Cisco & Microsoft E3: Making Them Better Together Solution Overview

Secure the Modern Workplace with Cisco Security Suites

Challenges with securing the modern workplace

The way we work is changing. Organizations today are complex ecosystems with a mixture of users, applications, and devices. While these environments foster productivity, they can also be difficult to protect, leading to gaps in the attack surface, exposing organizations to ransomware and other unknown vulnerabilities, and leaving organizations susceptible to an evolving threat landscape.

Organizations are faced with a difficult challenge: enable seamless and secure access, with limited budget, resources, and talent. That means investing in proactive protections for users, making progress on a zero-trust strategy, and implementing strong Extended Detection and Response (XDR) capabilities to protect against breaches while balancing financial considerations.

To add to these challenges, organizations are also struggling to manage disparate products that guard against individual attack vectors but fail to provide holistic protection. Therefore, to improve security posture, simplify management, and enhance user experience, organizations are looking to trusted vendors and platform level integration and performance. For many organizations, this means leveraging both Cisco^® and Microsoft 365 for comprehensive networking, cloud, security, identity, and productivity capabilities.

For Cisco, this includes solutions from both the User Protection Suite and the Breach Protection Suite, including Cisco Secure Access, Duo, Cisco XDR, and more.

Microsoft 365: IT Infrastructure and Productivity Solution

The Microsoft E3 solutions website notes: “connect and empower every employee across your organization with a Microsoft 365 solution that enhances productivity and drives innovation.” Organizations purchase E3 licenses for many reasons. The most common is to provide the tools required to keep a business running. These include:

●      Identity management: Entra ID and Active Directory are used as the main Identity Provider (IdP) to store user information

●      Device management: Organizations using Windows machines require Windows software to operate

●      Email security: Microsoft 365 provides enterprise email solutions

Because Microsoft wants to ensure their solutions are protected, they include some core security tools within an E3 license.

●      Identity: Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for cloud applications

●      Devices: Anti-virus protection with Defender for Endpoint P1

●      Email: Basic phishing and spam filter

Microsoft’s tools are essential for day-to-day business operations, and if your organization is looking to execute a robust zero-trust strategy with full threat visibility across your environment, that’s where Cisco comes in.

Enhance your security with Cisco Suites

Layering the Cisco User Protection and Breach Protection Suites on top of your existing Microsoft E3 solutions can maximize the value of your existing security investments and fortify your organization against threats.

Proactive User Protection

●      Identity security: Comprehensive identity visibility and protection

◦    Cisco Identity Intelligence ingests data across your environment, including your identity provider, SaaS applications, HR resources, and more to determine potential vulnerabilities. Duo provides flexible authentication options on an extensive set of use cases, to enable seamless access for trusted users and stop attackers from logging in.

●      Zero Trust Access:

◦    Cisco Secure Access, a comprehensive Security Service Edge (SSE) solution includes Secure Internet Access with Secure Private Application Access. An integrated VPN-as-a-Service and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) client and policies enable organizations to adopt Zero Trust Access on their timeline.

●      Email security:

◦    Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense maximizes your email security investment by augmenting MS365 with comprehensive threat protection. Deployed in minutes, Email Threat Defense sits behind your gateway to detect and block dangerous emails including malicious QR codes, Business Email Compromise (BEC), and other advanced threats.

●      Endpoint Detection and Response:

◦    Cisco Secure Endpoint’s Endpoint Detection and Response solution provides analytics across the Cisco portfolio to block malware and emerging threats. Working with Duo, it ensures only healthy devices can access corporate resources and prevent access when a threat is detected.

●      Device access control:

◦    Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) authenticates and authorizes all devices that connect to the network. ISE assigns tags to these devices, including corporate devices, BYOD, and IoT devices, like cameras and printers. Those tags are integrated in Secure Access to enable organizations to make security policies across their Cisco solutions.

Responsive Breach Protection

●      Email security:

◦    Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense is integrated with Cisco XDR and makes use of the user as an asset for correlation. All threat verdicts from Email Threat Defense are a part of Cisco XDR’s incident attack chains.

●      Endpoint Detection and Response:

◦    Secure Endpoint, the native EDR for Cisco XDR, enhances security by enabling faster detection through shared incident generation, enhancing asset context with detailed endpoint information, prioritizing threats using extensive MITRE Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP) mapping, and expediting investigations with the XDR ribbon and pivot menu. Additionally, it accelerates response with powerful workflows available through XDR automation.

●      XDR solution:

◦    Cisco XDR is a network-led, open Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solution that detects, prioritizes, and remediates threats to simplify security operations. It integrates with the Cisco security portfolio, third-party offerings, and Microsoft products such as Defender, Intune, and Entra ID to provide comprehensive visibility and holistic threat management.

Begin Your Suite Investment

User + Breach Combination Suite:

Combining User and Breach Suite Protection solutions, organizations can effectively utilize Cisco Secure Access, Duo MFA, Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense, and Cisco XDR for enhanced security operations and network analytics.

●      Cisco Secure Access

●      Cisco Duo

●      Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense

●      Cisco Secure Endpoint

●      Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)

●      Cisco XDR

●      Cisco Secure Network Analytics