Cisco Live is Cisco’s largest customer event, and at this year’s conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Cisco Corporate Social Responsibility had its largest showing ever. More than 28,000 customers, partners, press, and analysts learned of our goal to positively impact 1 billion people by 2025.
The week kicked off with an exciting announcement when Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins shared how Cisco is innovating faster and better than ever before; and that “We all have a renewed desire to solve problems around the world.”
After showing the latest CSR video from Corporate Affairs Senior Vice President Tae Yoo, Chuck invited those in attendance and at home to become Global Problem Solvers and join us on the journey for social good. Of those who attended the keynote, 86 percent agreed that Chuck’s keynote helped them better understand Cisco CSR and our impact in the world.
But our week was only beginning. Other highlights included:
250 attendees at Cisco Empowered Women’s Network watched Ruba Borno, Cisco Vice President of Growth Initiatives, highlight the Cisco Networking Academy by featuring a former student and an instructor in her keynote. The student, Soso Luningo, is now an instructor at an ICT Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she trains students in the NetAcad curriculum.
Approximately 1,300 customers and partners visited our Interactive Global Problem Solvers Wall in the World of Solutions. There, they got a firsthand look at how we’re accelerating global problem solving around the world through inspiring stories and photos.
Tae Yoo led a fireside chat with Living Goods Founder Chuck Slaughter in front of 125 CIOs and CTOs from Cisco’s leading customers and partners at the Executive Symposium. Tae highlighted how digitization has led to a greater understanding of the connection and interdependency between business, society and the planet. Living Goods, one of CSR’s nonprofit partners, has used digitization to reduce infant mortality of client in Uganda and Kenya by 25 percent.
The NetAcad Dream Team, which featured 10 students from North America, worked side-by-side with Cisco engineers to connect attendees to Cisco Live’s massive network.
Corporate Affairs vice presidents Kathy Mulvany, Laura Qunitana, and Harbrinder Kang joined Tae Yoo during one of Cisco Live’s television broadcast. They shared “Why Now is a Good Time to be a Global Problem Solver” to nearly 100,000 online attendees.
Cisco Live was the start of an exciting journey for Corporate Affairs. We have a tremendous opportunity to show how accelerating Global Problem Solving will enable individuals to reach their full potential in a digital economy and advance environmentally sustainable growth.
This is part 1 of a 2 part series. Next week we’ll reveal part 2.
Manufacturers who are better at connecting factory systems with enterprise networks undoubtedly create a more agile, efficient, flexible and profitable business, as exemplified in a recent case study we had with Daimler Truck North America. The problem is that more connections also open the door to new security risks. Further, previous generations of industrial control systems were not conceived with security or IP connectivity in mind. The net effect is that vulnerabilities can really start to proliferate when you integrate more enterprise IT with industrial assets and technologies. At the same time, malicious hackers are getting more sophisticated.
Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS) have a history of utilizing proprietary hardware and protocols that are hard to integrate with network security. They may be segregated from industrial IP networks, but they’re still at risk because they’re often set up as simple, open-network machine islands, with limited or no security. Why build islands of automation that create islands of untapped information—constraining business agility, efficiency and growth potential—if you’re not really even establishing sound systemic security? One great resource for more questions to ask and insights into securing your industrial control systems is our Buyer’s Guide: 10 Questions to Ask Your Industrial Control Cybersecurity Vendor.
The stakes are high for manufacturers. According to a recent Cisco Connected Factory white paper, if cybersecurity concerns delay digital implementation, it could take up to five years to realize value and catch your competitors. And our recent Cisco 2016 Annual Security Report purports that the industrial sector has some of the LEAST mature security practices and policies and LOWEST quality security infrastructure. All of this means security presents an opportunity to sustainably differentiate your business.
As they say, the best offense (i.e., growth) is a great defense (i.e. security). And while seven is considered a lucky number in many cultures, luck is NOT a security strategy.
Consider these ‘Security Seven’ approaches to enable your factory to play great defense.
Create, Educate, and Enforce security policies.
Many plants don’t even have the most basic security policies written down. Start by drafting and implementing a set of written security policies and procedures for your plant that will, for example, outline who should be able to access what assets, define acceptable asset use, and define reporting mechanisms for events. Your written policies should also contain an incident response plan including any procedures to restore critical production systems after a security event.
Lock down your factory with defense-in-depth security.
