Centralized Management Distributed Enforcement with Cisco Secure Connect

Akshar Patel, a product manager for Cisco Secure Connect, presented information about Cisco’s Secure Connect and how it provides a true unified SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) experience at scale. He introduced the concept of SASE, which combines networking and security into a unified platform, and explained the evolution of SASE from disjointed components to integrated multi-vendor solutions, and finally to single-vendor unified solutions like Cisco Secure Connect.

Secure Connect is built on two platforms: Meraki SD-WAN and Umbrella SASE solution. The architecture is designed to connect and secure branches, remote access users, and ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access) methods. It enables secure access to resources on the internet, on-premises, or in public/private clouds.

Akshar focused on branch connectivity and cloud security functionalities, emphasizing the firewall aspect. He highlighted the simplicity of onboarding branches to the Secure Connect platform and the ability to handle large numbers of sites quickly. The demo showed how Secure Connect integrates into the Meraki dashboard, allowing users to connect sites to regions and verify connectivity.

He addressed concerns about latency and bandwidth, explaining that Secure Connect optimizes traffic within the data center and between regions. The solution provides guaranteed bandwidth per uplink per site, and prioritizes traffic based on quality of service (QoS) policies.

Akshar also discussed cloud security functions, including DNS inspection, cloud firewall with IPS inspection, and Secure Web Gateway (SWG) for deeper inspection. He introduced a centralized management interface for global policy enforcement, allowing users to define rules once and apply them across multiple branches and the cloud.

Finally, he addressed questions about API access, licensing, egress charges, and traffic analytics, indicating that Secure Connect offers detailed reporting and control over traffic and policies.