LAS VEGAS — Cisco is doubling down on security with the introduction of its new security services edge (SSE), generative AI-powered security capabilities, cloud-native Application security solution, and 4200 Series firewall running the 7.4 Operating System at this week’s Cisco Live 2023.

The vendor’s new SSE solution, dubbed Cisco Secure Access, is designed to provide “secure access to any Application for any user from any device from any network,” Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and GM of security and collaboration, told SDxCentral.

Gartner defines SSE as a security framework that safeguards access to the web, cloud services and private applications regardless of user location, device or Application hosting. SSE enhances security and visibility for Software-as-a-Service, platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service.

It commonly consists of four elements: zero-trust network access (ZTNA), secure web gateways (SWG), cloud access security brokers (Cloud Access Security Broker) and firewall-as-a-service (FaaS).

Patel said Cisco Secure Access offers a common access experience and a single, cloud-managed console for those capabilities. At the same time, it integrates with the vendor’s Talos threat intelligence, endpoint security and ThousandEyes for better threat detection, response and visibility.

He added Cisco’s secure access service edge (SASE) offering — Cisco+ Secure Connect Now — is using the same zero trust–based SSE engine. And the vendor sees an influx of demand for both SASE and SSE use cases as the hybrid work model continues.

For customers who already have an SD-WAN, they can go with the SSE option for secure access; for organizations who want to have a joint solution from a common construct, they can buy SASE. “We're tightly integrated [with Cisco’s own SD-WANs] as part of a unified platform, but loosely coupled [with the third parties] so that customers have the flexibility of what they use,” Patel explained.

Cisco Secure Access will be in limited availability starting in July and is slated to be generally available in October 2023.

Generative AI-powered policy, SOC assistance

Cisco is previewing its first generative artificial intelligence (AI) (genAI)-based security capabilities for security policy and security operations center (SOC) assistance.

The vendor introduced an AI policy assistant that helps security teams describe granular security policies and evaluate how to best implement them. The first implementation of firewall policies will be available later this year.

Additionally, to address the security talent gap, Cisco offers a SOC assistant that supports SOC teams by correlating intelligence and contextualizing events for the Cisco Security Cloud platform across email, the web, endpoints and the network. Analysts can also interact with the assistant to find the best remediation approach. The feature will be available in mid-2024.

Cisco aims to build its Security Cloud into the best AI-powered, end-to-end integrated security platform in the world. Another recent move the vendor made is to announce the intent to acquire Armorblox, which is a startup using large language models (LLMs) and natural language understanding in security.

GenAI-powered security “is going to go off and democratize security much more and it's going to allow many, many more people to participate without having that much cognitive overload,” Patel said.

Cisco rolls out cloud-native Application security

Cisco is joining several cloud security vendors in the cloud-native Application protection platform (Cloud Native Application Protection Platform) market by introducing a code-to-cloud cloud-native Application security solution — Panoptica.

CNAPP is a cloud-native security model that encompasses Cloud Security Posture Management, cloud services network security (CSNS), and cloud workload protection platform (CWPP) in a single holistic platform.

Cisco integrated CSPM with Panoptica’s existing CWPP capabilities. Its CSPM capabilities will be available this fall.

The platform also offers a new attack path engine that uses graph-based technology to deliver advanced attack path analysis that helps security teams quickly identify and remediate potential risks across cloud infrastructures. The engine's integration with Cisco’s Full Stack Observability portfolio provides real-time visibility, the vendor claims.

Cisco introduces new firewalls, OS

At this week’s Cisco Live, the company also introduced its Cisco Secure Firewall 4200 Series running the new 7.4 version of the OS.

The vendor touted the new firewall as offering AI- and machine learning-based encrypted threat blocking without decryption. The new firewall product has ZTNA capabilities and simplified branch routing.

The 4200 Series will be released in September and the 7.4 OS will be generally available for the rest of the Secure Firewall appliance family in December 2023.

Finally, the vendor announced its new Cisco Multicloud Defense, which is based on its recent Valtix acquisition. The new service aims to extend the traditional firewall concept into the multicloud and enables SecOps teams to manage security across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) with a single policy, in real time, from a single SaaS platform.