Utilizing Cisco Controllers to Meet Monetary Regulatory Necessities

This weblog will discover how monetary establishments (FIs) can use completely different Cisco applied sciences to assist meet regulatory necessities, be they FFIEC, OCC, PCI, or others. Prior blogs on this collection enumerated on the regulatory our bodies and rules, in addition to how organizations can reside in a multi-controller world. That is elementary to the varied expertise necessities seen throughout an IT group’s span of management. This weblog will give attention to a few of the capabilities WITHIN every of those controllers, and the way they will help resolve the challenges confronted inside their respective domains. Of be aware is all of those applied sciences expose the northbound API which might permit for multi-domain orchestration, and multi-domain orchestration instruments that leverage these instruments have been evaluated within the prior weblog.

Throughout these regulatory audit standards numerous elementary constructs stay constant. These key tones permeate the steerage that Cisco applied sciences will help with are with the ability to

• know your atmosphere,
• patch your atmosphere, and
• section and safe delicate knowledge in your atmosphere

Particular inside some rules, you will see that superior steerage on evolving applied sciences, particularly with the 2021 replace to the FFIEC operations e-book. These rules will proceed to evolve, and with the ability to harness the ability of the automation techniques can save organizations operational prices in assembly them.

Cisco DNA Heart

Cisco DNA Heart is a robust community controller and administration dashboard that permits you to take cost of your community, optimize your Cisco funding, safe your distant workforce, and decrease your IT spending. It offers a spread of advantages for FIs, together with serving to them meet regulatory necessities by way of its intensive automation capabilities. These advantages embody:

1. Community Segmentation: One of many key regulatory necessities for FIs is to make sure community segmentation to isolate delicate knowledge and techniques. Cisco DNA Heart will help with the provisioning of SDA or different applied sciences (L3 and L2) persistently throughout the atmosphere.
2. Visibility and Management: Cisco DNA Heart can present the power to centralize and filter on occasions and supply superior analytics.
3. Compliance Reporting: FIs are required to keep up compliance reviews to display their adherence to regulatory necessities. Cisco DNA Heart offers compliance reviews that may be simply generated and shared with regulators.
4. Automation and Orchestration: Cisco DNA Heart automates community administration duties corresponding to configuration administration, gadget provisioning, and community coverage enforcement. By means of superior composite templates, configlets for options could be stitched collectively throughout units and gadget sorts in order that consistency could be maintained for the varied options that exist in an enterprise community.
5. Enhanced Safety: By means of superior options like integration with Talos and endpoint classification, in addition to automated workflows for the provisioning of superior safety assets like encrypted site visitors analytics, DNA Heart helps FIs implement the insurance policies to fulfill their regulatory necessities.

Cisco SD-WAN

Cisco SD-WAN is a cloud-delivered or on-premise managed software-defined wide-area community answer that allows FIs to attach any consumer to any software. It has built-in capabilities corresponding to multicloud, safety, enhanced visibility, and analytics constructing towards a Safe Entry Service Edge (SASE)-enabled structure. Some capabilities Cisco’s SD-WAN answer will help with embody:

1. Community Segmentation: Provisioning safe segmentation and simplifying advanced topologies is without doubt one of the strengths of the Cisco SD-WAN answer. It might probably assist FIs to declaratively and systematically isolate delicate knowledge and techniques. That is intrinsic to the overlay and naturally can lengthen the campus to the info middle and cloud utilizing requirements primarily based segmentation constructs.
2. Safe Connectivity: One of many improvements Cisco SD-WAN dropped at market was the wedding of the routing topology with the encryption overlay to scale back the standard complexity round managing each individually. It makes use of patented improvements round safe key distribution to facilitate an automatic overlay which might safe any workload from any endpoint to any cloud utilizing software conscious routing.
3. Compliance Reporting: Cisco SD-WAN is a PCI compliant answer that can be utilized to assist FIs meet their compliance wants. PCI-DSS reviews can be found and could be shared with regulators.
4. Automation and Orchestration: Cisco SD-WAN automates community administration duties corresponding to configuration administration, gadget provisioning, and community coverage enforcement, decreasing the danger of errors and inconsistencies that may result in compliance violations.
5. Enhanced Safety: Cisco SD-WAN offers superior safety features corresponding to risk detection and response, application-level safety, and entry management, which will help FIs meet regulatory necessities round knowledge safety.

