Cisco unveils toolkit for greater network visibility and control

Tech giant Cisco has announced what it calls new innovations in cloud-managed networking, welcoming the EMEA tech community back to the European edition of its networking and security event for the first time in three years.

Specifically, the company unveiled cloud services in its internet of things (IoT) Operations Dashboard to increase industrial asset visibility and securely manage assets, while the Cisco ThousandEyes division introduced support for OpenTelemetry, unlocking internet and cloud intelligence across monitoring and IT platforms for expanded visibility, correlated insights and optimised digital experiences. The company also announced that its unified secure access service edge (SASE) offering, Cisco+ Secure Connect, now supports integration into Cisco SD-WAN fabrics leveraging Viptela technology.

Outlining the benefits of the individual technologies, Cisco noted that with the new cloud management tools for industrial IoT applications, simplified dashboards to converge IT and OT operations, and flexible network intelligence to see and secure all industrial assets, enterprises can gain a unified experience that provides true business agility. This, said the firm, is essential in a marketplace where they need to connect core enterprise operations to industrial spaces, spanning utility grids, manufacturing facilities and transportation networks, and will need to prioritise sustainability and resiliency in their operations, driving the need for greater visibility across their environments.

Cisco also observed that organisations are extending their networks to new places. They must connect core enterprise operations to industrial spaces, spanning utility grids, manufacturing facilities and transportation networks. They are also prioritising sustainability and resiliency in their operations, driving the need for greater visibility across their environments. Yet the distributed nature of these operations makes these networks complex to manage and, as these industries digitise their assets, the cyber security attack surface grows.

“The most effective way to manage growing complexity and provide more insight into business operations is through reliable connectivity and complete visibility across an organisation’s operations and assets,” said Vikas Butaney, senior vice-president and general manager for SD-WAN, cloud connectivity and industrial IoT networking at Cisco. “A strong partnership between all technology teams – security, networking and operations – is essential.”

The new tools are designed to enable IT and operations teams with full visibility into IT and OT devices to manage threats across their organisations, providing a unified security posture across the entire network.

The offerings are also designed to make it easier for IT and OT teams to remotely deploy, manage and troubleshoot any connected equipment with IP connectivity, so operations teams can run native applications on their workstations to access remote assets more easily. These also provide common tooling and data so IT and OT teams can work more efficiently together to reduce downtime of critical infrastructure, drive greater business productivity and efficiencies, and enhance overall safety and security.

Another key challenge highlighted at Cisco Live was that even though having the relevant data at the right time is necessary to optimise users’ digital experiences, data may not always be easy to collect and correlate. To help customers tackle this challenge, Cisco’s ThousandEyes division announced it now supports OpenTelemetry, the open-source framework and industry standard that allows companies to generate, collect, process and export cloud-native and distributed telemetry data.

Claiming to offer the first network visibility service to support OpenTelemetry, ThousandEyes said it was making it possible for customers to interconnect cloud and internet intelligence across a wide range of offerings for “unmatched” data correlation and insights across disparate domains, from user to application for optimal digital experiences.

To simplify network security and policy management, the Cisco+ Secure Connect unified SASE offering now supports integration into SD-WAN fabrics using Viptela technology. This means SD-WAN users have a single platform and a streamlined operational model that simplifies and scales the visibility, management and control over a hybrid work environment.