Announcing New Advanced Security Monitoring from Cisco

Network Security

Aug 16

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Over the last several years, we've embraced the philosophy that every organization needs a multi-layer approach to security. You can't rely on a single security component to keep you safe. When it comes to security, more is more.

Most IT folks recognize this and usually have at least a couple basic items in place, such as a firewall and antivirus software. And, if you bought a firewall in the last three years, it likely came with an intrusion prevention subscription, letting it interrogate the traffic flowing through it in real-time.

We also recommend adding zero-day software such as Cisco Secure for Endpoints and Cisco Umbrella for Cloud DNS. There are still several more layers, but these provide some real protection.

One layer we have recommended but that has been tough for a lot of our clients to absorb is a Security Operations Center (SOC). This requires having trained IT security staff, and people that can monitor the various SOC tools 24/7. Unless you're an enterprise company, this is out of reach. The next option is to hire a company to provide this service for you. But even this can still be cost prohibitive for a lot of our clients. Without a SOC, who monitors your security layers and ensures that a breach hasn’t occurred? Most companies have a hard time allocating staff resources for this, even though the average cost of a breach is now 4.35 million dollars, according to IBM.

Enter Cisco Secure Endpoint Pro, Cisco’s first offering to provide 24/7 endpoint detection and response as a service. They offer several levels of service, but the main point is that Cisco is now leveraging the advanced security professionals that make up their SOC and deploying them as resources for clients that want to outsource their security monitoring to Cisco.

The only caveat that I can see currently is that you need to be using Cisco hardware and software tools through the Secure-X platform, which Cisco can access and integrate with their SOC resources. This means they aren’t supporting non-Cisco security software for now.

Cisco has the largest security team on the planet, with thousands of security professionals managing millions of Cisco devices. If you’ve been looking for a way to fill this hole in your organization, this is an ideal way of covering your bases.

Our goal is that all our clients have multiple layers of security as well as the knowledge that advanced security professionals are monitoring their networks 24/7. This is a sure way to finally get some sleep at night.

This post was contributed by Lance Reid, our CEO. Lance has worked in the technology industry for over 25 years. He became a Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CCIE) in Collaboration in 2005 and has been serving on Cisco's SMB Advisory Board since 2013.