Cisco Partners, Customers Can Now Secure SD-WAN From The Cloud Via Cisco Umbrella

‘Protecting SD-WAN, whether partners or customers have on-prem, in the cloud, or both as a deployment, they are covered,’ Gee Rittenhouse, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco's Security Business Group, says at Cisco Live 2019.

Last year, Cisco built security capabilities into its premise-based SD-WAN devices. Now, the tech giant is furthering its secure SD-WAN strategy by integrating Cisco SD-WAN with Cisco Umbrella, the company's cloud-based secure internet gateway.

Combining Cisco's Viptela-powered SD-WAN solution with Cisco Umbrella will let partners and end customers secure their SD-WAN from the cloud, Gee Rittenhouse, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco's Security Business Group, told CRN at Cisco Live 2019.

"You can now take your network and attach it to you security platform in a very easy, one-click way," Rittenhouse said.

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The secure SD-WAN news demonstrates that Cisco is focusing on simplicity, said Jason Parry, vice president of client solutions for Force 3, a Cisco Gold Partner and solution provider focused on Federal customers.

"We've talked about how Cisco needs to go to market with secure SD-WAN, not just SD-WAN, and it seems like that the approach they are starting to take," Parry said. "Leveraging Umbrella makes a ton of sense -- the more features and capabilities they can build on that platform and deliver, the better," he said.

The combination eliminates the need for the security team to worry about the networking involved with tunneling and the networking team won't have to worry about the security side, like upgrading and patching, Rittenhouse said.

Secure SD-WAN is something that customers have been asking for and partners have been asking for cloud-native secure SD-WAN specifically, he added.

"Protecting SD-WAN, whether partners or customers have on-prem, in the cloud, or both as a deployment, they are covered," Rittenhouse said.

The Cisco Umbrella platform brings together multiple layers of security, including secure web gateway, firewall, and cloud access security. It also acts as a secure onramp to the internet by offering secure internet access and controlled software as a service usage across all locations, according to San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco.

The shift to SD-WAN brings up new security challenges. Customers expect cost savings as they move off of MPLS networks and customers don't want to run long pilots anymore, Gary Symes, vice president of security for BT Americas, a longtime Cisco Partner, said.

"The way this offering is set up, we can be fairly aggressive about this and work almost as fast as the business will allow us," Symes said.