Cisco introduces Secure Access. This is an SSE solution designed to ensure companies can securely connect their employees to applications and files on-premises, at the edge or in the cloud.

Cisco will introduce a new Secure Service Edge (SSE) solution at Cisco Live: Cisco Secure Access (CSA). To this end, Cisco combines its firewall capabilities with those surrounding multicloud security. With CSA, the company wants to ensure that employees no longer have to make their own safety decisions. This must always be done automatically and in the right way.

“Cisco Secure Access connects to the network and CSA takes care of everything else,” said Gordon Thomson, VP Technology Acceleration EMEA. “The rest” has to do with the right way to connect securely to a service or application.

Different possibilities through one solution

For example, a connection to a cloud application can run directly from the home office, to a private application of a company via zero trust and to a legacy application via a VPN. Cisco believes that it is not the responsibility of employees to make this decision. That’s why CSA ensures that the connection is always made securely and in an optimized way.

CSA consists of several components:

• a zero-trust network architecture
• a secure web gateway
• a cloud access security broker
• Firewall as a service
• integrated DNS security
• Remote browser isolation

Cisco will roll out CSA on a limited basis starting in July. General availability is planned for October. The platform uses a single secure client for ZTNA with the ability to fall back on a VPN. This client monitors the conditions of a connection (at home, in the office, over the McDonalds WiFi network, etc.).