Securing the Branch
I suspect that when we use the term “branch” when talking about businesses, many minds think of a bank. But actually, the notion of a branch is much more widespread for organizations as they pursue flexible options for expanding their workforce, as well as globalization. From an IT perspective, the branch has changed from a few remote offices each with multiple people to sometimes thousands of remote workers connecting to the network from their home offices. In fact, according to a recent survey, the number of employees working away from headquarters is approaching 90%.
Security has always been a key element of the corporate DMZ and protecting the perimeter, but the growth of the branch created new challenges. How do you offer secure connectivity and manage the thousands of devices used in branch deployments? How do you make sure the right people are connecting to the right resources and applications? Cisco created the secure router market years ago by integrating security into the router in the form of firewall, intrusion prevention, content security and VPN technologies with centralized security management. This provided greater security for the branch and simplified the security task for IT.
This week Cisco’s Integrated Services Router Generation 2 moves security forward again. The new platform will provide up to five times the performance for security services and is optimized to support security in emerging cloud computing environments. The idea of consolidating services onto one device and providing high performance security sounds like a great idea. Read more about Cisco ISR G2 and security.
Posted by Fred Kost at 07:11AM PST
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