Cisco ushers in a new era of networking

The recent WannaCry ransomware cyberattack targeted users running older versions of Microsoft Windows, and the virus quickly infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries and regions, affecting medical, telecommunications, financial and other industries and organizations. If IT departments can quickly disconnect infected devices within the network, the losses caused by such cyberattacks can be effectively reduced, just like suppressing and eliminating a riot in a prison.

This is just one of many powerful new features in Cisco's new software and hardware products, which are designed to address the challenges facing traditional networks, including large-scale IoT deployments, growing complexity and expanding security threats.

A major leap forward for the network

A series of recent Cisco launches mark a major leap forward for Cisco's digital network architecture (DNA), which means that Cisco will adopt a new software-driven approach to building networks to help customers successfully complete their digital transformation. Scentsy, a direct sales company based in Idaho, is one of Cisco's customers. The company sells chipless products through an e-commerce platform.

Candles and scented candles and other products, with annual revenue of up to $450 million. With Cisco's technical support, Senstis has successfully expanded its network to support more than 150,000 consultants. Like many companies, Senstis's network serves a variety of audiences, including customers, consultants, employees, distributors and visitors. Cisco's new Software Defined Access allows each visitor to see only information related to themselves. In the past, IT had to manually set visitor permissions. Now, this process is fully automated, significantly reducing errors caused by manual operations.

Kevin Tompkins, a network architect at Senstis, believes that this technology has changed the rules of the game: "Once you can segment users based on users rather than IP addresses, users will be able to log in from any device and anywhere. This scenario was originally just a dream that I thought would never happen, but now it has become a reality that can be done immediately."

The new generation of networks can learn from the environment, self-learn from information provided by IT, automate operations, and help teams deploy policies in a more consistent and rapid manner. Scott Harrell, senior vice president of product management for Cisco's Enterprise Networking Division, said Cisco is redefining the network. Harrell said: "The newly released products are designed to make the network more agile and intelligent, while allowing enterprises to segment the network in a more refined way to ensure security. In addition, users can also gain advantages such as automation and service assurance to operate the network more efficiently."

Fully integrated

Traditional networks are hardware-centric, with a lot of work to be done manually and lacking effective integrated security. The next-generation network is software-driven, fully automated, and has built-in security features that can transform network data into business insights. In addition, through the large-scale application of machine learning technology, the next-generation network can also self-learn, perceive changes, and make predictions. Cisco believes that this will help us build a fully integrated intent-based network system.

The new DNA-ready series of switches kicks off Cisco's new product launch. The Catalyst 9000 switching portfolio can form a platform that supports mobile, IoT and cloud, and has integrated security, including the industry's first solution that can detect threats in encrypted traffic.

"It's a long-standing tactic used by attackers to exploit the privacy protections of encrypted traffic to evade detection by security tools," Harrell said. "Now, Cisco has introduced a product that is unmatched in the market that can determine if malicious traffic is inside encrypted traffic without decrypting it."

Cisco's innovation doesn't stop there: as the digital network architecture (DNA) evolves further and the network becomes more open and programmable, application developers will be able to unlock new capabilities by integrating application programming interfaces (APIs) with the DNA hardware infrastructure.

“The network is more important to customers now than ever before, and with a single, fully integrated system, customers can have complete confidence that the right best practices are in place,” said Harrell. “This is the beginning of something cool and incredibly powerful to come from here.”