Home / Cisco Meraki / Cisco Meraki Security - Meraki MX Security Appliances

Cisco Meraki Security - Meraki MX Security Appliances


Meraki Cloud Managed Security Appliance Series 

Today I am going to talk about Cisco acquired Meraki or Cisco Meraki MX Security Appliances. These appliances are ideal for organizations with large numbers of distributed sites. Since the MX is 100% cloud managed, installation and remote management is simple.  So it means that these security appliances will be managed on cloud.The Meraki MX has a comprehensive suite of network services, eliminating the need for multiple appliances. These services include Layer 7 application firewall, content filtering, web search filtering with intrusion prevention, web caching, Intelligent WAN with multiple uplinks and 4G failover. 

Fig 1.1- Cisco Meraki MX Security Appliances

Security Features 
  • With the help of Meraki MX Security appliances we can have Application-aware traffic control which can set bandwidth policies based on Layer 7 application type (e.g., YouTube, Skype, P2P). 
  • Another best feature is the content Filtering which can be used as CIPA-compliant content filtering and safe search enforcement.
  • Meraki based Intrusion prevention ( IPS feature) : PCI-compliant IPS sensor using industry-leading SNORT signature database from Cisco Sourcefire. 
  • With the help of Meraki MX security appliances, you can have the Anti-virus and anti-phishing with flow based protection
  • Another good feature is to get the Identity based security policies and application management. 


IWAN and VPN Features
  • Auto VPN feature which includes automatic VPN route generation, IKE/IPSEC setup and key exchange via Cisco Meraki’s secure cloud. 
  • Cisco Intelligent WAN with active / active VPN, policy-based-routing, and dynamic VPN path selection. 
  • You can also Interoperates with standards-based IPSEC VPNs. 
  • With the help of Meraki you can Automated MPLS to VPN failover. 
  • Another feature is to have the Client VPN in which you will have L2TP IPSEC support for native Windows, Mac OS X, iPad and Android clients with no per-user licensing fees. 


Cloud Management Features
  • With the help of Cisco Meraki MX security appliances you can have the rich features like Unified Firewall, switching, wireless LAN, and mobile device management through an intuitive web-based dashboard. 
  • You can also have the template based settings scale easily from small deployments to tens of thousands of devices. 
  • With the Cisco Meraki MX appliances we can have Role-based administration, configurable email alerts for a variety of important events, and easily audible change logs. 
  • v We can also achieve the summary reports with user, device, and application usage details archived in the cloud. 

Gateway Services
  • If you talk about the Cisco Meraki MX security appliances, these alliances have built-in DHCP, NAT, QoS, and VLAN management services. 
  • Web caching: accelerates frequently accessed content. 
  • Another feature which is an important part of Meraki MX appliances are Load balancing by which we combines multiple WAN links into a single high- speed interface, with policies for QoS, traffic shaping, and failover. 
  • With the Cisco Meraki MX appliances we will have Smart connection monitoring by which we can automatic detection of layer 2 and layer 3 outages and fast failover, including 3G/4G USB modems.