Clients of Cisco now have access to new risk-based security capabilities across the entire Cisco security portfolio, improving the protection of multi-cloud and hybrid work environments. These developments show progress in achieving the Cisco Security Cloud’s full potential, which will safeguard the stability of an organization’s entire IT environment.
The very first Cybersecurity Readiness Index, which focused on five fundamental pillars of security protection—identity, devices, network, apps, and data—was also unveiled by Cisco. Despite the widespread adoption of technologies for device security, additional development is still required to safeguard identities, networks, and apps. Identity management and device management were regarded as two of the top three cybersecurity dangers by respondents. Criminals are increasingly focusing on the systems that secure users and devices as multi-factor authentication (MFA) becomes more widely used.
Unfortunately, even though device protection is reaching great levels of adoption, there is still more work to be done in the area of identity. The area of device security has the maximum readiness among businesses all over the world, with roughly half of them classified as being in either the “mature” or “advanced” phases of implementation. On the other hand, with only 20% of organizations falling into the “mature” category and more than half categorized as the “beginning” or “formative”, phases, significant advancement is needed to tackle the problem of identity verification. In addition to the increasing frequency of these attacks and the failure of the current risk-based signals, the rigidity of authentication controls also adds to the problem.
“Security products should provide a frictionless user experience while minimizing risk for the organization. At the same time, organizations need to look at their security resilience holistically. This is why Cisco is building an end-to-end portfolio of security solutions and integrating them into a single platform. We’re excited to share the latest innovations across zero trust, application security, and secure connectivity as we build towards our vision,” said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration at Cisco.
Duo Risk-Based Authentication now offers several capabilities that are intended to decrease user friction and improve security effectiveness in a hybrid work environment. These are:
- Customers can now authenticate in trusted contexts less frequently without risking their privacy. Users may stay logged in when utilizing familiar programs, devices, and networks thanks to remembered devices and the patent-pending Wi-Fi Fingerprint technology, all without sharing their private or sensitive location data.
- Utilize the new Verified Push functionality to defend against authentication phishing attacks. Instead of just pressing a button to confirm in risky circumstances where Duo may identify behavior from well-known attack patterns, it asks the user to input a code.
- Expanded Single Sign On (SSO) features that are geared toward modern companies increase efficiency by alerting users and enabling them to reset their login credentials before they expire.
