With the increasing number of threats facing Saudi businesses today, one layer of security simply isn't enough. Because of this, your IT department uses a variety of tools to protect your network and the machines on it from attack.

One new layer that Ctelecoms is excited to offer is Cisco Umbrella. Let's take a look at this robust solution and see how it boosts your security.

What Is Cisco Umbrella?

Security without complexity, Cisco Umbrella is a cloud security platform that forms a first line of defense against cyber threats. It forms a defensive line at the first port of call for any traffic entering or leaving your network: DNS.

Essentially, DNS translates human-friendly website names (like msn.com) into computer-friendly IP addresses (like 123.45.67.89). Any potential attack on your network must go through DNS first, so securing it is vital to defense.
Thus, adding Cisco Umbrella is like putting an armed guard at the entrance to your network. And if anything does manage to get in, Umbrella prevents it from calling home.

Top 8 Reasons To Choose Cisco Umbrella

1- Visibility Over All Internet-connected Devices

Cisco Umbrella protects every device on and off your network – even mobile phones and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. You can utilise its integration with Cisco AnyConnect, the Cisco Security Connector app and also the Umbrella app.

2- Superior Security For All Users

Umbrella’s secure web gateway logs and inspects web traffic for full visibility, URL and application controls, and protection against malware, ransomware, command and control callbacks and all emerging threats. One of Umbrella’s greatest features is that there’s no hardware to deploy or software to manually update, and it can scale to meet the needs of any organisation. Umbrella uses DNS as the main mechanism to get all internet requests to the cloud. Moreover, by using DNS, Umbrella stops threats over all ports and protocols — not just web ports 80 and 443 like a traditional web proxy. The DNS request becomes the very first point at which Umbrella enforces security, by determining whether the domain or IP is legitimate or malicious.

3- Fast, Reliable & Highly Efficient

With Umbrella, even if a user gets infected, the call-back to the attacker’s server is blocked so the attack does not succeed. Because Umbrella operates at the DNS and IP layers, it acts as the first line of defence against threats, meaning malware and other attacks and threats will be stopped before they cause damage and security teams will have fewer infections to remediate.

4- Cloud Access Security Broker

Umbrella exposes shadow IT by providing the ability to detect and report on cloud applications in use across your organization. For discovered apps, view details on vendor, category, and activity volume to better manage cloud adoption and reduce risk.

5- Real-time Threat Intelligence

Our unique view of the internet gives us unprecedented insight into malicious domains, IPs, and URLs. Umbrella sees the relationships between malware, URLs, domains, IPs, and networks across the internet. It analyses internet activity patterns from more than 150 billion DNS requests from 90 million users worldwide every day and automatically identifies infrastructure being staged for the next attack using a combination of statistical and machine learning models and human intelligence. Then, Umbrella proactively blocks your users from these threats before a connection is ever made or a file is ever downloaded.

6- Non-Intrusive To Users

Umbrella is always on, always protecting, without action required from end users. They won’t experience slow or broken connections with Umbrella or memory impacts on their devices. In fact, many even see performance improvements when accessing the internet.

7- Unmatched intelligence

Powered by Cisco Talos, one of the world’s largest commercial threat teams, Umbrella blocks malicious activity earlier, before it reaches your network or endpoints. Umbrella also uses statistical and machine learning models to uncover new attacks staged on the internet.

8- Seamless Integration Capabilities

The Umbrella and Cisco SD-WAN integration deploys easily across your network for powerful cloud security and protection against internet threats. Our integrated approach secures cloud access and efficiently protects your branch users, connected devices, and app usage from all direct internet access breakouts. Besides, Umbrella has seamless integration with Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers, Meraki MR Access Points and support for other wireless products.

Ready To Try Cisco Umbrella?

As a Premier Cisco Partner in Saudi Arabia (Jeddah, Riyadh & Western KSA), Ctelecoms can help you experience an ultimate level of cyber security so you can ensure all users are protected 24/7/365. If Cisco Umbrella piqued your interest, contact our expert team and get your free trial.