Using Cisco Controllers to Meet Financial Regulatory Requirements

This weblog will discover how monetary establishments (FIs) can use completely different Cisco applied sciences to assist meet regulatory necessities, be they FFIEC, OCC, PCI, or others. Prior blogs on this sequence enumerated on the regulatory our bodies and rules, in addition to how organizations can dwell in a multi-controller world. That is elementary to the varied expertise necessities seen throughout an IT group’s span of management. This weblog will give attention to a few of the capabilities WITHIN every of those controllers, and the way they might help remedy the challenges confronted inside their respective domains. Of word is all of those applied sciences expose the northbound API which may permit for multi-domain orchestration, and multi-domain orchestration instruments that leverage these instruments have been evaluated within the prior weblog.

Throughout these regulatory audit standards various elementary constructs stay constant. These key tones permeate the steering that Cisco applied sciences might help with are with the ability to

• know your atmosphere,
• patch your atmosphere, and
• phase and safe delicate information in your atmosphere

Particular inside some rules, one can find superior steering on evolving applied sciences, particularly with the 2021 replace to the FFIEC operations ebook. These rules will proceed to evolve, and with the ability to harness the facility of the automation methods can save organizations operational prices in assembly them.

Cisco DNA Middle

Cisco DNA Middle is a robust community controller and administration dashboard that permits you to take cost of your community, optimize your Cisco funding, safe your distant workforce, and decrease your IT spending. It supplies a variety of advantages for FIs, together with serving to them meet regulatory necessities via its intensive automation capabilities. These advantages embrace:

1. Community Segmentation: One of many key regulatory necessities for FIs is to make sure community segmentation to isolate delicate information and methods. Cisco DNA Middle might help with the provisioning of SDA or different applied sciences (L3 and L2) constantly throughout the atmosphere.
2. Visibility and Management: Cisco DNA Middle can present the flexibility to centralize and filter on occasions and supply superior analytics.
3. Compliance Reporting: FIs are required to keep up compliance stories to show their adherence to regulatory necessities. Cisco DNA Middle supplies compliance stories that may be simply generated and shared with regulators.
4. Automation and Orchestration: Cisco DNA Middle automates community administration duties resembling configuration administration, gadget provisioning, and community coverage enforcement. By superior composite templates, configlets for options could be stitched collectively throughout gadgets and gadget varieties in order that consistency could be maintained for the varied options that exist in an enterprise community.
5. Enhanced Safety: By superior options like integration with Talos and endpoint classification, in addition to automated workflows for the provisioning of superior safety assets like encrypted site visitors analytics, DNA Middle helps FIs implement the insurance policies to satisfy their regulatory necessities.

Cisco SD-WAN

Cisco SD-WAN is a cloud-delivered or on-premise managed software-defined wide-area community resolution that permits FIs to attach any consumer to any software. It has built-in capabilities resembling multicloud, safety, enhanced visibility, and analytics constructing towards a Safe Entry Service Edge (SASE)-enabled structure. Some capabilities Cisco’s SD-WAN resolution might help with embrace:

1. Community Segmentation: Provisioning safe segmentation and simplifying complicated topologies is among the strengths of the Cisco SD-WAN resolution. It will probably assist FIs to declaratively and systematically isolate delicate information and methods. That is intrinsic to the overlay and naturally can lengthen the campus to the info middle and cloud utilizing requirements primarily based segmentation constructs.
2. Safe Connectivity: One of many improvements Cisco SD-WAN dropped at market was the wedding of the routing topology with the encryption overlay to scale back the normal complexity round managing each individually. It makes use of patented improvements round safe key distribution to facilitate an automatic overlay which may safe any workload from any endpoint to any cloud utilizing software conscious routing.
3. Compliance Reporting: Cisco SD-WAN is a PCI compliant resolution that can be utilized to assist FIs meet their compliance wants. PCI-DSS stories can be found and could be shared with regulators.
4. Automation and Orchestration: Cisco SD-WAN automates community administration duties resembling configuration administration, gadget provisioning, and community coverage enforcement, lowering the chance of errors and inconsistencies that may result in compliance violations.
5. Enhanced Safety: Cisco SD-WAN supplies superior security measures resembling menace detection and response, application-level safety, and entry management, which might help FIs meet regulatory necessities round information safety.

