Cisco boosts security of business apps with launch of Cisco Security business

AppDynamics, which is part of Cisco, today announced Cisco Secure Application, the industry’s first solution to drastically simplify vulnerability management, defend against cyber threats and protect applications - from the inside-out.

AppDynamics is the world’s #1 APM solution and full-stack, business-centric observability platform and collaborated with the Cisco Security business - the world’s largest enterprise security company - to develop this new application.  

The Cisco Secure Application protects applications at runtime, provides real-time Intrusion detection and blocks attacks. It also simplifies the lifecycle of security incidents by providing application and business context and creating a shared context across Application and Security teams. All this is done under a single solution.

It is built natively into the AppDynamics platform so users benefit from reduced alert fatigue, in addition to continuous real time threat detection, and automatic breach prevention. This enables security teams to investigate threats, turning thousand of hours of prevention and detection into seconds.  Thus enabling threats to be caught in seconds not months, an essential factor for business continuity. As a result, businesses have the confidence to maintain operations without the fear of a malicious attack and the potential damage to brand reputation and customer trust it could cause.

Organizations have become increasingly reliant on applications to engage with and deliver services to customers. This has led to huge volumes of personal user data being housed within the application and made them tempting targets for hackers.

Businesses are now more vulnerable to cyber threats and security incidents. This challenge is further exacerbated as they continue to support more employees working from home who are using laptops and devices connected to the public internet. This is testing the limits of monitoring practices and vastly expanding the IT perimeter, creating new weaknesses and vulnerabilities in even the most secure IT networks.

It is therefore essential to have the right processes and solutions in place to safeguard application stored data. Breaches risk consumer trust, impact brand reputation and potentially cost organizations millions of dollars.

With applications now running from on-premise to various cloud based services, the need for an application-led approach to security is paramount. This critical shift will enable IT teams to quickly identify vulnerabilities within the application during production, prioritise threats that impact business operations and resolve them. Cisco Secure Application is the only solution that uniquely brings together business performance and security insights​ to protect brands against slowdowns and exploits.

“A slow or underperforming application can significantly impact the digital experience of the user, but when an application’s security is breached and exploited, it can be life altering for the end user. Companies simply cannot afford to ignore the risk,” said Fady Younes, Cybersecurity Director, Middle East and Africa, Cisco . “Cisco Secure Application is the first of its kind to deliver this level of security insight that empowers both Application and Security teams to safeguard customer and organization assets while delivering a best-in-class digital experience.”

With Secure Application, enterprise IT teams will have access to:

Automatic runtime protection: Visibility into an application's true behavior to easily detect attacks, identify deviations, and block attacks automatically.

Simplified vulnerability management: Access at the code level to detect dependency and configuration level security vulnerabilities in production.

Security insights informed by business impact: Security details correlated with the application topology to apply business relevance to security events and helps teams focus on the incidents that matter most.

Collaboration between Application and Security teams: Shared context for Application and Security teams for optimal collaboration, improved security posture, and healthy digital business.