Cisco and Amazon Web Services Working Together: If it’s cloud connected, it’s protected

Cisco and AWS continue to work together tirelessly to help simplify and accelerate our mutual customers’ journeys to the cloud. What does this involve?

For one, we’ve built integrations across four broad categories–security, monitoring, networking, and collaboration–leveraging our mutual understanding of key customer challenges learned over thousands of mutual customer engagements across several verticals.

We’ve also simplified procurement, making the Cisco Software as a Service (SaaS) portfolio available through AWS marketplace. If Cisco customers need software from Cisco to succeed on AWS, Cisco channel partners can sell it via AWS marketplace.

We’ve further simplified licensing, as channel partners can procure Cisco software for their customers on AWS marketplace through their existing Cisco Enterprise Agreements. As partners and customers identify new business needs and use cases in need of Cisco software, they can easily add Cisco software products to an existing Enterprise Agreement, further simplifying how customers procure software, services, and support across the Cisco software portfolio available on AWS.

In addition, purchases of Cisco software through AWS marketplace can be applied to customer Enterprise Discount Program (EDP) commitments. In general, for every dollar spent on AWS marketplace, one dollar is applied to this committed spend.

Although we’re seeing many customer use cases that resonate with mutual customers enabled by our integrations, I will describe four example use cases focused on an area on everyone’s mind, security.

Threat prevention: Stop attackers before they enter your cloud

AWS Integration: Cisco Umbrella integrates with AWS Route 53 to provide Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) visibility

Securing your network is more challenging than ever. This includes the need to secure users, devices, applications, and data at the point of access–working at the cloud edge to deliver protection without compromising network performance.

This is where Cisco Umbrella comes in. As shown in Figure 1 below, Umbrella provides Domain Name System (DNS) level security, evaluating all requests from any device, cloud, or location to prevent users and devices from being compromised. With our AWS integration, Umbrella provides visibility into AWS hosted cloud applications used across the organization, enabling security teams to identify potential risks and easily block specified applications.

Access control: Only authorized users get access to your cloud applications

AWS Integration: Duo validates identity for AWS through Verified Access

To help further protect against bad actors, organizations also need to ensure the right users access the right applications from the right devices. This is where Cisco Duo shines. Duo verifies user identity, establishes device trust, and provides a secure connection to cloud applications. With our AWS integration, Duo provides secure access protection for applications authenticated through the AWS Directory Service. In addition, Duo and AWS Verified Access validate user identity and set appropriate security controls for access to AWS applications.

Data security: Separate and secure your cloud applications and data

AWS integration: Cisco Secure Firewall reports to AWS Security Lake

Organizations also need to separate critical applications and data (such as commerce) from those that are less critical (such as event registration) to ensure data is not lost or compromised.

This is where Cisco Secure Firewall on AWS extends Cisco industry-leading threat intelligence and protection to AWS. Secure Firewall enables organizations to gain control across their cloud environments with consistent security policies to separate sensitive applications and data. Through our integration, Secure Firewall seamlessly extends corporate security architecture into AWS.

Visibility: Stop bad actors before they compromise your cloud

Integration: Thousand Eyes monitors all AWS application flows

Organizations need the ability to identify anomalies and compromises across clouds and over the internet to stop threat activity.

This is where ThousandEyes gets deployed, delivering end-to-end visibility for organization from the user to the secure edge to every application, providing actionable insights that IT and operations teams use to resolve incidents quickly to deliver better outcomes for end users.

In addition, Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics (Stealthwatch Cloud)–also integrated with AWS–detects early indicators of compromise in the cloud or on premises, including insider threat activity and malware, as well as policy violations, misconfigured cloud assets, and user misuse.

Securing your cloud journey with AWS and Cisco

As mentioned earlier, Cisco and AWS are integrating solutions across security, monitoring, networking, and collaboration. That said, when it comes to security, Cisco and AWS offer a broad suite of security solutions to protect cloud applications, infrastructure, and users, providing visibility and control over every aspect of running on AWS.

Interested in learning more? Come visit Cisco at AWS re:Inforce (booth #246).

Also check out the Cisco security products available on AWS marketplace.

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