Cisco Partner Summit is one of my favorite events as I get feedback from partners on our technology roadmap, but more importantly, it is a valuable opportunity to discuss how we can work together to solve customers’ security challenges.  Now this year is virtual, so it is a bit of a game-changer in terms of delivery and interaction, but some of the underlying key security challenges remain for customers – perhaps elevated due to the pandemic.

So, what are some of the more pressing customer security challenges?  Well, we continue to see Security Operation Centers in a constant race against time to stay ahead of advanced threats.  The time to detect and remediate is at the heart of this race.  In fact, as part of our CISO 2020 Benchmark Report, 56% of CISOs stated that time-to-detect is a critical key performance indicator.  However, security teams are all too often held back in this race, overwhelmed with a slew of disconnected vendors and products. The complexity hampers the team’s ability to enter this race with the best possible operational security fitness.

The old way of doing things in the industry left us in disarray.  For years the path forward was to deploy best of breed technologies in an attempt to stay ahead of threat actors.  All of these disparate security investments not working well together left customers with massive operational inefficiencies and a porous defense.  Customers might have felt protected with the latest new technology and multiple technologies delivering a defense in depth strategy.  The stark reality is that the underlying architecture is a complex mess with technologies from multiple vendors, multiple providers resulting in hidden context, conflicting alerts, and multiple manual efforts dramatically reducing time-to-detect and time-to-remediate.  Today’s approach is unsustainable.  The complexity is only yielding limited visibility, lack of orchestration, a patchwork of products creating security gaps, skills shortages, and more.  Throwing more technology at the problem is not the answer. Customers realize that they must break out of this vicious circle.

This is where a platform approach will make all the difference by tackling the most pressing challenge of complexity.  At Partner Summit, I delivered an Innovation Talk on Cisco SecureX. Our cloud-native, built-in platform experience within our portfolio that connects to existing customer infrastructures, dramatically innovating time-to-detect and time-to-remediate.  SecureX is truly helping customers sharpen their Security Operation Center fitness, making it easier to stay ahead of advanced threats.  A Financial Customer stated: “Security priorities are the ability to respond to threats quicker, and operational efficiencies. SecureX addressed our top priorities and challenges.”

There is an amazing opportunity for us to partner together and build new business opportunities together by helping customers transform their security infrastructure.  Together we can help customers move from a complex infrastructure with disjointed solutions to a simpler infrastructure that is integrated, resilient, and open.  The platform approach with SecureX shows our customers how to remove bottlenecks that slow down their team’s access to answers and actions.  And, this empowers customers with the industry’s most advanced XDR (extended detection and response) capabilities and more, to help them achieve greater visibility, simplicity, and efficiency. As a Cisco Secure partner is that you strengthen customer relationships while growing your business with multiple recurring revenue streams.

Cisco SecureX is an exciting and powerful platform that makes using and managing security easier for our customers.  SecureX is the culmination of an effort that began several years ago that started with Cisco Threat Response, long before XDR was a thing, which now is an integral feature of our platform called SecureX threat response.  As a result, we have a massively proven platform that has helped over 11,000 customers unlock value with the threat response feature.  Of course, the SecureX platform extends innovation beyond SecureX threat response with SecureX orchestration, SecureX ribbon, and more.  Here are some responses back from SecureX customers based on a recent survey:

• Almost all of our customer said SecureX helps them get a unified view needed for rapid threat response
• More than 90% of our customers reported that SecureX enables their security teams to collaborate more effectively
• 82% of customers emphasized the importance of our platform’s ability to connect to 3^rd party security tools for comprehensive investigations.

SecureX customers are unlocking tremendous value with Cisco Secure portfolio and 3^rd party solutions while building up their security operation fitness in the process.  After all, it is a race against time; getting rid of complexity enhances security fitness so customers will stay ahead of advanced threats.  We are looking forward to working with our Cisco Secure partners to help customers confidently tackle their most pressing security and security operation challenges with SecureX.

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