COUNTRY FOCUS : SOUTH AFRICA
OVERCOMING DATA CENTRE CHALLENGES
Challenges
• Increase data centre visibility
• Improve problem identification and troubleshooting
• Defend against persistent , multifaceted cyberattacks
Solutions
• Application connectivity and dependency mapping
• Integrated , multi-layered security from the core to the Edge
• Application-centric , software-defined network cyberdefences . Like all of South Africa ’ s big four banks , FNB is under persistent , multifaceted attacks by cybercriminals and malware . Cisco Stealthwatch and Cisco Tetration work in tandem to provide continuous , real-time monitoring of all network traffic . Cisco Umbrella and Cisco Advanced Malware Protection ( AMP ) scour the traffic to detect anomalies , malicious behaviour and malware . And Cisco Identity Services Engine ( ISE ) takes action when problems are identified .
“ All of our Cisco security products are tightly integrated , giving us multi-layered protection from the core to the Edge ,” he said . “ Stealthwatch identifies anomalies , ISE immediately quarantines them and then we use Tetration to get an incredibly detailed picture of what happened and what was affected . In the past , we had to comb through firewalls , hundreds of logs and dozens of network devices just to get a fraction of the picture .”
With Cisco Tetration working in concert with Cisco security products , FNB ’ s malware infection rate has dropped from 9 % to 0.1 %. Whereas the bank used to have thousands of infected endpoints at any given time , Pretorius pointed out that FNB now has less than 100 compromised machines on average .
Looking ahead
Skyscrapers skyline at business district of Johannesburg culprit of such problems . In one case , a DNS issue was quickly exposed . In another , a failing front-end web server was easily detected . And in a situation that would have otherwise proven baffling to FNB ’ s IT staff , Cisco Tetration pinpointed a user-generated query that had been running for 197 hours inside a data warehouse , slowing down the entire environment .
“ We never would have been able to see or understand these problems without Tetration . It ’ s the only tool in the world that can show what is happening across the network , application and server planes all on one screen ,” he claimed . “ Tetration gives me 20 / 20 vision in the data centre .”
Thwarting persistent cyberattacks
In addition to better data centre visibility , Cisco Tetration-along with an entire suite of Cisco security products , has dramatically improved the bank ’ s
With vastly improved troubleshooting and security , Pretorius and his team are now working to enhance the automation and compliance reporting of FNB ’ s three data centres . Key to those efforts are Cisco ACI , the industry ’ s leading software-defined networking ( SDN ) solution and Cisco Network Assurance Engine or NAE , a comprehensive intent assurance solution that mathematically verifies the entire data centre network for correctness .
“ Cisco ACI will help us automate our processes , enforce network and application policies and segment our data . Once ACI is fully installed , Cisco NAE will give us assurance and show compliance , which will stop auditors from running scripts in our environment ,” he explained .
Cisco ACI will also help FNB move to a DevOps model of continuous application development and deployment . Instead of working two weekends every month-in the middle of the night-to implement changes and deploy new applications , Pretorius ’ team will be able to do so at any time , without disrupting service availability .
“ In addition to security , visibility and availability , Cisco technologies give all of us the ability to sleep at night . And ever since Tetration was launched , not a single outage has been blamed on the network ,” he said . p
44 INTELLIGENTCIO AFRICA www . intelligentcio . com