Cisco unveils Secure Internet Gateway for mobile cloud era

BENGALURU: Cisco has launched its secure internet gateway (SIG) in the cloud, Cisco Umbrella, to address the new enterprise security challenges of today’s mobile, cloud-era.

The way people work is changing. An increasingly mobile workforce conducts business via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. The unprecedented growth of SaaS apps looks set to continue with Gartner predicting that SaaS usage will increase 70 percent by 2018. Because of this, more branch offices are connecting directly to the internet, bypassing protections offered by the corporate network. This new way of working, while great for productivity and flexibility, means that a large population of users aren’t protected by traditional network and web security controls offered on the corporate network. It also leaves organizations without visibility into threats targeting a significant portion of their enterprise.

Organizations are struggling to protect themselves in this new working paradigm. Most rely heavily on virtual private network (VPN) usage. But according to IDG, 82 percent of mobile workers admit that they don’t always use the VPN. Others depend on on-premise secure web gateway solutions and an array of associated agents, creating complexity and latency. Today’s challenges call for a new approach to security. Cisco believes that cloud protection is the new first line of defense for organizations, providing visibility and control right at the edge of the internet.

Cisco is driving this shift to cloud protection by pioneering a new product category, secure internet gateway (SIG), a new technology to secure this new working paradigm. A secure internet gateway (SIG) provides safe access to the internet anywhere users go, even when they are off the VPN. A SIG acts as a secure onramp to the internet and provides the first line of visibility and defense regardless of where users are located or to what they’re trying to connect.

Cisco Umbrella, a secure internet gateway, is a cloud-delivered security platform that provides this first line of defense to protect employees both on and off the corporate network. Umbrella stops current and emergent threats over all ports and protocols for the most comprehensive coverage. It blocks access to malicious domains, URLs, IPs, and files before a connection is ever established or a file downloaded. With most threats targeting the endpoint, it’s critical to cover all ports and protocols to provide a safety net that covers 100 percent of traffic. Umbrella’s powerful, effective security does not require the typical operational complexity. By performing everything in the cloud, there is no hardware to install, and no software to manually update. Organizations can provide protection for all devices in minutes and leverage their existing Cisco investments — including AnyConnect client, Integrated Services Router 4K Series, and wireless LAN controllers— to easily point Internet traffic to Umbrella whether on or off the corporate network.