Cisco Integrates ACI With FirePOWER to Deliver Automated Real-Time Threat Protection for Data Centers

Cisco has announced the full integration of Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) embedded security with the threat detection of the Cisco FirePOWER Next Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS), providing automated threat protection to combat emerging data center security threats.

Combining best of breed FirePOWER NGIPS with ACI, Cisco’s customers would now be able to build highly secure infrastructure with fine-grained control (including application level security), visibility and centralized automation all the way from infrastructure to the application level. 

In addition, customers would benefit from lower total cost of ownership including infrastructure and management costs as well as costs associated with security breaches. Cisco also announced that ACI is now validated by independent auditors for deployment in PCI compliant networks, which can help reduce the scope of a PCI audit and lower audit costs and time.

Multi-Tenant Infrastructure

The Cisco FirePOWER family of security appliances, available as both physical devices and virtual appliances, would offer best-in-class threat effectiveness, superior visibility and global threat intelligence. ACI is a highly secured multi-tenant infrastructure based on whitelist policy model that isolates and segments both physical and virtual applications in the data center with centralized automation, visibility and auditing through the Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC).

Cisco ACI integration with Cisco FirePOWER NGIPS (including Advanced Malware Protection) provides security before, during and after an attack, enabling organizations to dynamically detect and block advanced threats with continuous visibility and control across the full attack continuum. These new security capabilities would deliver unprecedented control, visibility and centralized security automation in the data center.

Cisco ACI also supports investment protection with a comprehensive and open ecosystem that includes: Check Point Software Technologies, Fortinet, Infoblox, Intel Security, Radware, and Symantec.