Cisco Live!, the renowned five-day Information Technology convention hosted by Cisco Systems, was held on June 2-6, 2024, in Las Vegas, Nevada. This year, Faith Group had the privilege of sending three members of our Network Design Team, Rick Adams, Hassan Chalabi, and Michael Oseni, with a mission to collaborate with potential partners, clients dive into next-generation technologies rolling out in the next year.
Splunk
The overall message of the conference had an overarching theme, responsible and meaningful Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities coming to Cisco product suites, with a focus on end-to-end visibility and continuous vulnerability assessments leveraging their recent acquisition of Splunk, a market leader in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), and other portfolio products like Thousand Eyes. This end-to-end visibility, and associated analytics, is not just focused on infrastructure, but provides full hardware and software stack insights with integrated analytics across products to drive reduced recovery times and impact to operations during incidents.
Figure 1: Full Stack Observability with Cisco & Splunk (Cisco Systems 2024)
Zero Trust Network Access
An example of a specific technology highlighted at the conference was Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), which specifically solves the challenge faced by many of our Faith Group clients, secure remote access to our most vulnerable and mission critical Operational Technology (OT) systems and infrastructure. Not only does this remove the need for legacy Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), but also enforces no-lateral movement (east-to-west) within our OT networks, to provide maintenance and enhancement access to internal staff and contractors, in a way which provides auditable, least privilege and reliable communication where absolutely necessary.
Figure 2: Cisco Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA, Cisco Systems 2024)
Take-Away
Participating in these key industry events enables our staff to better identify opportunities to align with potential client use-cases, while also considering fitting within Enterprise Architecture as part of an integrated solution. To learn more about how these latest technologies can fit into your strategic roadmap, or how we can partner on a proof-of-concept in our Faith Group / Saefix Innovation Lab, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Rick Adams, Faith Group’s Director of Technology and CTO of Saefix, a Cisco Systems Partner and Faith Group’s sister company.
Rick Adams
Hassan Chalabi
hassan.chalabi@faithgroupllc.com
Michael Oseni