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 elementary to the varied expertise necessities seen throughout an IT group’s span of management. This weblog will concentrate on a number of the capabilities WITHIN every of those controllers, and the way they may help clear up the challenges confronted inside their respective domains. Of observe 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 had been evaluated within the prior blog.

Throughout these regulatory audit standards quite a few elementary constructs stay constant. These key tones permeate the steerage that Cisco applied sciences may help with are with the ability to

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

Particular inside some rules, you can see superior steerage 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 ability of the automation methods can save organizations operational prices in assembly them.

Cisco DNA Middle

Cisco DNA Center is a robust community controller and administration dashboard that allows you to take cost of your community, optimize your Cisco funding, safe your distant workforce, and decrease your IT spending. It gives 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 knowledge and methods. Cisco DNA Middle may help with the provisioning of SDA or different applied sciences (L3 and L2) persistently throughout the surroundings.
2. Visibility and Management: Cisco DNA Middle can present the power to centralize and filter on occasions and supply superior analytics.
3. Compliance Reporting: FIs are required to take care of compliance reviews to display their adherence to regulatory necessities. Cisco DNA Middle gives compliance reviews that may be simply generated and shared with regulators.
4. Automation and Orchestration: Cisco DNA Middle automates community administration duties equivalent to configuration administration, system provisioning, and community coverage enforcement. By means of superior composite templates, configlets for options will be stitched collectively throughout gadgets and system varieties in order that consistency will be maintained for the varied 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 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 answer that allows FIs to attach any consumer to any utility. It has built-in capabilities equivalent to multicloud, safety, enhanced visibility, and analytics constructing towards a Safe Entry Service Edge (SASE)-enabled structure. Some capabilities Cisco’s SD-WAN answer may help with embrace:

1. Community Segmentation: Provisioning safe segmentation and simplifying advanced topologies is likely one of the strengths of the Cisco SD-WAN answer. It might assist FIs to declaratively and systematically isolate delicate knowledge and methods. That is intrinsic to the overlay and naturally can lengthen the campus to the info heart and cloud utilizing requirements primarily based 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 cut back the standard 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 utility conscious routing.
3. Compliance Reporting: Cisco SD-WAN is a PCI compliant answer that can be utilized to assist FIs meet their compliance wants. PCI-DSS reviews can be found and will be shared with regulators.
4. Automation and Orchestration: Cisco SD-WAN automates community administration duties equivalent to configuration administration, system provisioning, and community coverage enforcement, lowering the danger of errors and inconsistencies that may result in compliance violations.
5. Enhanced Safety: Cisco SD-WAN gives superior security measures equivalent to 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 answer that gives the total stack of enterprise merchandise managed persistently by way of centralized administration of community gadgets and functions. It gives a variety of advantages for FIs, together with serving to them meet regulatory necessities. Among the advantages of Cisco Meraki for FIs on this regard embrace:

1. Cloud Administration: With a PCI and GPDR compliant cloud administration answer, FIs can safely handle their community infrastructure from a single cloud-based dashboard. The intuitive skill to quickly provision and preserve giant networks to incorporate SD-WAN, switching, wi-fi, sensors and cameras, and persistently and in line with 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 straightforward to take care of, safe, and audit surroundings. It has the power to do full stack safety marrying the wi-fi SSID to Layer 2 swap segmentation and preserving that via the SD-WAN answer, presenting this all in a single elegant answer.
3. Compliance Reporting: FIs are required to take care of compliance reviews to display their adherence to regulatory necessities. Cisco Meraki gives compliance reviews that may be simply generated and shared with regulators.
4. Superior Safety: Cisco Meraki gives superior security measures equivalent to 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 answer that gives centralized automation and policy-driven utility profiles for knowledge heart networking. It gives a variety of advantages for FIs, together with serving to them meet regulatory necessities. Among the advantages of Cisco ACI for FIs on this regard embrace:

1. Community Segmentation: Implicit in ACI is the assemble of utility 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 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 by way of 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 power to report on {hardware} and software program variations in addition to safety constructs used inside the material both by way of 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 by way of API to permit third-party merchandise to seamlessly match into the answer.
4.  Enhanced Safety: Cisco ACI gives superior security measures equivalent to 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 charge efficiency and distinctive scalability to satisfy probably the most demanding environments. Evolutions equivalent to 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 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 because of the actual world danger and evolution of industrialization of the risk 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 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 perfect 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 method 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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