Cisco enhance their SecureX System

Industry News Tue 28th, Feb 2012 by Dave Simpson 0
Cisco will announce today the extension and refresh of their SecureX threat monitoring system which will be incorporated into some of its high-end firewalls – referred to as the Cisco CX firewall.

Furthermore, Cisco is upgrading its Trustsec and Identity Service Engine (ISE) to essentially enhance and lift their capability to monitor threats on the cloud and across a wide range of device types. Ultimately, the goal is to integrate the intelligence on the software side with no additional hardware.

"Long term, we're going to be taking the power of SecureX, and bringing it into the Cisco core architecture, and delivering it on everything we do - our core router and switching, but also data, voice and video. We're bringing security to all parts of the Cisco landscape," commented Cisco's new senior vice president of security Christopher Young at the RSA 2012 conference in San Francisco.

Cisco's CSO John Stewart said this gave the company a unique selling point, "We've got to work together – you're not going to survive on your own. You've got to work in a community of data. Cisco's been quietly successful in protecting customers from a phenomenal data source, which is ours”. According to Stewart, every day Cisco handles 35 per cent of the world's email via its systems, accounting for 4TB of information and routes 30 billion website requests. This kind of information is now being analysed and fed into Cisco's SecureX network.

Cisco claims the ASA CX system will be capable of identifying over a thousand individual applications such as Facebook and Google+, as well as 75,000 micro applications. For example, the system can be configured to allow access to Facebook, but not to specific applications within it.

As a first step, the company announced that SecureX will be built into the ASA 5500 Series X firewalls aimed at large and medium-sized business sector. These next-generation security appliances deliver multiple security services, multigigabit performance, flexible interface options, and redundant power supplies—all in a compact 1-RU form factor.

The Cisco ASA 5500-X Series midrange security appliances provides additional network security through optional integrated cloud- and software-based security services that use identity for security policy selection, requiring no additional hardware modules. Built on the same proven security platform as the rest of the ASA family of security appliances, the Cisco ASA 5500-X Series midrange security appliances delivers superior performance for exceptional operational efficiency.

What’s New?

  • 4x increase in firewall throughput protects users as their current and future data consumption demands increase.
  • Additional security services can be enabled quickly and easily, without requiring additional hardware.
  • Dedicated IPS hardware accelerates responses against security threats. Available on ASA 5525-X, 5545-X, and 5555-X
  • Redundant power supplies protect against power outages. Available on ASA 5545-X and 5555-X
  • Multicore enterprise-class CPUs deliver more powerful, efficient performance.
  • Additional copper and SFP Gigabit Ethernet ports provide greater flexibility during network configuration.

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