The ‘CloudLock’

1. How has the year 2016 been for the cloud security market? What all breaches and patches made to the top news?

Cloud permeates everything we do, powering digital transformation. The impact on customer experiences, business processes and models, and workforce innovations is undeniable. While cloud computing increases business agility, scalability and efficiency, it also introduces new security risks and concerns. The challenges are complex because they involve not only technology issues but also substantial process changes due to the new business computing models. According to a new report Global Cloud Security Market (2016-2022), published by KBV Research, the global Cloud Security is expected to attain a market size of $13.1billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 22.3% during the forecast period.

According to the Cisco 2017 Annual Cybersecurity Report (ACR), Cisco CloudLock has been tracking the growth of connected third-party cloud applications and found that there were about 129,000 unique applications observed at the beginning of 2016. By the end of October, that number had grown to 222,000. Of those total applications, 27 percent were deemed to be high risk based on the data-access requirements, community trust ratings and application threat intelligence.

2. How has your security portfolio performed in 2016?

Cisco enables simple, intelligent, automated, and secure clouds. Foundational is security everywhere, designed to help customers securely adopt cloud.  And all this is accomplished in collaboration with our global partner ecosystem, spanning both technology partners (in software, tools, and infrastructure) and go-to-market partners (including builders, providers, and resellers).

• During the first quarter of fiscal 2017, Cisco completed the following acquisitions, both of which integrate fully into the Cisco Security Architecture to provide simplified, integrated, automated security:
• CloudLock, Inc. – a privately held company, to further enhance Cisco’s security portfolio and build on Cisco’s Security Everywhere strategy, designed to provide protection from the cloud to the network to the endpoint and also aligns with our strategy to deliver more cloud-based subscription services.
• OpenDNS – a privately held company that provides advanced threat protection for any device, anywhere, anytime. The acquisition boosted Cisco’s Security Everywhere approach by adding broad visibility and threat intelligence from the OpenDNS cloud delivered platform.

We’ll continue to see investment and development in the cloud security market.

3. What should the 2017 CIOs be careful of when it comes to cloud security?

As highlighted in the Cisco-sponsored InfoBrief Cloud Going Mainstream: All Are Trying, Some Are Benefiting; Few Are Maximizing Value which was developed by International Data Corporation (IDC), almost 78% of organizations use some form of cloud today, yet only 3% of the companies IDC surveyed have optimized cloud strategies in place.

Before adopting any cloud offering, ask two important questions.

• Given the sensitivity of the data I’m putting into the cloud, does the cloud operator have the proper controls – and do I have the right visibility – to adequately protect my data?
• Will I be able to respond to incidents when they happen?

4. Which aspect of cloud security was the most sought after in 2016 and which will be sought after in 2017?

One of the most challenging innovations in the cloud in 2016 will be the rise of serverless frameworks. This is a big change for cloud security strategy, because it means APIs are becoming an additional area of vulnerability for attacks. It’s an area where IT teams are usually unaccustomed to configuring for and defending against these types of threats. Attacks on cloud infrastructure are becoming more sophisticated and automated, and this trend is unlikely to abate in 2017; if anything, attacks on the cloud will become even more intense because more organizations are storing more and more valuable data in cloud infrastructure.

5. How are your security solutions a game changer?

Many of our customers want to consistently enforce security policies where services and applications are deployed, beyond the data center to include multicloud environments and the edge. This is why we talk about Security Everywhere. With our growing security portfolio we can offer security solutions for the cloud and from the cloud. We focus on three major areas:

1. Helping you keep valuable data more secure- Extend data center performance to increase uptime. Control access to your data center, and limit how data is handled. Protect your resources: physical, virtual, and cloud.
2. Protecting apps and data in the cloud – Integrate security across all cloud deployments. Deploy security solutions easily across all environments. Gain consistent protection, removing vulnerable coverage gaps.

• Promoting secure access anywhere – Connect new users and devices quickly with the right access. Maintain protection of remote users and devices automatically. See into user behaviour and device status.

Cisco Umbrella

Cisco Umbrella is a cloud security platform that provides the first line of defense against threats on the internet. Because Umbrella is delivered from the cloud, it is the easiest way to protect all of your users in minutes. One of the capabilities we offer is the ability to leverage cloud-based insights on a global scale to prevent security attacks instead of just responding to them. By implementing a cloud-delivered security service possessing predictive capabilities, you can block phishing attempts, bespoke malware, and other evolving threats from the moment attackers start spinning up their attack infrastructure.

Cisco CloudLock

Another solution deployed by over 700 organizations worldwide is CloudLock. CloudLock is a frictionless solution that is installed in minutes and protects cloud applications and provides codeless security for custom-built apps. From crowd-sourced security analytics across billions of data points to advanced machine learning, to the data scientist-led CyberLab, CloudLock provides actionable cybersecurity intelligence across an organization’s entire cloud infrastructure. Protecting any cloud application and platform, CloudLock secures SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS environments, and provides unparalleled coverage of cloud traffic, including on- and off-network, retroactively and in-real time. Watch this fun video for real life examples.

Cloud Lock consists of the following three key components:

• Cloud Data Security & Compliance– CloudLock protects organizations against data breaches in any cloud environment through a highly-configurable Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) engine providing excellent coverage of cloud traffic.
• Cloud User Security– CloudLock defends against account compromises with cross-platform User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) for SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, and IDaaS environments. CloudLock uses advanced machine learning to detect anomalies in account usage, in addition to identifying activities outside of whitelisted countries and actions across distances in an impossible amount of time.
• Cloud Application Security– The CloudLock Apps Firewall discovers and controls malicious cloud applications connected to your corporate environment, and provides the world’s largest crowd-sourced security solution to identify individual application risk, using our Community Trust Rating.

As the Cloud continues to drive disruption in the business world across the globe, organizations are increasingly placing their trust in third-party cloud service providers (CSPs). A holistic approach to building security into the cloud enables trust throughout the lifecycle. At Cisco, we believe that transparency also leads to trust. Transparency to our customers includes rapid and open communications and is critical in earning and maintaining a trusted relationship. By offering a level of threat research and intelligence beyond that available from most companies, Cisco provides an unmatched security ecosystem.