The working world’s shift to remote work and hybrid work conditions has many companies under pressure to adapt their network environments quickly. As a result, many companies are selecting a multi-cloud architecture to stay progressive. And with this influx of new users, it’s safe to say those cloud environments are set to be a permanent fixture.
Now, multi-cloud may sound interesting, but to transition some real challenges. For example, how will companies start using the software? How can they protect all of the workloads? How can they manage different cloud providers? Is the software secure? Who will answer and resolve issues?
These are all incredibly relevant questions. We’ll begin taking a look at answers in this blog. And if you want to dive a little deeper, watch this playback of our recent live webinar where we introduced our newest concept of a Cisco Secure Firewall, which utilizes templates to enable secure, fast, and managed Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC). You’ll learn more about Cisco Secure Firewall and how to deploy using cloud native templates like Ansible and Terraform?
Or, if you already know enough to get started, please visit our Secure Firewall Dev Center.
Cisco Secure Firewalls and Cloud Environments
Cloud-based technology is highly effective. It offers access to a much faster way of working, well beyond what traditional infrastructure can accomplish.
However, as more and more workloads are incorporated into the cloud, the scale becomes challenging to manage. Thankfully, the Cisco Secure Firewall is available to assist. With the recent 7.0 release, we have announced the adaption of “cloud ready,” along with its many new features.
What is Infrastructure as Code?
Now that there is a cloud-ready firewall that can be implemented, what’s next? Let’s first talk about the key concepts to get you started.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the process of provisioning and managing the complete infrastructure of a company using machine-readable definition files. The premise is built on a software engineering approach to everyday operations.
The fundamental goal of the system is to help with the automation of the infrastructure by using programming scripts. To accomplish this, we use an IaC tool Terraform, which recently released version 1.0, that allows you to build, change, and safely create new versions of infrastructure.
NOTE: Terraform is capable of managing both custom in-house solutions and existing service providers.
Visit DevNet’s IaC website to learn how IaC helps you embrace DevOps, APIs and automation
to manage networks efficiently, control risk, and optimize for growth and innovation.
How to Install a Cisco Secure Firewall
If your company plans to install the firewall using the IaC method. Start by visiting Cisco Secure Firewall. There, you’ll find a wide range of templates and resources, covering deployments for the most relevant scenarios (AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, Vmware, OpenStack, etc)
After that, you’ll install all of the required assets (Azure CLI, Terraform) and customize them to meet your needs. It’s easy to do. Check out the diagram below for flow information.
Once we have all the tools and templates, we can now build what I like to call a “Domino Effect,” where once we put all the variables into place… all the other components fall like dominos.
Final Thoughts
From reading this short blog, you can see that installing the firewall can be quite simple and protects your cloud environment.
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