The more connections you have in your manufacturing environment, the more chances for a breach. No single technology, product, or methodology can fully secure your network. Protecting critical manufacturing assets requires a holistic approach that uses multiple layers of defense—physical, procedural, and digital (network, device, application)— to address different types of threats. A basic mapping exercise will help you get started, providing an inventory of all the devices and software on your network.
Remember, ’air gap’ strategies are fallible—just because a robot or device isn’t connected to the network doesn’t mean it’s completely safe. One corrupt or malicious thumb drive will put an isolated machine at risks of unplanned downtime or worse, safety incidents.
Physical security is especially important in manufacturing. Some of the most severe damage comes from the inside, when entry is gained from the factory floor. Whether it’s preventing inventory lift, data loss or intellectual property theft, companies can benefit from a comprehensive physical security solution integrated with a secure wired and wireless industrial network. You can protect PLCs and other play assets with physical access restrictions like locks, key cards, and video surveillance. In places where it’s practical, you can also add device authentication and authorization, plus encryption.
For example, Del Papa Distributing, a regional beverages distributor, needed to protect its new 27-acre headquarters in Texas. Del Papa built a secure IP network with Cisco solutions for video surveillance, physical access control, digital signs, temperature sensors and more.
IP cameras monitor the property perimeter, a 100,000-square-foot warehouse, office corridors, and all delivery gates. System alerts notify employees when a door to a restricted area is open, with links to live video. Doors can be opened and closed by pressing a button on an IP phone.
Control who is on the network with device profiling.
People are bringing their own tablets, phones, and other mobile devices into the manufacturing workplace, making it more difficult than ever to complete network visibility and control. With device and identity profiling services, you can monitor, authenticate, and control all the users, devices, and even applications connecting to the network with a centralized, policy-based approach to security.
For example, Diebold, Inc. set up a Cisco solution including the Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) to help protect its network of 87,000 devices in 77 countries. The solution allowed Diebold to easily profile all devices in the network and streamline guest and contractor access.
“It’s made our whole process significantly easier – and safer too,” – Diebold’s Chief Security Officer
If an outside contractor—e.g., servicing OEM equipment as many plants have every hour of the day— connects a laptop to an open port on the plant floor, Cisco ISE detects the connection and identity then denies access. This averts unplanned downtime and other undesired outcomes from intended or unintended security breaches.
We’ll share the rest of the Security Seven with you next week. For more factory security best practices, download our latest whitepaper:
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Macros have been used since the mid 1990s to spread malware and infect systems. Increased user awareness of the need to disable the macro function within Microsoft Word during the late 90s and early 2000s sent these malware into decline. However, a change in Microsoft (MS) Office file formats dating from 2007 is now being actively exploited to hide the presence of macros and distribute malware at an increasing rate.
In this article, I show how MS Office file formats are being abused and obfuscated, and the extent of distribution of macro malware.
According to IDC, by 2020, organizations able to analyze all relevant data and deliver actionable information will achieve an extra $430 billion in productivity benefits over their less analytically oriented peers.
You’ll notice, IDC’s statement doesn’t say some data. Or a few pieces of data. It says all relevant data. Easier said than done in today’s environment, as massive amounts of data is created by connected devices and in more places than ever. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a great example—from data created by high speed powerboats that go up to 200 mph to extremely time sensitive data created by machines on manufacturing floors.
To get a piece of that $430 billion pie requires new technical capabilities to supplement existing data and analytics’ strategies; mainly the ability to capture, store and analyze data in the place where it is actively created. Also required is the ability to query billions of data records instantly and run hyper-distributed analytics to deliver the insights and experiences customers, business partners and employees expect. Whether you are in the business of racing or manufacturing – speed is critical.
This is exactly why Cisco is collaborating with industry leaders like IBM —to create capabilities that bring analytics from the cloud to the network’s edge to help organizations take advantage of all of its data assets. Cisco’s part of that is Edge Analytics Fabric (EAF), an open architecture platform that captures, stores, and analyzes data where it is actively created.
To better understand EAF, take the example of a digital manufacturer. Keeping machines running optimally is an essential part of running a successful facility and can be a big – and costly – challenge. Each machine creates large amounts of data every day that tell us about the health that machine. By embedding streaming analytics software into a Cisco Industrial Ethernet 4000 switch attached to the machine, we are able to analyze the vibration patterns on machine spindles in real-time. It can pick up ultrasonic machine vibrations beyond human perception and analyze the data quicker than humanly possible. If machine vibrations exceed the normal threshold, an alert is created so an employee can take immediate action.
