Cisco Multicloud Defense

Score8.5 out of 10

28 Reviews and Ratings

What is Cisco Multicloud Defense?

A solution to simplify security and gain multidirectional protection across any public or private cloud to block inbound attacks, lateral movement, and data exfiltration using a single solution. Cisco Multicloud Defense protects all cloud environments using a single software-as-a-service (SaaS) control plane, eliminating inefficient, complex, and costly point solutions.

Categories & Use Cases

Compliance and Auditing
Supports compliance with industry regulations and standards, and offers audit logs and reports to meet regulatory requirements and facilitate security audits.
Category average: 8.3
Security Incident Response
Establishes protocols and procedures for promptly responding to security incidents, mitigating their impact, and conducting forensic investigations.
Category average: 7.4
Secure Data Transfer
Provides secure methods for transferring data to and from the cloud, such as encrypted protocols or virtual private networks (VPNs).
Category average: 8

Regular Vulnerability Management
Conducts regular vulnerability assessments and scans to identify and remediate security vulnerabilities within the cloud infrastructure.
Category average: 8.1
Identity and Access Management
Offers centralized management of user identities, roles, and permissions to streamline access control and enforce least privilege principles.
Category average: 7.8
Intrusion Detection and Prevention:
Implements systems and technologies to detect and prevent unauthorized access or intrusions into cloud resources or networks.
Category average: 7.6

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use 1000 plus Cisco Multicloud Defense gateways in our environment. This product solved a lot of problems we had with the previous product. Few examples are limitations on automating the gateway deployment, Policy push Vs Policy pull, a lot of time spent on upgrades. This Product solved all these problems.

Pros

Protecting the Egress Internet traffic
Ease of Policy Changes
Ease of gateway image roll outs
Single Controller to manage multiple environments and Multiple clouds

Cons

VPN tunnel capability
Security Audits of Cloud infrastructure like Security groups, NACLs, NSGs, GCP firewall policies, etc.

Return on Investment

Saved a lot of money on Operational Overhead. I would say we were able to save more than 10 hours every week.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Aviatrix, AWS Firewall Manager and Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series

Other Software Used

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI), Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches

Verified User

Employee in Information Technology (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Cisco Multicloud Defense has been a great product. It has helped us keep eyes on our network activity. It helps us track our local machines, servers and even remote devices. It helps us block inbound attacks, laterlam movement, and even data exfiltration. Cisco Multicloud Defense is a great SaaS product.

Pros

Inbound Attacks
Lateral Movement
Data Exfiltrations

Cons

Logs can be tricky to navigate
GUI can sometimes be confusing
Wish there was a better sizing recommendation for gateway deployments

Alternatives Considered

CrowdStrike Falcon and Arctic Wolf Cloud Posture Security Management

Gert-Jan de Boer View profile

CTO in Information Technology at aaZoo B.V. (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are an MSP offering Cisco and Palo Alto products and solutions. We use Cisco Multicloud Defense in our offering to secure our customer's cloud environments. Cisco Multicloud Defense is a next-generation cloud native security solution that utilizes both APIs and proprietary gateways to secure cloud environments in a manageable and scalable way. Cisco Multicloud Defense takes care of keeping the gateways up2date, enables redundancy and scales automatically with the customer's cloud environments.

Pros

IPSec VPN to integrate with campus and/or private cloud solutions
Integration through CDO using shared objects
Clear policies that are understandable

Cons

The GUI for IPSec VPN is sometimes confusing if you want to add third party VPN endpoints.
There should be a clearer indication of the sizing you need to choose for the gateway deployments.
We would love to be able to push policies to private cloud as well.

Return on Investment

Cisco Multicloud Defense is easy to deploy and manage

Alternatives Considered

Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series and Cisco Secure Firewall

Other Software Used

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series, Cisco Secure Firewall, Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, Cisco Secure Endpoint, Cisco Secure Connect, Cisco Umbrella, MISP Threat Sharing, Cisco XDR, Cisco Secure Network Analytics, Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics

Verified User

Director in Information Technology (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In our organization we utilize multiple different cloud providers. With Cisco Multicloud Defense we have the ability to break down our security needs and implement protection across all of our public and private cloud infrastructure. With Cisco Multicloud Defense we are able to segment and allow specific types of traffic to flow while bocking traffic we do not want.

Pros

Segmentation
Ease of use
Reducing risk

Cons

The ability to see traffic flowing and identify malicious traffic is amazing.
The ease of setting up the connections of the cloud platforms is perfect.
Dynamic based security policies allow for better protection.
I don't have any detailed examples of improvement so instead I highlighted a couple of aspects that make the solution amazing.

Return on Investment

The insight that it provides allows us to move away from other tools and just utilize the Cisco Multicloud Defense.
Insights into data usage provides tangible analytics.
Ease of management and use allows for less in-depth and specialized training.

Alternatives Considered

Netskope Cloud Firewall

Other Software Used

Sophos Intercept X, Corsair SSD, FortiAuthenticator

Kevin Brew

Network Architect. in Information Technology at Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have a considerable cloud environment that we run most of our networking and services from and we utilize Cisco Multicloud Defense to secure and monitor all of the above. It is helping us manage our cloud inventory more effectively, and closing knowledge gaps in our security footprint, to give us an overall better posture.

Pros

The thing that I'd like the most about Cisco Multicloud Defense so far is that it's allowed me to look at security within our cloud environment in a new way and to rebuild it in a far more scalable fashion while giving more control to people that are actually involved in the delivery end of things some ability to manage the networking security within that.

Cons

I think there are some GUI changes that could be made, and probably will be made as the product matures moreso to align it with the wider Cisco security platform look and feel

Return on Investment

Our availability has increased because of how availability works within this product. Whereas before as running two virtual machines for firewalls, the automated end of this entire deployment where if it sees a health issue, it will build another version itself and drain the old one and re-add the traffic into the new one very cleanly with very little loss. So that's really greatly improved our availability. Then the deployment of new services will also be quicker because, as I mentioned, it is tag-based, if you already have a preexisting tag architecture, you can just add new services into that and they will automatically be pulled into the new system. So it's more efficient in that way. In terms of commercials, I guess it's kind of similar. I don't think it will make a massive commercial difference to us, but in terms of the operational element it will.

Other Software Used

Juniper Mist AI, IBM Security QRadar SIEM, Cisco Firepower 4100 Series

Usability

Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud

Zscaler Posture Control

Cisco Multicloud Defense

What is Cisco Multicloud Defense?

Categories & Use Cases