ICS Adds Cisco Umbrella to Product Line

Internet security has been forced into evolution by the dynamic changes affecting our workforce due to the current digital landscape. Gone are the days when your concerns were centralized in one office location. Many businesses now allow their employees to work remotely at least some of the time, and in-office employees often depend on the cloud and use their mobile devices to access company information offsite.

Users no longer need the VPN to work outside of the office, as cloud services are the norm.  So how do you protect your business and your users anywhere they access the internet?

A Complete Solution to Cloud-Based Security

ICS is proud to have added Cisco Umbrella to our product line. It is the industry’s first Secure Internet Gateway in the cloud. The system provides the first line of defense against internet threats. Cisco Umbrella allows business owners to provide a strategy to outsmart malicious cyber-attacks with cloud security that provides the first line of defense against threats. Cisco Umbrella uses the internet’s infrastructure to block malicious destinations before a connection is ever established through a series of phases.

• DNS & IP Layer Enforcement: Umbrella uses DNS to halt threats over all ports and protocols, stopping malware before it reaches your network.
• Intelligent Proxy: Umbrella routes requests to risky domains for deeper URL and file inspection, effectively protecting without delay or performance impact.
• Command & Control Callback Blocking: Even if devices become infected in various ways, Umbrella prevents connects to attacker servers, stopping data exfiltration and execution of ransomware encryption.

Spot Attacks Before They Launch

Cisco Umbrella utilizes internet activity to learn how to identify attacker infrastructure staged for current and emergent threats. The system captures and analyzes relationships between malware, domains, IPs and networks across the internet.

• Statistical Models: The system analyzes data to identify patterns, detect abnormalities and create mockups to predict the likelihood that a domain or IP is malicious.
• Cisco Umbrella Investigate: Enrich your incident response and SIEM data with access to Cisco’s threat intelligence of global DNS requests.
  
• Cisco Ecosystem: Umbrella utilized URL and file reputation scores from Cisco Talos and Cisco AMP to block malicious content.

Simple Cloud-Security Solution

Umbrella is a simplistic security system with enterprise-wide deployment in minutes. There is absolutely no hardware to install or software to update. The browser-based interface provides quick setup and ongoing management.

• On-network Devices: You can implement powerful security simply by changing just one setting on your network server, access point or router–protecting all devices.

• Off-network Laptops: When VPN is off, you can still protect laptops with Umbrella’s roaming client or built-in Cisco AnyConnect integration.
• Browser-based Interface: You can efficiently create and manage policies, as the Umbrella dashboard provides both central and local administration and reporting.

Packages Tailored to Your Business Needs

This robust system–the first of its kind–has the capacity to protect businesses of all sizes from the devastation that is often brought on by a cyber-attack. Whether you’re a small business owner looking to protect your remote team, or you’re a large corporation with multitudes of devices traveling in and out of the office, Cisco Umbrella has a package suited to fit your unique business needs.

The Cisco Umbrella packages–Professional, Insights and Platform–all include the protection and performance features. As the features begin to get more robust, the packages stagger.

The Professional package is best for the small business owner looking to add security to their cloud-based documentation and/or project management system. This package will protect the business from cloud-based attacks, but it does not include access to some of the more dynamic data subsets.

The Insights package is great for mid-sized companies, and it will include all the features of the Professional package, plus access to insightful data that will help companies keep track of devices on their networks.

The Platform package is the perfect cloud-based security option for advanced security teams looking for all the protection possible, with access to powerful data analysis and information that will rapidly expand security measures, all while protecting the business at an optimal level.

Cisco Umbrella’s Cloud

Cisco Umbrella processes billions of DNS requests from millions of users. The system has data center locations around the world, and they peer with the top internet service providers and content delivery networks to shorten the routes between networks and the company’s data centers, making internet access faster than ever.

Fast Cloud Performance Platform

Performance is a crucial aspect of connecting your business to a cloud security platform, as it would be devastating to have the system break or slow down your connection. Cisco Umbrella utilizes Anycast routing to ensure reliability, so that businesses never face maintenance downtime.

Cloud Protection Made Easy

You can have protection across your network in as little as 30 seconds. You can add a code to your DNS or DHCP servers to protect every device on that network. For laptops connecting off network and utilizing Cisco AnyConnect, users can enable the Umbrella roaming security module for protection, even when the VPN is off.

World’s First Intelligent Proxy

Historically, URL-level web content blocking requires proxying all connections, which can result in negative performance. With Umbrella, safe connections are allowed and malicious requests are blocked at the DNS-layer. Only requests to risky domains, which contain both malicious and legitimate content, are rooted for deeper URL and file inspection. With Umbrella’s intelligent proxy, users don’t experience any slow or broken internet access.

ICS is proud to offer these services to our customer base, and we’re happy to help you and your business get started with Cisco Umbrella.

Jason Simons

ICS is a Texas-based 40-year-old technology company specializing in Managed IT, VoIP, Video Conferencing and Video Surveillance solutions for US and International businesses. ICS has over 4000 regional installations and specializes in multi-site businesses between 25 and 2500 employees. ICS’s customers enjoy the experience of ICS’s Total Care program which provides clients flat fee services with obsolescence and growth protection. Whether a customer elects to deploy their IT, Video Conferencing or VoIP in the cloud or on the customer’s premise, ICS can provide a full turn-key solution for our clients under one flat monthly fee.