In addition, the collection of raw machine data on the factory floor allows operations to collect historical information for analysis of the overall process over longer periods of time. Then it will send only data defined as essential to the Watson IoT platform in the cloud, where Watson’s cognitive and business analytics capabilities allow it to learn from this data and adjust its algorithms for optimal machine performance and provide enterprise wide views. Now, plant maintenance is able to be conducted more reliably and at the ideal time for cost effectiveness and productivity.
Having the right strategy and technical capabilities in place means more than just accessing and analyzing data. It’s about making it personal by putting it into the exact context to act on it for your business.
There is never a better time to get your piece of that $430 billion worth of increased productivity. Don’t be left behind.
If you grew up loving High School Musical like me, then get ready to have some of it’s most iconic (and catchy) songs stuck in your head all day. For those who have not seen this movie-musical masterpiece, let me provide some context for you.
High School Musical is a teen movie in the form of a musical, with songs woven throughout the (wonderful) hour and a half. I have watched it at least 100 times, listened to the soundtrack thousands, and know every single song. By heart. Really.
Who knew that one day I’d take the lessons that I learned from this incredible coming-of-age story and apply them professionally? Three of my favorite songs, “We’re All in This Together,” “Stick to the Status Quo,” and “Breaking Free,” have really spoken to me during my internship time here at Cisco in the Marketing and Communications group.
Let me explain.
1.) “We’re all in this together.” It’s true!
There is nothing better than walking into a room of friendly, intelligent, and highly ambitious interns on your first day of orientation. There is also nothing more intimidating than walking into a room of friendly, intelligent, and highly ambitious interns (who may be competing for the same job that you are hoping to secure throughout the summer.)
However, Cisco immediately provided a collaborative, open, and inviting environment to begin our journeys into our summer and our careers. From training questions to helping each other edit project planning drafts to intern socials, we are quite literally “All In This Together.”
2.) “Stick to the Status Quo” (Or Don’t)
Many companies say that they encourage individualism and bringing your own skills to the table, but although many “talk the talk” not many “walk the walk.” When I walked into my first day on the job, it was clear that each and every person is allowed to truly be themselves at work.
The thought of cubicles sounds a little bit draining to me; there is no creativity that can come out of staring at a grey desk with grey dividers and a grey wall behind it. However, employees are not only allowed to decorate their space but are encouraged to let their personalities shine through. Everything from flashing LED lights to beach-themed banners to travel treasures decorate the desks of the enthusiastic and individualistic creative minds of my colleagues.
If that isn’t enough, you can always go down to the massage chairs, cabana beach room, or take a fitness class to steer clear of a creative brain block.
3.) “Breaking free” from traditional office norms
Hawaiian shirt Fridays. Create your own schedule. Smoothie bars, fitness classes, and creativity cubes. Need I say more? Cisco clearly is not your typical “corporate office.”
I have been “Breaking Free” from any stereotypes that I had about working a corporate job since walking through the doors of Cisco. This has been the most inviting, flexible, and exciting place to be and I cannot wait to continue to experience all that Cisco has to offer. There truly has never been a better time to join the journey, and never been a better place to begin a career.
All I can say is that I’m incredibly excited for this “Start of Something New.” (I had to get one more song in there. I couldn’t help it.)
I love buffets. (Especially when they are all you can eat). But what I really like is the ability to choose what and how much I want. This is where I know that the use of cloud services will become useful. When we don’t have to make an ‘either/or’ decision.
How work gets done has completely changed in just the last few years.
Fact is: business moves fast. When application developers or business leaders can’t get what they need the official way…it has never BEEN SO EASY (to go around the IT department).
Public Clouds offer so much less friction…no PO required… so can you blame them?
Third party cloud providers are doing a great job providing attractive, easy to use services. They have earned that business.
Who cares how it splinters your own company…puts your data at risk…or makes it almost impossible to transition from development to production?
We offer a couple of options for you here at Cisco:
Get Tough. We have tools that can help you identify ‘shadow IT’, those rogue operations. Find them and put the hurt on ‘em. It’s against policy…you have the company rule book to back you up.
Address the Real Issue. Just give them what they want. They are following the path of least resistance…so make it easy.
We should all be thinking of ourselves as internal service providers. We have to compete and serve company interests viewing the world as it is, rather than as we wish it would be.
