Cisco releases SecureX platform free-of-charge for existing customers

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Cisco’s is bundling its newly-announced cloud-native SecureX enterprise platform into all of its existing products free of charge in direct response to the accelerating nature of remote working due to coronavirus.

From 30 June, existing customers to Cisco’s security portfolio across will gain access to SecureX, connecting Cisco’s integrated security portfolio with their enterprise security infrastructure.

The platform aims to give chief information security officers (CISOs) unified visibility across the breadth of Cisco’s security products, as well as the capacity to automate workflows and remediate security threats.

SecureX was first revealed in February as a service that adds more visibility over cloud platforms, as well as offering analytical and AI functionality. Cisco, however, hadn't appreciated just how important this new approach to security, focused on simplicity and automation, would be at this moment in time, according to SVP and general manager of Cisco’s security business Gee Rittenhouse.

Distributing the platform in such a way has come about as a result of the accelerating demand for digital transformation and remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“With SecureX we wanted to reimagine the way our customers experienced security by making it simple and automated,” said Rittenhouse.

“We knew this would be transformative for the industry, but we could never have predicted just how important this would be to security and IT professionals at this very moment. In this new and dynamic world, customers need a security platform that can protect employees wherever they work and meet the challenges of today and the future.”

SecureX analyses data across endpoints, cloud environments, networks and applications to identity threats, fitting into Cisco’s existing security products and those from third-party providers.

New and existing customers can use SecureX to gain a full view of their security infrastructure and the components that make it up, with Cisco using a ribbon feature to integrate the platform across all its products.

Customers can also automate workflows across products from both Cisco’s security portfolio and third-party systems so they can focus on higher-priority tasks. The process of threat hunting would be automated using data gathered by Cisco Talos, for instance.

The platform can also enable security experts to quickly identify impacted targets and remediate within minutes, the company claims, by correlating intelligence data from multiple sources and telemetry data from other products.

Keumars Afifi-Sabet
Features Editor

Keumars Afifi-Sabet is a writer and editor that specialises in public sector, cyber security, and cloud computing. He first joined ITPro as a staff writer in April 2018 and eventually became its Features Editor. Although a regular contributor to other tech sites in the past, these days you will find Keumars on LiveScience, where he runs its Technology section.