Developing Integrations and SecureX Orchestration Workflows... Together!

The author of this blog is Cisco Cybersecurity Architect, Brian Sak.

Walkaround in the new DevNet developer security community,
and learn how the community can help you with integrating and automating with SecureX.

When approaching a new programmability project, I tend to start by developing a list of the things I’m going to need: API docs, a review of similar projects on GitHub, DevNet sandboxes for the products I’m developing against, and my collection of previously written code samples and projects to reuse. More recently, I’ve added a new thing to this list, the collective experience of my peers and the vast breadth and depth of knowledge that they are more than happy to share with anyone who asks.

The DevNet Developer Security Community

I’m sure I’m not alone when I admit that I’ll scour Stack Overflow for much longer than I should looking for help with some obscure error until I finally reach out and ask one of my peers who immediately recognizes why I’m getting that 500 Internal Server Error. This expertise comes from working with these products day in and day out and knowing their specifics and, probably more importantly, the specifics of writing to their APIs. If only there were a place where these subject matter experts and other developers could connect around Cisco security APIs and SecureX Orchestration. Well, now there is.

Reintroducing the Developer Security Communities

The DevNet developer security community has been redesigned and reorganized around how developers write integrations and automations and expanded to include SecureX Orchestration (more on this later). From a support perspective, we’ve recruited subject-matter experts from across Cisco to join, follow, and collaborate in forums to lend their expertise to our developer community. These experts span many teams including our software development, product marketing, TAC, and our Security Programmability Team (SPOT) which includes individuals from around the globe who work on programmability with our partners and customers every day.

To summarize, the developer security community can become your virtual peer group and your access to their collective experience and vast breadth and depth of knowledge.

You mentioned something about SecureX Orchestration?

SecureX Orchestration recently moved to being generally available across all SecureX instances. This new feature opens the door to developing workflows and orchestrations that can automate response efforts, reduce the number of manual tasks of operations teams, and coordinate security efforts across an organization.

While there are a number of included workflows and atomic actions included “out of the box” the real power of SXO comes from the workflows that are built by our developer community to solve their unique and varied use cases. The developer security community provides a forum to ask questions, interact with experts, and get the assistance you need to build simple or complex automation workflows. The community also can connect you with additional resources to aid in your development including code samples, pre-built atomics and workflows, and links to videos that demonstrate some of the SPOT team’s projects around SecureX Orchestrator.

I’m onboard, what’s next?

Follow the simple three step checklist to connect to the community and follow the topics you’re interested in.

1. Browse to http://cs.co/devsec-community to access the Developer Security Communities and login using your cisco.com account

2. Subscribe to community forums to be notified via email when posts are added around topics that you are interested in or have expertise.

3. Note the Navigation widget on the lower-right sidebar of the community with links to additional resources to aid in your development efforts.

Engaging your peers and experts around security programmability and automation is now easier than ever and we’re looking forward to seeing you in the community soon!