What is it my mom would always say?
“You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”
So how would we go about doing that?
I suggest we look towards a few winners recently announced by The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA):
Best Cloud Infrastructure: Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite
But also, for Best Cloud Management Solution: CliQr CloudCenter…now called ‘Cisco CloudCenter’ because that team is now part of Cisco and these two winners are now integrated.
In this episode we uncover why these applications are winning awards, and what kind of pain we can help get rid of.
https://youtu.be/MawAUHeOsdg
Thank you to TechWiseTV alum Joann Stark for bringing this one to market..and for introducing me to the smart and energetic Zach Kielich.
We will be doing a live workshop on this topic around August 18. Please subscribe to our twitter feed (@techwisetv) and monitor that for updates on where to register.
Every enterprise is becoming a data business. Data is the lifeline that guides intelligent decision making, enabling enterprises to effectively serve their customers. The rise of data has led to the modernization of data infrastructure, with Apache Hadoop as a critical foundational element for data storage and processing. Designed as a multi-workload platform, Apache Hadoop, along with related Apache projects, enables real-time insight, robust interactive analysis, and deep data mining.
In a connected world of Internet of Things (IoT), social networking, and business applications, the capability to capture, monitor, and rapidly process information is becoming essential for modern enterprises. A new model has emerged, the Lambda Architecture, for storing and processing large amounts of data-in-motion and data-at-rest. In many cases, it includes support for complex event processing with applications such as Apache Kafka and Storm, near-real-time analytics with Apache Spark Streaming, interactive SQL with Apache Hive, machine learning with Apache Spark, and data persistence and batch analytics with the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and MapReduce.
Building a next-generation big data architecture requires simplified and centralized management, high performance, and a linearly scaling infrastructure and software platform. Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) for Big Data and Analytics is a proven platform deployed across industry verticals and recognized as a leader in the space by leading analysts.
Cisco and Hortonworks have partnered to create an industry-leading solution with the Cisco UCS and Hortonworks Connected Data Platforms to deliver end-to-end capabilities for data in motion and data at rest. Hortonworks DataFlow (HDF) collects, curates, analyzes, and delivers real-time data from the IoT: sensors, smart devices, clickstreams, log files, and more. Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP), built on Apache Hadoop and Spark, enables the creation of a secure enterprise data lake and delivers the analytics you need to innovate quickly and power real-time business insights. Together, HDF and HDP empower the deployment of modern data applications for data in motion and data at rest within the Lambda Architecture framework. See Figure 1.
Figure 1: Lambda Architecture with Cisco UCS, HDP and HDF
I am delighted to announce the availability of the Cisco® Validated Design for Hortonworks Connected Data Platforms spanning HDP and HDF on Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Big Data and Analytics. The design represents a close collaboration between Cisco and Hortonworks, providing our joint customers with an industry-leading big data solution.
Drive the bottom line through Business Outcomes, powered by Digitization.
Mohandas Gandhi was spot on when he said,“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
These words epitomize what consumer’s value today. Our society has become accustomed to completing tasks with the touch of a button (hah, I sounded like a true millennial right there). It’s all about maximizing speed, while maintaining high levels of efficiency. Technology has accelerated the conversation of change into boardrooms across the globe. The underlining message is clear: change is no longer a recommendation, but rather an expectation.
On July 10th, Cisco hosted Americas Distribution Summit at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas prior to Cisco Live US. The audience consisted of over 100 people across Americas Distribution and Cisco. Teams came from 2 different continents and 7 different countries. Together, our Americas Distribution team generates over $8.8 billion in revenue per FY, covering over 44 countries.
At the Cisco Distribution Summit held before Cisco Live US last month (from left to right) Bill Dyrek, Beth Kincaid, and Kim Christensen.
Why is this even more impressive?
Because 60% of all Distribution sales flow through these Distributors. These same folks will take their training and go out and enable thousands of Cisco partners.
The theme of the Summit was based on “Driving Business Outcomes” in the digital world of today. Moreover, it was about learning how to sell business outcomes to non-traditional IT buyers within the Lines of Business (learn more about LoB here). The importance to be ahead of change is imminent, which forces a shift in thought processes and visions across industries. Cisco has the opportunity to reshape the conversation in a massive way – deliver the digital capabilities needed to break down walls of old consumption models and forge into the new era of digitization.
Why Digitization?
