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Cisco Announced Advanced Security Features on SDWAN Edge Devices Part-III

Cisco SD-WAN solution was rated high by customers and service providers as one of the secured SD-WAN solution available compared to other players in the SD-WAN market. It had end to end segmentation and two factor authentications initially with support of high density large deployment. 

And now with new security feature inclusion, Cisco SD-WAN security is enhanced exponentially. Latest features introduced includes Enterprise Application Aware Firewall, Intrusion Prevention System, URL Filtering, DNS Security through Cisco Umbrella. 

No these advance security features are not intended to replace the dedicated solution available those are still required depends on the data traffic. Customer already have these solutions deployed in DC / DR / Colo Sites. Purpose here is to secure the small remote branch locations with single box solution to meet both connectivity and the security requirement. 
Fig 1.1- Cisco SDWAN
Now all central locations, remote sites, users and devices are protected with suite of security functions. 

SD-WAN which is primarily a routing stuff is based on SDN principles where services are extracted from hardware and the centralized to reduce the complexity. Cisco SD-WAN is truly Software Defined where routers are forwarding the traffic while other critical functionalities such as Routing, Device Configurations, Policies configurations are centralized and managed by the controller. 

Inline to IBN and SD-WAN principles, Cisco is reducing the great level of complexity while implementing the new security features on SD-WAN edge devices with very few inputs in simple UI. 

All the new advance security features are implemented from single pane of window (vManage - NMS for Cisco SD-WAN solution). 

Enterprise landscape is evolving where ease of management, scalability, improved uptime, IT cost reduction and end-to-end security are key asks from enterprises. In short customer wants all good features from security, best of bread routing capabilities and ease of management. 

Cisco has secured a strong position in SD-WAN field with announcement of advanced security features address all the challenges stated above – maximum uptime / optimal routing with Overlay network architecture; security with end to end VPNs segments, 2 factor authentications and recently announced security features; and vManage UI to configure, monitor, manage and troubleshoot complete WAN.
Gartner recently release magic quadrant on IPS, Firewall and Edge Routing and all these reports placed Cisco in Leader quadrant. Which means if we put together all these quadrants and say all these technologies are required functionality from customers to address current challenges faced in evolving landscape, Cisco has strong position as is the only vender appearing in all the quadrant in leader section.

Cisco last year announced Intent Based Network (IBN) approach to simplify the network deployment based on the intends keyed in by users. These intents are rendered into configuration and pushed to the end devices. Switching and routing both are very well following IBN approach. 
All new security features are provisioned, managed, troubleshoot through single window which is more to yet to come on - how multiple security solutions are used in various use cases at remote branch end.

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