Cisco today introduced a set of security solutions designed for securing data centres against the threats they face in moving towards more consolidated and virtualised environment.

The offerings include new scalable software for its Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firewall; virtualised ASA for multitenant environment; a data-centre-grade intrusion prevention system (IPS); and new improvements to the Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client to meet the stringent requirements of a more mobile workforce.

Collectively, the offerings extend data centre and security professionals’ power to enforce end-to-end security for high-capacity data centres and mobile workforces.

Virtualisaton and cloud environment

The virtualisation and cloud mega trend is forcing profound shifts within data centres, affecting everything from IT services to business models to architectures.

If addressed properly, these trends offer business benefits such as reduced capital investments, new revenue growth and the greater efficiency, agility and scalability, according to industry watchers.

Cisco officials say that the company is seeing a trend wherein security has to keep pace with the demands of changing virtual and cloud environment, as well as the demands of increased complexity, compliance and employees bringing their own devices to work.

Operating under the principle that security must be integrated across the network to ensure the protection of unified data centres, Cisco believes network policies must be unified across physical and virtual worlds, intra-virtual machine communication should be secured, and access to applications by wired and mobile clients must be protected.

This security approach has become imperative as customers look to make the migration to cloud and a more flexible device-agnostic corporate culture. Cisco’s latest product developments support such an approach, according to its officials.

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