resolution including delays in threat detection and mitigation. Tool sprawl also compounds existing issues in organizations where siloed teams and siloed processes lead to higher TCO of technology with suboptimal delivery. Observability can become the primary way to reduce friction between teams by unifying data, analysis, actions, and practices. Achieving this through observability enables operational efficiency, ensures great user experience and lowers business risk. This is why IDC notes in the same study: Observability is becoming established as a key tactical and strategic function with vital benefits, executive support, and rising budgets.

Introducing Cisco FSO Platform

Cisco is uniquely positioned to deliver full-stack observability to customers. More than any other company, Cisco is defining the market. Cisco FSO Platform offers cross-domain visibility that brings teams together with real-time ingestion of massive data streams of MELT from normal business operations.

Most importantly, it provides a view relative to business context. According to Gartner regarding the broader applied observability movement, “When applied systematically, it can reduce the latency for response and optimize business operations in real time.” With the Cisco FSO Platform, business context becomes an integral part of monitoring and visibility outcomes.

A vendor-agnostic solution, Cisco FSO Platform brings data together from application, networking, infrastructure, security, cloud, sustainability, and business sources. Customers get in-context, correlated, and predictive insights so they can reduce time to resolve issues, optimize experiences and minimize business risk.

In addition, it provides the flexibility of extending Cisco FSO Platform for creation of new or custom business use cases including monitoring and analysis of APIs. It enables extensibility from queries, data ingestion pipelines, and entity models all the way to APIs and a composable UI framework.

Cisco FSO Platform extensibility means developers can build their own observability solutions that natively correlate and integrate with other signals and modules. It also equips developers with a seamless extension of Cisco’s entity-centric model, allowing them to collect and analyze MELT data generated by any source – not just applications and hosts.

Developers can use the platform to enrich existing entities, their attributes, and relationships, or to create new ones. These capabilities make it easy to create, launch, and monetize custom use cases as modules on Cisco FSO Platform, spawning an ecosystem of more customers and partners.

Cisco FSO Platform Applications

Cloud Native Application Observability is the premier solution delivered on Cisco FSO Platform. Cisco’s application performance management (APM) solution for cloud native architectures, it helps customers achieve business outcomes in their own context, make the right digital experiences-related decisions, ensure performance alignment with end-user expectations, prioritize and reduce risk, and secure workloads.

The first set of applications on Cisco FSO Platform, and built by Cisco, are Cost Insights from Cisco, Application Resource Optimizer from Cisco, Security Insights from Cisco, and Cisco AIOps.

Working with partners to develop and monetize a diverse ecosystem of solutions for Cisco FSO Platform, we are partnering to enable meaningful, new use cases and deliver customer value from observable telemetry. For example, launch partners CloudFabrix, Evolutio, and Kanari have built novel solutions that extend Cisco’s FSO Platform reach to new customers and new business objectives.

Ultimately, it’s a solution whose time has come. Cisco FSO Platform accelerates and extends Cisco’s Full-Stack Observability strategy, which allows teams to bring together telemetry data from their own context and drive correlated insights across the entire IT estate with business context.

It makes it possible to move faster to identify, prioritize, and remediate potential problems in near real-time with insights correlated to business context. Delivering outstanding, reliable, secure digital experiences that are true drivers of business is no longer an abstract “concept” — with Cisco FSO Platform it’s business as usual.

Source: cisco.com

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How Secure Network Analytics 7.4.2 delivers world-class NDR

Cisco is dedicated to providing genuine added value to customers, and we believe our new version of Secure Network Analytics (SNA) – software release 7.4.2 – more than drives that point home. Packed with enhancements, including better data ingestion and processing, advanced detection, and hardware integrations, this new SNA implementation delivers the essential, high-demand network visibility and detection needed to safeguard the business efficiently and effectively.

Data Store architecture takes center stage

So, what’s the most notable improvement in 7.4.2? Better Data Store architecture. With the ability migrate existing SNA implementation over to this architecture, users can access enhancements added over multiple iterations — all designed to make gathering and storing info easier.

It starts with flow collectors. This new release aims to minimize the number needed, using a centralized database instead to handle the processing of collected flows – a substantial change designed to improve fault tolerance, add resiliency, and preserve your historical data – even when it’s deployed in more than three data nodes.

Query response times are also faster, and we’ve also added better reporting. So, between these two enhancements alone, charts, graphs, and your top-5 accessed reports will load up within minutes, rather than hours.

On the telemetry front, 7.4.2 is very scalable. It’s already compatible with NetFlow, NVM, FTD, and ASA Firewall telemetry, but it will also be adaptable to future types of telemetry.

And one of the biggest benefits is enhanced maintenance. This architecture delivers a substantial increase in flow processing rates, scaling up to as much as 1 million Flows Per Second (FPS). This is an almost two-fold increase over the previous rate. But now with a centralized primary database to process flows, this makes maintenance easier — and reduces costs – a high priority across many industries.

Here are some of the specific feature enhancements you’ll see with 7.4.2:

Converged analytics meets powerful detection

In one specific deployment model, the Converged Analytics workflow delivers superior intel by using a more robust and efficient threat detection engine, and centralized data is leveraged to create reliable, relevant alerts.

Compared to the original SNA alarms, these are drastically quieter – and more in-tune with what’s happening now – delivering context based on the network and advanced behavioral analytics. In other words, SNA creates a instant baseline, learns what behavior is considered “normal” over time, and only triggers an alert if a user fails to follow that trend.

This new centralized engine can in fact now produce new alerts on additional telemetry types, such as Remote Worker detections leveraging the Network Visibility Module (NVM). This represents an important milestone in the threat detection capabilities for the Secure Network Analytics offering, which can now cover important use cases for the market as the need for remote worker visibility continuously increases. To add to the capabilities of Converged Analytics, the engine can also dynamically provide role modeling detections based on the behavior of assets in the network.

This feature helps provide needed context for the detection engine so it can understand an entity’s behavior and create relevant alerts that are meaningful to each customer’s circumstances.

And one more performance boost to note. Secure Network Analytics now integrates with the latest M6 hardware appliance. This yields better Flow Collector ingestion rates, faster flow search queries, and an overall increase in the throughput for the Flow Sensors. Cisco Telemetry Broker is also integrated, which enables users to redirect traffic from any source to a Secure Network Analytics deployment.

With all the improvements to the data ingestion mechanism, the product can effectively achieve XDR outcomes with its native functionality and integration with SecureX. By leveraging multiple telemetry sources, customers can achieve broad network visibility and easily consume relevant detections for potential threats in their network. The simplified workflow reduces the need for users to understand the meaning and source of an alert, enabling them to respond and remediate faster. Thanks to this, organizations can safeguard their assets in time and prevent attackers from breaching the network.

While there are many more details that showcase the fantastic work by the Cisco team, this summary provides a conceptual overview that illustrates the added value for customers who upgrade to the latest 7.4.2 release. And as the market continues to evolve and organizations need a strong Network Detection and Response solution to protect their business and assets, Secure Network Analytics will continue leading the market with a world-class solution that solves customers’ most prominent and urgent needs.

Source: cisco.com

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