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 series enumerated on the regulatory our bodies and rules, in addition to how organizations can dwell in a multi-controller world. That is basic to the various know-how necessities seen throughout an IT group’s span of management. This weblog will deal with a few of the capabilities WITHIN every of those controllers, and the way they may help clear up the challenges confronted inside their respective domains. Of word is all of those applied sciences expose the northbound API which might permit for multi-domain orchestration, and multi-domain orchestration instruments that leverage these instruments have been evaluated within the prior blog.

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

• know your surroundings,
• patch your surroundings, and
• phase and safe delicate knowledge in your surroundings

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

Cisco DNA Heart

Cisco DNA Center 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 by way of its in depth automation capabilities. These advantages embody:

1. Community Segmentation: One of many key regulatory necessities for FIs is to make sure community segmentation to isolate delicate knowledge and programs. Cisco DNA Heart may help with the provisioning of SDA or different applied sciences (L3 and L2) persistently throughout the surroundings.
2. Visibility and Management: Cisco DNA Heart can present the flexibility to centralize and filter on occasions and supply superior analytics.
3. Compliance Reporting: FIs are required to take care of compliance experiences to reveal their adherence to regulatory necessities. Cisco DNA Heart supplies compliance experiences that may be simply generated and shared with regulators.
4. Automation and Orchestration: Cisco DNA Heart automates community administration duties resembling configuration administration, machine provisioning, and community coverage enforcement. By means of superior composite templates, configlets for options may be stitched collectively throughout gadgets and machine sorts in order that consistency may be maintained for the various options that exist in an enterprise community.
5. Enhanced Safety: By means of superior options like integration with Talos and endpoint classification, in addition to automated workflows for the provisioning of superior safety sources like encrypted visitors analytics, DNA Heart helps FIs implement the insurance policies to fulfill their regulatory necessities.

Cisco SD-WAN

Cisco SD-WAN is a cloud-delivered or on-premise managed software-defined wide-area community resolution that allows FIs to attach any consumer to any utility. 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 may help with embody:

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 knowledge and programs. That is intrinsic to the overlay and naturally can prolong the campus to the information heart and cloud utilizing requirements based mostly segmentation constructs.
2. Safe Connectivity: One of many improvements Cisco SD-WAN delivered to 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 might safe any workload from any endpoint to any cloud utilizing utility 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 experiences can be found and may be shared with regulators.
4. Automation and Orchestration: Cisco SD-WAN automates community administration duties resembling configuration administration, machine provisioning, and community coverage enforcement, decreasing the danger of errors and inconsistencies that may result in compliance violations.
5. Enhanced Safety: Cisco SD-WAN supplies superior security measures resembling risk detection and response, application-level safety, and entry management, which may help FIs meet regulatory necessities round knowledge safety.

Cisco Meraki

Cisco Meraki is the world main cloud-managed networking resolution that gives the total stack of enterprise merchandise managed persistently 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 embody:

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 potential to quickly provision and preserve massive networks to incorporate SD-WAN, switching, wi-fi, sensors and cameras, and persistently and based on predefined requirements, prevents configuration drift and inherent threat. The native API permits straightforward integration with present safety instruments and programs for auditing and validation.
2. Community Segmentation: Cisco Meraki helps intrinsic and simplified SD-WAN at low complexity to make a straightforward to take care of, safe, and audit surroundings. It has the flexibility to do full stack safety marrying the wi-fi SSID to Layer 2 swap segmentation and preserving that by way of the SD-WAN resolution, presenting this all in a single elegant resolution.
3. Compliance Reporting: FIs are required to take care of compliance experiences to reveal their adherence to regulatory necessities. Cisco Meraki supplies compliance experiences that may be simply generated and shared with regulators.
4. Superior Safety: Cisco Meraki supplies superior security measures resembling risk detection and response, content material filtering, and entry management, which may help FIs meet regulatory necessities round knowledge safety.

Cisco ACI

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is a software-defined networking resolution that gives centralized automation and policy-driven utility profiles for knowledge heart 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 embody:

1. Community Segmentation: Implicit in ACI is the assemble of utility based mostly consciousness and segmentation into requirements based mostly group coverage. This allows a framework for macro and micro-segmentation utilizing conventional community based mostly constructs or extra superior utility classification. By means of utilizing a mannequin pushed method 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 material.
2. Compliance Reporting: As a part of Cisco’s reference design for safe knowledge facilities ACI gives the flexibility to report on {hardware} and software program variations in addition to safety constructs used throughout the material both through native instruments, or by way of created toolkits, and even by way of 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 risk detection and response, which may help monetary establishments meet regulatory necessities round knowledge safety.
5. Scalability and Efficiency: Cisco ACI has line fee efficiency and distinctive scalability to fulfill essentially 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 blog series has been targeted round summarizing and evaluating the regulatory surroundings confronted by IT organizations by way of the lens of the way it impacts these organizations, and corresponding applied sciences to assist. In my 15 years serving the monetary providers house, the regulatory world has solely gotten tougher, however that is as a result of actual world threat and evolution of industrialization of the risk panorama into viable and worthwhile enterprise fashions. The extent of technical threat 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 surroundings doesn’t clear up this however is an try to make sure some degree 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 programs from the campus to the WAN, whereas having the ability interoperate utilizing requirements based mostly protocols and apply a multi-domain coverage. This method promotes flexibility and performance with out compromise, serving to organizations unlock the utmost potential of their investments to resolve their present and future enterprise issues.

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