Cisco, Kyndryl step up partnership to cut enterprise security threats

Cisco and Kyndryl have expanded their partnership to offer new services that are aimed at helping enterprise customers better detect and respond to cyber threats.

Specifically, Kyndryl will be integrating its own cyber resiliency offering with Cisco’s overarching Security Cloud platform that includes security components such as Cisco’s Duo access control, extended detection and response features, and Multicloud Defense, which orchestrates security and policy across private and public clouds.

Security Cloud operates as a layer on top of the infrastructure across a customer’s cloud services – including Azure, AWS, GCP and private data-center clouds – to protect core applications, Cisco said. It features a unified dashboard, support for flexible trust policies, and open APIs to encourage third-party integrators. By correlating data and employing artificial intelligence and machine learning, Cisco Security Cloud can detect and remediate threats quickly throughout an organization, Cisco says.

“Cisco’s Security Cloud will let Kyndryl integrate multi-vendor solutions and provide a more cohesive and integrated solution. By increasing the integration, customers benefit from offerings that protect their organizations. In turn, this consolidates security vendors, centralizes technology and limits attack surfaces, while improving an organization’s ability to meet their cyber resilience needs,” said Kyndryl Michelle Weston, vice president of global offerings for security and resiliency.

Cyber resilience allows Kyndryl’s customers to anticipate, protect, withstand and recover from adverse conditions, stresses, attacks and compromises of cyber-enabled business, Weston said.

Kyndryl offers a Security and Resiliency service that includes a variety of services such as zero trust support, security operations and incident recovery services.

“Kyndryl provides a suite of services and solutions that address customer needs – from anticipating an attack through recovering data in the event of a cyber incident or otherwise, like a natural disaster,” Weston said. “Kyndryl is using our cyber resilience framework to provide customers with innovative and flexible offerings that break away from traditional, outdated security models.”

Last year, Cisco and Kyndryl announced their first alliance, which focused on helping enterprise customers implement a range of connectivity technologies including software defined networking (SDN), WAN, and private 5G.

Kyndryl offers network consulting, fully managed networks, and SDN services to help enterprises build programmable network fabrics that include SD-WAN, data center, branch, and LAN technologies.

The relationship continues a technology partnership between Cisco and IBM’s former managed infrastructure services unit, which spun out of IBM in 2021.