Kyndryl has teamed up with Cisco to offer two new security services edge (SSE) products — Consult SSE and Managed SSE, which are designed to help customers transition, implement and manage an SSE architecture with Cisco’s technology.

The Kyndryl Consult SSE with Cisco Secure Access aims to offer services such as assessments of the customer environment, policies, procedures and compliance. Services also include factors to help design and implement an SSE architecture, Michelle Weston, VP of global offerings for security and resiliency at Kyndryl, told SDxCentral in response to questions.

Weston added the consulting service can be beneficial to both new and existing Cisco Security Access customers, as “Kyndryl's experts in security and resiliency work with customers to find services and solutions that best fit their individual organizational requirements.”

Cisco introduced its SSE solution, dubbed Cisco Secure Access, last year during its Cisco Live 2023 event.

SSE is a security framework that safeguards access to the web, cloud services and private applications regardless of user location, device or Application hosting, as defined by Gartner. 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).

In addition to the consultant service, Kyndryl also expanded its managed service to SSE, in collaboration with Cisco.

The Managed SSE solution is designed for transitioning, implementing and managing SSE solutions with Cisco’s portfolio of products and services, Weston explained. Kyndryl takes on the role of the SSE service provider and offers other security and resiliency services while partnering with Cisco to integrate SSE technologies.

“Kyndryl’s global experts in security and resiliency provide advisory and consultative services that identify customer needs and translate them to actionable plans to protect individuals, networks and data,” she said. “Then, they guide customers through the implementation and management of services that bolster customer capabilities.”

The target audiences for these services are existing Kyndryl customers who are looking to explore SSE capabilities and other large enterprises who are aiming to improve their security posture.

The Managed SSE is the company’s latest managed service. Kyndryl introduced its Managed secure access service edge (SASE) service in May last year, based on technology from Fortinet. It also tapped Palo Alto Networks in October last year for an SD-WAN service that integrates network management with security components supporting SASE systems.

Kyndryl was spun out from IBM‘s professional services in November 2021. Since then, “Kyndryl has been expanding its global strategic partnerships and technology collaborations to address the network and edge needs of our customers” with Nokia, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, and Fortinet, said Paul Savill, Kyndryl global network and edge computing practice leader, in an earlier interview with SDxCentral.