Cisco steps up security options for MSPs

Cisco has increased the support it provides for managed service providers (MSPs) looking to get involved with its security portfolio. The vendor has used the backdrop of the Partner Summit being held this week to roll out enhancements in its Security Cloud Control platform.

MSPs will be able to provide multi-customer management on the platform, delivering a range of options including Hybrid Mesh Firewall with AI Defense and the vendor’s Secure Access security service edge (SSE) offering.

Tim Coogan, senior vice-president for global partner sales at Cisco, said that managed service providers were an important route to market and it was essential to Cisco to give partners the ability to deliver its technology in a way customers were demanding.

“It is important that we provide a platform that makes the deployment and consumption of that easier, and our partners are the inflection point between what we offer and what our customers are demanding. And managed services is a fabulous example. As a service is another example to make that transition even easier,” he said.

The enhancements that have been made to Security Cloud Control that should appeal to the MSP community include centralised oversight and management with the ability to handle multiple customers.

Efforts have also been made to streamline MSO licensing, including supporting models including multi-architecture Managed Services Enterprise Agreement (MSEA) and consumption-based Managed Services License Agreement (MSLA).

“MSPs are on the front lines, helping businesses navigate the complexities of modern cybersecurity, especially as AI makes threats more sophisticated,” said Jeetu Patel, president and chief product officer at Cisco. “The new multi-customer management capabilities in Cisco Security Cloud Control, coupled with our Hybrid Mesh Firewall, are designed to eliminate operational friction, empower our partners to accelerate revenue growth, and ultimately deliver superior security outcomes for their customers.”

Cisco has emphasised the enhancements to the platform will give MSPs a faster time to market, making it easier to onboard customers as well as reducing operational costs due to the multi-organisation management features.

The vendor provided some thoughts from partners that had already been updated on the increased support for MSPs.

“Being able to log into a single dashboard, with robust role-based access control and being able to manage multiple customers from a single place is really going to reduce the workload for our teams,” said Gísli Helgason, chief technologist of network and security at CAE Technology Services.

Cisco also unveiled its unified edge platform the help customers across distributed networks, including retail and healthcare, with options to help handle their rising levels of AI workloads.

“Today’s infrastructure can’t meet the demands of powering AI at scale,” said Patel. “As AI agents and experiences proliferate, they will naturally emerge closer to where customers interact and decisions are made – the branch office, retail store, factory floor, stadium and more. That’s where compute needs to live. With our Unified Edge, we’re making it easier to power AI in the real world with flexible, secure systems that are simple to deploy, operate and scale as demand grows.”

Cisco is looking to its broad partner ecosystem, ranging from MSPs, resellers and ISVs, to get involved with the technology and take it out to market.