Let’s be sincere. Most individuals don’t belief zero belief.
For customers, once they hear the phrases ‘zero belief’, it sounds prefer it may take longer to log into work. And should you’re in IT or IT safety, you might have extra merchandise to purchase and combine into your present — already sophisticated — safety stack. And naturally, then there are the audits.
Possibly that’s why so many zero belief initiatives are stalled.
Irrespective of the way you slice it, zero belief entry is an elusive however fascinating objective for a lot of organizations, and but most groups haven’t achieved zero belief maturity1 — particularly for securing distant work.
At Cisco, we’ve got designed our resolution in a approach that overcomes frequent obstacles by powering a safe, in-office expertise anyplace. And we all know as a result of we’ve got been on our personal zero belief journey with our person communities and IT groups for years now.
Cisco on Cisco: Zero belief entry at scale
We began with an enterprise rollout of Cisco Duo for our remote-first workforce again in 2020, and we’re at the moment deploying Cisco Safe Entry. Cisco’s large and numerous IT infrastructure contains:
- 1 million IP related “issues”
- 27,000 Cisco video units
- 62,000 cell units
…throughout massive campuses, small workplaces, properties, buyer websites, roaming customers, and extra.
Speedy time to worth
Throughout our first section in 2020, we rolled out Duo for phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication (MFA) and machine posture throughout our huge person neighborhood in solely 5 months, which considerably decreased helpdesk tickets and endpoint compromises.
Extra just lately, we deployed Cisco Safe Entry, our Safety Service Edge (SSE) resolution which is optimized for serving to ease the transition from legacy VPN structure to Zero Belief Community Entry (ZTNA) with VPN-as-a-Service (VPNaaS). We’re simply getting began, however we’ve already seen worth.
As a result of Safe Entry eliminates the necessity for a number of groups to investigate networking and safety knowledge, and since it sidesteps advanced duties like IP-user mapping, we’ve seen a 25% discount in imply time to troubleshoot person connectivity points. Up to now, a single area on-prem VPN enablement course of would take weeks to a month. Now by utilizing the VPNaaS functionality within Safe Entry, our groups can allow 5 areas in simply 3 hours.
Speedy time to productiveness
Right here’s what it’s like for a typical Cisco remote-first worker:
- Whether or not at their breakfast desk or within the workplace, they login ‘passwordlessly’ on their laptop computer (through Home windows Good day or Mac TouchID) after which Cisco Duo — behind the scenes — takes that OS-level belief to all use circumstances (cross-browser, embedded browser).
- By being absolutely context-aware, Cisco Duo acknowledges this as typical person exercise, decreasing person interplay wanted for authentication. That mentioned, any adjustments to machine posture and different contextual threat attributes will immediate our customers to reverify belief through risk-based authentication (e.g., Verified Push).
- Distant staff can robotically and transparently entry each wanted utility, some by ZTNA, others by Cisco’s VPN-as-a-Service. They don’t even have to consider how they’ll entry an app … it simply works, due to Cisco Safe Entry.
- When our staff are off our company community, their web entry is transparently protected by a wide range of built-in cloud-delivered safety instruments offering DNS-layer safety, safe internet gateway, CASB, DLP, distant browser isolation and extra.
Challenges with early SSE merchandise
Sadly, the first-to-market SSE options weren’t designed for the remote-first office. As a substitute, most of those distributors began as level merchandise (e.g., CASB, NGFW, SWG, and so on.) after which bolted-on extra performance to qualify as SSE distributors and seize zero belief finances.
The underlying structure is brittle in consequence, with a disjointed and siloed administration expertise and a scarcity of identity- and context-awareness. These challenges decelerate zero belief adoption, making it troublesome for groups to ship the identical constant and safe expertise for all staff connecting to every kind of functions.
- Lack of visibility: Who’re my customers, what are they accessing, which insurance policies are required, which units are managed vs. unmanaged, what’s their end-to-end digital expertise?
- Person frustration: Excessive latency, dropped connections, complicated authentication and app entry workflows, and insufficient efficiency — even with frequent workplace functions — and no approach of realizing the place the efficiency points lie
- Difficult administration: A number of brokers, consoles and insurance policies make it tougher to implement the precise zero belief entry coverage all over the place
- Pricey surprises: Organizations can’t merely cease supporting VPN, as some apps don’t work properly with ZTNA; plus, evolution to zero belief by yourself schedule is a greater method than being pushed right into a dangerous VPN rip-and-replace
Given the challenges with these options, it’s no shock that organizations are battling their zero belief initiatives. Finish customers and IT groups alike want a greater zero belief expertise.
Cisco Zero Belief Entry
Our Cisco Zero Belief Entry resolution is completely different: Our structure is purpose-built to present an in-office expertise, all over the place. It’s a drive multiplier, because it delivers the {industry}’s most simply managed sturdy identification safety, coupled with main Safety Service Edge (SSE) capabilities.
Past completely satisfied customers, these are the methods your IT and IT safety groups will profit:
- SSE deployment is eased with a single consumer — The multi-functional Cisco Safe Shopper is a single installer, serving to to boost interoperability and decrease value. Its modular options embody ZTNA, VPNaaS and off-corporate-network SWG and DNS-layer safety safety.
- Safer — and less complicated — multi-factor authentication — Right this moment, attackers typically don’t hack into enterprises — they merely log in. Duo evaluates identification conduct and attributes earlier than, throughout and after login to make sure safe entry and modify authentication energy robotically based mostly on contextual threat.
- Fewer help calls — Not like different ZTNA options utilizing legacy protocols with efficiency limitations, Cisco’s underlying inner transport (Vector Packet Processing, or VPP) is quicker and extra dependable with fashionable protocols together with QUIC and MASQUE.
- No administration updates, no website visits — All components of the Zero Belief Entry resolution are cloud-managed, and, other than consumer exercise, all safety is cloud-delivered, globally.
- Ongoing administration simplified — In comparison with options which have separate consoles for web entry safety, ZTNA, and VPN, Cisco’s Zero Belief Entry collapses these capabilities into one, rising visibility, enabling extra complete safety insurance policies, and saving you valuable time.
- Superior cell help — Our partnerships with main cell machine producers, like Apple and Samsung, have led to industry-first working system-level integration for extra reliable connectivity.
Begin making zero belief simpler, efficient and environment friendly
Solely Cisco Zero Belief Entry gives sturdy identification safety coupled with a complete, easy-to-manage SSE. This lets you ship a constant in-office expertise all over the place, making certain that safety doesn’t hinder productiveness.
And since our Cisco Safe Entry SSE resolution has not solely ZTNA, however built-in VPNaaS as properly, you possibly can undertake your zero belief journey in your timeline, not one that’s dictated by the constraints of different distributors.
Uncover extra about Cisco Zero Belief Entry, and the way it can remodel your safety method, by registering for an upcoming workshop or exploring a product tour of Cisco Safe Entry.
1Based mostly on analysis from Cisco’s newest Safety Outcomes for Zero Belief report
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