Cisco’s Secure Service Edge PoP for cloud-delivered security will help customers protect users, infrastructure and investments.
Ahead of GITEX Global 2024, Cisco announced plans to establish a Point-of-Presence (PoP) for cloud-delivered security in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This initiative aims to help customers protect their users, infrastructure and investments against threat actors.
The announcement is part of Cisco’s continued effort to empower organisations locally and regionally with flexible security services and data loss protection for devices, remote users and distributed locations.
Cisco targets service availability by the end of 2024 for the Secure Service Edge (SSE) PoP.
“Today’s announcement reaffirms Cisco’s commitment to rapidly extend its global reach for customers and provide advanced cloud security protection and services to the UAE and the surrounding region,” said Abdelilah Nejjari, Managing Director for Cisco in the Gulf and Levant region. “Our goal is to help companies in the UAE accelerate the deployment of cybersecurity capabilities by adopting a platform approach. This will enable the seamless integration of various solutions within their stack, allowing them to maximise their potential.”
The new PoP will play an important role in delivering agile, highly resilient, high-capacity secure access closer to users in the UAE. It will support Cisco’s cloud services including its Secure Service Edge (SSE) solution, Cisco Secure Access. This cloud-delivered platform helps organisations solve a variety of security challenges.
Empowering users and organisations
Users can now safely and seamlessly access the resources and apps they need, regardless of protocol, port or level of customisation. As a result, customers can move away from the complex web of point products that weren’t designed to support today’s highly distributed environment. With Cisco Secure Access, decisions about how users connect to the Internet, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and private applications are automated, removing complexity and helping to increase productivity.
“This initiative marks a new milestone in Cisco’s commitment to help strengthen the region’s cybersecurity efforts,” said Fady Younes, Managing Director, Cybersecurity, Middle East, Africa and Romania. “In February, we announced a local data centre for our Duo Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) offering and I am pleased to say that this is already up and running, in line with our original schedule.
“As a next step, with the new PoP for the converged cloud security SSE solution, grounded in zero trust, to provide our customers with seamless, transparent and secure access from anything to anywhere,” added Younes.
Cybersecurity readiness in the UAE
In the UAE, organisations will experience the benefits of Cisco’s SSE PoP with the scalability of public cloud. The PoP will be carrier-neutral and available on any Internet Service Provider (ISP) in UAE.
