Protecting the present and the future! Cisco helps enterprises resume work and production and ensure business continuity

[51CTO.com original article] The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has caused companies to present a completely different development trend: industries such as tourism and hotels have been put on hold, while industries such as manufacturing and retail have resumed work and production under strict control, and industries such as online education and e-commerce have been accelerated...

As we all know, black swans are unpredictable and accidents always come unexpectedly. So how did the companies that have shown strong risk resistance during this epidemic "go against the wind"? Cisco recently held a "Media Communication Meeting on How Cisco Security Ensures Business Continuity of Enterprises". Bu Xianlu, Vice President of Cisco Greater China and General Manager of the Security Business Unit, and Xu Hongtao, Technical Director of Cisco Greater China Security Business Unit, talked about Cisco's thinking on how to ensure the normal operation of the business of enterprises based on the best practices of enterprises during this epidemic, and shared with the media how Cisco's "Business Continuity Plan (BCP)" can help enterprises calmly deal with "black swans."

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Bu Xianlu, Vice President of Cisco Greater China and General Manager of Security Business Unit

Companies that embrace digital transformation earlier are more resistant to risks

Bu Xianlu told 51CTO that Cisco has not been put on hold during this global pandemic. In fact, 95% of Cisco's more than 70,000 employees worldwide work remotely and have hardly been affected by the pandemic. Cisco has also provided customers with security products, technologies, and services to help them resume work and production smoothly. In addition, Cisco has provided more than RMB 10 million worth of product and technical support to Hubei's anti-epidemic frontline, helping the Hubei Center for Disease Control and Prevention and frontline hospitals and cabin hospitals to calmly respond to the pandemic.

How did Cisco do so well with 70,000 employees around the world working non-stop to serve customers in resuming work and production, and actively supporting the front line of the fight against the epidemic? The secret lies in the fact that Cisco has a business continuity system to support it. In April this year, Cisco announced the launch of the Business Resiliency Program, continuing its global commitment to help customers and partners cope with the changing economic environment, alleviate the financial challenges brought about by the new crown epidemic, and provide companies with the solutions they need to enable them to maintain efficient business operations, ensure employee safety, and provide support to the community during this special period.

Similarly, among many of Cisco's customers, there are some companies with a high degree of digitalization, a solid foundation in network informatization, employees working remotely from home, leaders making online decisions, and corporate production and operations completed through digital platforms. "Such companies are actually very little affected by the epidemic." Take online education and e-commerce as examples. Because the business is related to online, they often embrace digital transformation before other users. Therefore, they are not affected during the epidemic, but can accelerate development. "Now that China has announced a new infrastructure plan to develop new infrastructure represented by 5G, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, and Internet of Things, I believe that the entire digital economy of China will be able to accelerate development in the future." Bu Xianlu said.

"Zero Trust" security architecture enables enterprises to work efficiently at any location and at any time

"In the new normal, remote work and learning require technology as a means and trust as a foundation." Bu Xianlu revealed that many customers reported that remote work efficiency seemed to have declined during the epidemic. The key reason is that companies often only value technical support but fail to build a culture and process of mutual trust. Cisco's solution is that companies need to build a "zero trust" framework to flexibly respond to various security challenges.

He cited a work scenario of a Cisco employee: In their daily work, Cisco employees will install security client software on their mobile devices, and employees can directly access it when handling general affairs. However, when employees need to access sensitive company data, such as customer relationship management systems and production and operation data, Cisco will build a secure channel where all information is encrypted and the identity of the employee is authenticated in a variety of ways to ensure secure and reliable access. Not only that, Cisco also has some applications that ensure that employees can access the network safely even when they are not connected to an encrypted secure channel. In this way, for Cisco employees, working from home or working at a customer or partner location is the same and is very safe. "This is a seamless and smooth application experience that also ensures employee productivity."

So in the long run, how can we help customers build security capabilities that allow them to work anywhere and maintain business continuity? Bu Xianlu said that Cisco provides an end-to-end remote office security solution that can solve this problem. By building a secure network interconnection channel, protecting key office applications, strengthening terminal security, conducting overall security awareness training for employees, and using zero-trust security methods, etc., it can help corporate customers build security capabilities that allow them to work efficiently at any time and in any place.

51CTO reporter learned that according to incomplete statistics, since March 10, more than 15 million new users around the world have used Cisco's security solutions, and more than 400,000 users in Greater China have started using Cisco's security solutions. During the Spring Festival, Cisco helped a large domestic insurance company to quickly deploy a remote office security solution in just three days, enabling its 47,000 employees to securely access internal corporate data remotely, achieving the same office experience as in the company.

Cisco's three-step cycle to create "zero trust"

Due to the impact of the epidemic, the online digital economy has become extremely active, and security risks have also increased. Ransomware and online fraud are on the rise. This not only poses a huge challenge to corporate security protection, but also poses a considerable threat to corporate business continuity. Bu Xianlu believes that from a security perspective, the cornerstones of building business continuity include: how to ensure secure remote access, how to protect production data and operational data, how to manage user identities, how to prevent and control terminal security, how to protect critical applications, and enhance the overall employee safety awareness. "During the epidemic, the 'zero trust' security architecture has also been further recognized and developed."

It is understood that Cisco has unique advantages in "zero trust" and ranks first in the Forrester Zero Trust Security Report. Cisco's application concept for "zero trust" is to minimize the permissions of each user in the network, and then establish a level of trust based on the user's role and status. When users access different applications, the authentication, authorization, and auditing processes given by the system are uninterrupted and run continuously to ensure that each user has minimal rights and the risks to the system are minimal and controllable and visible. In short, Cisco's entire "zero trust" framework is a three-step cycle of "establishing trust, implementing trust-based access, and continuous trust verification", which can comprehensively protect the access security of the company's employees, workplaces, and workloads.

Xu Hongtao introduced that Cisco's "zero trust" security architecture has three major characteristics:

The first feature is that the solution has a wide coverage, including "zero trust" for employees, "zero trust" for devices, "zero trust" for networks, "zero trust" for data, and "zero trust" for workloads (servers), covering multiple links with a very high degree of completeness.

The second feature is that Cisco's deployment method is very simple. One is a cloud-based method that does not require users to deploy any equipment in the network, and the development workload is also very small. The other is that "zero trust" has been integrated into the network infrastructure solution. When users deploy the network and enjoy high performance, they have already obtained "zero trust" security.

The third feature is that Cisco's security products and technologies are always at the forefront of the industry. Coupled with Cisco Talos, the world's leading threat research team, it can provide strong backing support for Cisco's security research and security product services, helping Cisco's security solutions quickly discover, identify and block the latest and most complex attacks.

At the end of the interview, Bu Xianlu suggested that large and medium-sized domestic enterprises could build a system according to the business continuity plan, which is not only an IT system, but also a supply chain system and a production operation system. In addition, they could improve the security maturity of the enterprise by establishing a zero-trust architecture. Only by advancing in multiple directions can they maintain uninterrupted operation. "After experiencing this epidemic, more and more enterprises will pay attention to this direction."

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