Cisco expands Advanced Malware Protection and data centre security solutions

The newest updates to Cisco(R) Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) make it the first solution to correlate Indications of Compromise (IoC) data between network and endpoint, with integrated threat defense and shared intelligence -- providing customers with continuous and pervasive protection against the most advanced threats. AMP also now features Mac OSX support and a private cloud appliance, an on-premises solution that delivers continuous analysis. ThreatGRID's technology, with its dynamic analysis capabilities both on-premises and in the cloud, complements AMP and allows enhanced aggregation and correlation of data for advanced threat intelligence across the extended network and across Cisco security solutions and services.

"Every day, we are faced with new threats that are becoming more and more innovative in the ways they infiltrate and attack our environment," said Dan Polly, vice president, enterprise information security, First Financial Bank. "With AMP, Cisco is enabling us to take a much more mature approach to our advanced threat protection efforts."

Cisco is also increasing data center and cloud protection with enhancements to its market-leading ASA firewall family, offering superior performance, scalability and flexibility. These enhancements support advances in software-defined networking (SDN) and Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) environments.

"Faced with advanced threats that have the ability to disrupt businesses before most tools even take notice, companies today require complete solutions that continuously detect and stop the most sophisticated attacks," said Christopher Young, senior vice president, security business group, Cisco. "With these threats infiltrating environments at the endpoint, in the data center and through the cloud, Cisco's mission is to provide solutions that move beyond point-in-time threat response to deliver anytime, all-the-time threat-centric protection."

Continuous and Pervasive Advanced Malware Protection "Everywhere"
Bridging the gap between network and endpoint protection, AMP was recently named one of the top solutions in an NSS Labs Security Value Map for Breach Detection Systems -- outpacing other vendor solutions in protection and cost-effectiveness. Unlike other solutions that simply detect malware at a point-in-time, AMP delivers unrelenting, continuous detection and response capabilities across the extended network, including endpoints, mobile devices, virtual systems and Web and e-mail gateways.

"AMP allows us to go beyond point-in-time protection and take a continuous approach to identifying and stopping attacks, which is critical to not only our security efforts but to our overall operations," stated Brad Stroeh, senior network security engineer at First Financial Bank.

New capabilities in the AMP product portfolio include:
• AMP for Endpoints -- Delivering advanced analytics and correlation enhancements, AMP accelerates investigation of Indications of Compromise and file behavior, and prioritizes the top areas of a compromise that require the greatest attention. New Elastic Search enables users to quickly hunt down the scope of attack, while Remote File Analysis furthers the solution's retrospective security capabilities with the ability to retrieve and store files for later scoring and analysis. Cisco is also extending AMP for Endpoints to Mac OS X, enabling organizations to protect their entire heterogeneous environments.
• AMP Private Cloud Appliance -- For customers with high privacy requirements that restrict using a public cloud, the new on-premises AMP Private Cloud Appliance delivers comprehensive advanced malware protection using big data analytics, continuous analysis, and security intelligence stored locally.
• AMP for Networks -- High performance networks and requirements to accelerate time-to-detection are driving the need for optimized advanced malware protection on the network. New multi-source Indications of Compromise capabilities correlate and prioritize events across a variety of solutions for enhanced intelligence, while automatic Dynamic Analysis utilizes a cloud-based sandbox to evaluate files with an unknown disposition to provide increased protection against unknown threats. Users can also create custom detections to immediately block files, while the new File Capture feature allows teams to store and retrieve files for further analysis.
• New AMP FirePOWER Appliances -- For customers who need enhanced processing and storage, Cisco is now delivering two new dedicated AMP for Networks appliances: the FirePOWER AMP8150 with up to 2 Gbps of performance and the FirePOWER AMP7150 with up to 500 Mbps of performance.
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Control without Compromise through Superior Data Center Protection
Increasing data center and cloud protection to support the advances being made in software-defined networking (SDN) and Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) environments, Cisco is delivering superior performance, scalability and flexibility with its ASAv and updated ASA 5585-X firewalls. Both are designed to provide critical protection without compromising data center performance. The ASA solutions provision in hours or minutes, feature elastic scalability to eliminate security bottlenecks, and weave security into the intelligent data center fabric, not just at the edge. Cisco is also releasing a new version of its Secure Data Center Cisco Validated Design (CVD), which significantly simplifies the secure deployment of new solutions.

"The integration of the Border Gateway Protocol and Change of Authorization are huge additions with the new 9.2.1 platform for our Cisco ASA 5585-X Next-Generation Firewalls," said Kyle Ross, senior solution architect, CompuCom. "These features enable simplified configurations that produce both time and cost-savings benefits that we can provide to our clients. We're very excited to see where the Cisco portfolio is going with a complete end-to-end solution. We believe Security should be part of every discussion we have with our clients, and this new platform is key to that."
• New ASAv -- A virtual appliance seamlessly integrating into the data center architecture, the ASAv helps ensure that security is never more than one hop away from critical applications featuring dynamic, on-demand scalability within virtual environments, with ACI integration, without hypervisor or vSwitch limitations. Additionally, ASAv offers industry leading performance marks in the area of throughput and connections per second.
• Enhanced ASA 5585-X Firewall -- Extremely high performance for traditional, SDN and ACI data center environments, along with superior scalability across both connections per second AND total connections, delivering up to 640 Gbps in a 16- node clustered configuration. This makes it one of the fastest physical firewall solutions on the market. It also offers unique deployment flexibility by integrating both virtual and physical security infrastructures into a single policy and management domain.
• Cisco Secure Data Center CVD -- Outlining best practices for planning, designing, implementing and operating fully-integrated highly secure data center architecture and encompassing Cisco, Sourcefire and Cisco ecosystem partner solutions, CVD helps users expand visibility and control across physical, virtual and cloud environments.