Cisco Advances Solutions to Simplify Cybersecurity Processes in Saudi Arabia

Focused on placing cybersecurity at the heart of digitization, Cisco Security has unveiled platform enhancements and services to help CISOs simplify their environments, increasing the speed of threat detection and remediation, while protecting users and their data.

 The Kingdom’s National Cybersecurity Authority is striving to create a safe and resilient digital ecosystem, enabling citizens to fulfil their aspirations and empowering businesses to thrive. As more organizations actively embrace digital transformation, the role of the CISO and the necessity for a comprehensive, unified cybersecurity infrastructure becomes instrumental to their success. 

Keen to help local businesses address these challenges, Cisco’s approach features an open and integrated platform, enhanced with new zero trust, cloud, endpoint and breach defense capabilities. The company has also introduced Talos Incident Response, providing a full suite or proactive and reactive services – addressing the full security continuum by enabling businesses to prepare for, respond to and recover from breaches with greater ease. 

The evolution of Cisco Security’s portfolio is designed to address key areas of concern for CISOs, such as managing multi-vendor environments and the complexity they are known to bring to security architecture. According to Cisco’s 2019 CISO Benchmark Study, 79 percent of security professionals surveyed admitted finding it challenging to orchestrate threat response in a multi-vendor environment. This number was up from 74 percent in the previous year.

Furthermore, 48 percent of respondents surveyed shared that they are now spending more time on remediating, instead of simply detecting and patching at an early stage – proving the critical nature of the situation at hand for businesses of all sizes. 

To reduce complexity, Cisco Security has announced the following enhanced platform capabilities and services for policy, analytics and threat response to deliver better threat protection and continuous trust verification:

Simplify Investigation and Remediation:

More than 6,700 customers today are reducing both the time to investigate and the response to threats across multiple security technologies with Cisco Threat Response. As part of the platform approach, Cisco integrates threat response across its Cisco Security portfolio. As part of this range, customers also benefit from Cisco Stealthwatch, a network traffic analysis product that detects new infections, breach propagation and data exfiltration.
With simplified threat hunting and investigation, users can contain threats faster with AMP for Endpoints' new advanced endpoint detection and response capabilities. Customers can also isolate a compromised endpoint device as they remediate a security incident or resolve an IT ticket. With an advanced search,  they have all the data required to achieve a quicker response and ultimately, drive down the cost of a breach.

Accelerate Cloud Adoption Securely—Protect Any User, Anywhere They Connect to the Internet

Customers will benefit from more cloud security capabilities including DNS-layer security, secure web gateway, cloud-delivered firewall, CASB functionality and interactive threat intelligence. All in the Cisco Umbrella Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) Essentials package.
All packages enable customers to easily integrate Umbrella and Cisco SD-WAN with Anycast routing, enabling them to secure their network and direct internet access with 100 percent uptime.

Design for the Future with A Zero Trust Security Leader

Customers will be able to embrace zero trust with confidence for their workforce, workload and workplace. Cisco was recently named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers, Q4 2019 report, receiving the highest possible scores in the ZTX strategy, network security, people/workforce security, device security, visibility and analytics, and management and usability criteria. As Forrester notes, Cisco “excels in Zero Trust with a renewed and targeted focus” and is “well positioned as a prominent Zero Trust player.”

Customers will also benefit from platform level integrations such as Duo MFA and AMP for Endpoints, currently in beta, helping customers safeguard against vulnerable or potentially compromised devices with automatic adaptive policy enforcement.

New Security Services Deliver Expertise 

When a customer requires help, they can call the Cisco Talos Incident Response team. Cisco Incident Response capabilities are now part of Cisco Talos, the largest threat intelligence research organization. By fully combining incident response and retainers into Talos, it increases customers’ access to threat intelligence to feed response plans, preparedness exercises and emergency responses as well as expanded protection from on-the-ground threat intelligence. 
Cisco combined its integrated security platform approach with a team of expert cyber investigators to deliver Managed Detection and Response (MDR). The MDR service helps customers make the most of their investment and keep pace with current threats and a rapidly expanding attack surface across cloud, network and endpoints. It provides them with 24x7 threat monitoring and response to reduce the mean time to detect and contain threats faster with defined, prioritized and consistent investigations and response playbook supported by Cisco Talos threat research.

“Complexity challenges have been an issue for many years. At Cisco, we are focused on addressing this by helping our customers adopt a platform approach to security that can simplify their security operations with products and services that work together, offering a more secure environment,” said Fady Younes, Cybersecurity Director, Middle East & Africa. “We are committed to continuing to offer customers in Saudi Arabia new ways to solve their top security challenges.”