Cisco Meraki

Cisco Meraki is the world main cloud-managed networking answer that gives the total stack of enterprise merchandise managed persistently by way of centralized administration of community units and purposes. It offers a spread of advantages for FIs, together with serving to them meet regulatory necessities. A few of the advantages of Cisco Meraki for FIs on this regard embody:

1. Cloud Administration: With a PCI and GPDR compliant cloud administration answer, FIs can safely handle their community infrastructure from a single cloud-based dashboard. The intuitive means to quickly provision and preserve massive networks to incorporate SD-WAN, switching, wi-fi, sensors and cameras, and persistently and in keeping with predefined requirements, prevents configuration drift and inherent danger. The native API permits straightforward integration with present safety instruments and techniques for auditing and validation.
2. Community Segmentation: Cisco Meraki helps intrinsic and simplified SD-WAN at low complexity to make a simple to keep up, safe, and audit atmosphere. It has the power to do full stack safety marrying the wi-fi SSID to Layer 2 swap segmentation and preserving that by way of the SD-WAN answer, presenting this all in a single elegant answer.
3. Compliance Reporting: FIs are required to keep up compliance reviews to display their adherence to regulatory necessities. Cisco Meraki offers compliance reviews that may be simply generated and shared with regulators.
4. Superior Safety: Cisco Meraki offers superior safety features corresponding to risk detection and response, content material filtering, and entry management, which will help FIs meet regulatory necessities round knowledge safety.

Cisco ACI

Cisco Utility Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is a software-defined networking answer that gives centralized automation and policy-driven software profiles for knowledge middle networking. It offers a spread of advantages for FIs, together with serving to them meet regulatory necessities. A few of the advantages of Cisco ACI for FIs on this regard embody:

1. Community Segmentation: Implicit in ACI is the assemble of software primarily based consciousness and segmentation into requirements primarily based group coverage. This allows a framework for macro and micro-segmentation utilizing conventional community primarily based constructs or extra superior software classification. By means of utilizing a mannequin pushed strategy to segmentation it permits FIs to make sure that segmentation constructs are constant throughout a category of purposes and enforced both in ASIC or by way of service home equipment stitched into the community material.
2. Compliance Reporting: As a part of Cisco’s reference design for safe knowledge facilities ACI gives the power to report on {hardware} and software program variations in addition to safety constructs used throughout the material both by way of native instruments, or by way of created toolkits, and even by way of third-party audit options.
3. Automation and Orchestration: Cisco ACI was constructed from the highest down as a mannequin pushed orchestration platform to permit all constructs of the community to be programmed and orchestrated as objects within the mannequin. ACI has implicit automation and orchestration, and exposes all this performance by way of API to permit third-party merchandise to seamlessly match into the answer.
4.  Enhanced Safety: Cisco ACI offers superior safety features corresponding to community segmentation, policy-based entry management, and risk detection and response, which will help monetary establishments meet regulatory necessities round knowledge safety.
5. Scalability and Efficiency: Cisco ACI has line price efficiency and distinctive scalability to fulfill probably the most demanding environments. Evolutions corresponding to multi-pod and multi-site permit materials to not solely span geography however will increase scalability by permitting mobility between a number of availability zones.

In Conclusion

The FFIEC weblog collection has been centered round summarizing and evaluating the regulatory atmosphere confronted by IT organizations by way of the lens of the way it impacts these organizations, and corresponding applied sciences to assist. In my 15 years serving the monetary companies house, the regulatory world has solely gotten more difficult, however that is because of the actual world danger and evolution of industrialization of the risk panorama into viable and worthwhile enterprise fashions. The extent of technical danger confronted by FIs is at an all time excessive and can proceed to evolve as long as FIs are “the place the cash is.” The regulatory atmosphere doesn’t resolve this however is an try to make sure some degree of management and consistency. To assist meet these necessities Cisco has invested billions of {dollars} into the safety and into the safety of our platforms.

The extensibility of those platforms right into a northbound API permits for the most effective at school performance of all these techniques from the campus to the WAN, whereas having the ability interoperate utilizing requirements primarily based protocols and apply a multi-domain coverage. This strategy promotes flexibility and performance with out compromise, serving to organizations unlock the utmost potential of their investments to unravel their present and future enterprise issues.

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