We see this in the news on a seemingly weekly basis: large corporations get hacked and lose sensitive data. At first glance we might think that large businesses are the primary targets of hackers. However beneath the headlines is a more alarming problem. The truth is that small businesses and distributed enterprises like yours are also being targeted.
Hackers are targeting you not only for your sensitive data and intellectual property but because of who you know. Small businesses and distributed enterprises are seen as easy targets windows that hackers can use to gain access to larger customers. Some of the breaches mentioned in the previous slide happened when attackers compromised a small business and used their partner credentials to exploit the larger company.
In a recent study conducted by The National Cyber Security Alliance, 41% of small business were attacked. 60% of small businesses in the UK were compromised in the year 2014; and in the Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report, 100% of networks examined had malicious traffic on them. Yes, it is 100%!Like it or not, hackers use you as a tool to steal from larger companies, regardless of how much you really interact with them. And as a small business, it’s difficult to allocate the time or manpower to deal with a complicated attack.
To date, your security options have been limited.
Traditionally, small businesses and distributed enterprises used Unified Threat Management or deployed a basic firewall. However, these solutions are typically static and cannot keep pace with the evolving threat landscape. If you’ve used these, you know: they simply aren’t effective enough.
To compensate for what UTMs and basic firewalls are missing, it’s common to cobble together multiple point solutions from different vendors. Unfortunately, different vendors’ solutions rarely integrate well, which can leave security gaps. Setting up and maintaining this set of solutions is often expensive and timing-consuming. And when something goes wrong, having multiple vendors may require numerous service calls in order to solve the issue.
The end result is a bunch of parts that don’t work well together and are still ineffective against the latest and most advanced threats. The cascading problems resulting from these traditional security options can put a lot of strain on your business.
Cisco’s ASA is the only next-generation firewall solution with advanced threat protection thanks to the integration of FirePOWER Services. No other next-gen firewall features next generation IPS (NGIPS) or advanced malware protection (AMP). With new ASA offerings designed for small businesses and distributed enterprises, the same level of advanced threat protection used by larger enterprises is now available for all business .
Fortunately, Cisco has a better way.
This combination of Cisco ASA with FirePOWER Services addresses today’s evolving security needs by delivering end-to-end threat protection, along with increased network intelligence, better user control, and streamlined policy management. This saves organizations money by reducing the number of exploits that succeed and also dramatically lowering remediation costs.
The bottom line is only Cisco delivers comprehensive firewall-based security along with a simplified management experience at an exceptional value. Let’s take a deep one next post. Stay tune!