Simple – it’s the bread and butter solution for transforming businesses into the powerful and well-equipped engines of tomorrow. According to Accenture, digital transformation is already happening across every industry and will create a $24.6 billion opportunity by 2020.
I mentioned Cisco’s opportunity to deliver on digital capabilities. These consist of business services that leverage technology to drive very specific business outcomes and change business models. The services include, Workforce Experience, Customer Experience and Business Operations.
Workforce Experience
Like in anything we do, our experience is critical. It becomes the basis by which we evaluate our time spent in an environment. Gallup Research demonstrates that companies have a 1 ½ times higher earnings per share with workforces that are highly engaged. This is predicated around driving productivity, attracting and retaining talent and increasing the opportunity for a workforce to impact the business.
Customer Experience
When a brand exceeds expectation over and over again, a customer develops into a loyal supporter of it. The same is true for increasing wallet share and creating new opportunities with the existing customer base. Gartner explains that by 2016, there will be a 50% increase in companies that say they will compete directly on customer experience.
Business Operations
While the humanistic experience companies have with employees and customers is important today, its value going forward is multiplied. Everyday we see how business processes, and the need for efficiencies and operational excellence, are driving business operations. The ability to drive predictive insights and drive more support for citizen services will play as the key business differentiator.
As we look forward, business models are already beginning to shift. According to Gartner by 2020, 90 % of Technology spending will be outside of IT.
Where is this money being spent exactly?
Lines of Business (LoB). This has created a tremendous opportunity for Cisco, as LoB develop new budgets specifically focused on digitization. Cisco and our partners are in a unique position to help unify the approach, share the tremendous experience we have gained over the years and in many ways help the lines of business realize business outcomes.
Key Takeaway
It all starts with the network as the platform for Digitization. Digitization leverages technology as the enabler to drive new business outcomes through new business services and digital capabilities.
Want to learn more about Business Outcomes? Click Here.
Questions or Comments? Feel free to connect with me on Twitter.
I’m excited to announce today that Cisco has completed the acquisition of CloudLock. CloudLock’s unique approach to security enables customers to manage and secure their transition to the cloud by providing powerful security insights and controls that are easy to deploy and simple to manage.
In a new IT landscape marked by personal devices in the enterprise, users working outside the office, and more applications and data moving to the cloud, the number one question we hear from our customers is about security. Customers want to be able to take advantage of the increased agility and improved economics that come with moving to the cloud while still protecting their data, applications, and users. They want to re-establish the fundamental security best practices of visibility and control in a way that is cloud-friendly and cloud-first. CloudLock’s Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) offering adapts the traditional enterprise security approach for the cloud – without impacting productivity or performance. CloudLock helps customers move to the cloud faster without sacrificing security.
To put this into context, imagine being able to easily define policies that prevent highly confidential or sensitive files from being shared across your entire organization or outside your organization. CloudLock enables that. Imagine being able to scan every file in your organization’s Box account for malware. CloudLock enables that. Imagine being able to identify compromised user accounts and malicious insiders automatically, based on advanced machine learning capabilities. CloudLock enables that and more.
CloudLock’s “CloudLock Security Fabric” is a cloud-native platform comprised of a robust set of API-enabled micro-services that connect directly into leading SaaS platforms like Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, and many others. This capability enables CloudLock to deliver a comprehensive level of visibility into user behavior and exposed sensitive data, and to provide granular controls for both cloud applications you buy (SaaS) and in-house applications you build (IaaS, PaaS).
CloudLock is a security product that is sold ‘as a service’ and currently supports more than 700 customers worldwide in protecting tens of millions of users across those organizations. With the completion of the acquisition today, CloudLock and Cisco will offer the industry’s broadest cloud security protection for users, applications, and data.
Cisco has been aggressively executing our cloud security strategy over the past several years, making it a fundamental part of our overall security portfolio. With this acquisition, the CloudLock team joins Cisco’s Networking and Security Business led by Senior Vice President and General Manager David Goeckeler.
I know I speak for everyone working in cloud security and the broader Cisco Networking and Security Business when I say we are incredibly excited to welcome the CloudLock team to Cisco. Together, we will continue our mission to deliver world-class security solutions that help our customers connect with confidence.
If you grew up loving High School Musical like me, then get ready to have some of it’s most iconic (and catchy) songs stuck in your head all day. For those who have not seen this movie-musical masterpiece, let me provide some context for you.