Cisco Meraki

Cisco Meraki is the world main cloud-managed networking resolution that gives the total stack of enterprise merchandise managed constantly through centralized administration of community gadgets and functions. It supplies a variety of advantages for FIs, together with serving to them meet regulatory necessities. A number of the advantages of Cisco Meraki for FIs on this regard embrace:

1. Cloud Administration: With a PCI and GPDR compliant cloud administration resolution, FIs can safely handle their community infrastructure from a single cloud-based dashboard. The intuitive capacity to quickly provision and keep massive networks to incorporate SD-WAN, switching, wi-fi, sensors and cameras, and constantly and based on predefined requirements, prevents configuration drift and inherent danger. The native API permits simple integration with present safety instruments and methods for auditing and validation.
2. Community Segmentation: Cisco Meraki helps intrinsic and simplified SD-WAN at low complexity to make a simple to keep up, safe, and audit atmosphere. It has the flexibility to do full stack safety marrying the wi-fi SSID to Layer 2 change segmentation and preserving that via the SD-WAN resolution, presenting this all in a single elegant resolution.
3. Compliance Reporting: FIs are required to keep up compliance stories to show their adherence to regulatory necessities. Cisco Meraki supplies compliance stories that may be simply generated and shared with regulators.
4. Superior Safety: Cisco Meraki supplies superior security measures resembling menace detection and response, content material filtering, and entry management, which might help FIs meet regulatory necessities round information safety.

Cisco ACI

Cisco Software Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is a software-defined networking resolution that gives centralized automation and policy-driven software profiles for information middle networking. It supplies a variety of advantages for FIs, together with serving to them meet regulatory necessities. A number of the advantages of Cisco ACI for FIs on this regard embrace:

1. Community Segmentation: Implicit in ACI is the assemble of software primarily based consciousness and segmentation into requirements primarily based group coverage. This allows a framework for macro and micro-segmentation utilizing conventional community primarily based constructs or extra superior software classification. By utilizing a mannequin pushed strategy to segmentation it permits FIs to make sure that segmentation constructs are constant throughout a category of functions and enforced both in ASIC or through service home equipment stitched into the community cloth.
2. Compliance Reporting: As a part of Cisco’s reference design for safe information facilities ACI gives the flexibility to report on {hardware} and software program variations in addition to safety constructs used throughout the cloth both through native instruments, or via created toolkits, and even via third-party audit options.
3. Automation and Orchestration: Cisco ACI was constructed from the highest down as a mannequin pushed orchestration platform to permit all constructs of the community to be programmed and orchestrated as objects within the mannequin. ACI has implicit automation and orchestration, and exposes all this performance through API to permit third-party merchandise to seamlessly match into the answer.
4.  Enhanced Safety: Cisco ACI supplies superior security measures resembling community segmentation, policy-based entry management, and menace detection and response, which might help monetary establishments meet regulatory necessities round information safety.
5. Scalability and Efficiency: Cisco ACI has line charge efficiency and distinctive scalability to satisfy probably the most demanding environments. Evolutions resembling multi-pod and multi-site permit materials to not solely span geography however will increase scalability by permitting mobility between a number of availability zones.

In Conclusion

The FFIEC weblog sequence has been targeted round summarizing and evaluating the regulatory atmosphere confronted by IT organizations via the lens of the way it impacts these organizations, and corresponding applied sciences to assist. In my 15 years serving the monetary companies area, the regulatory world has solely gotten tougher, however that is as a result of actual world danger and evolution of industrialization of the menace panorama into viable and worthwhile enterprise fashions. The extent of technical danger confronted by FIs is at an all time excessive and can proceed to evolve as long as FIs are “the place the cash is.” The regulatory atmosphere doesn’t remedy this however is an try to make sure some stage of management and consistency. To assist meet these necessities Cisco has invested billions of {dollars} into the safety and into the safety of our platforms.

The extensibility of those platforms right into a northbound API permits for the most effective at school performance of all these methods from the campus to the WAN, whereas having the ability interoperate utilizing requirements primarily based protocols and apply a multi-domain coverage. This strategy promotes flexibility and performance with out compromise, serving to organizations unlock the utmost potential of their investments to unravel their present and future enterprise issues.

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