Cisco brings SSE technology to new Kyndryl services

Cisco and infrastructure services firm Kyndryl have extended their relationship with two new services aimed at helping enterprises securely connect cloud, private and SaaS-based edge resources.

The first new service, called Kyndryl Consult Security Services Edge (SSE) with Cisco Secure Access, helps customers design and implement SSE environments and set policies. The second service provides a fully Kyndryl-managed, cloud-based SSE implementation using Cisco technology. It’s called Kyndryl Managed SSE with Cisco Secure Access.

The new services incorporate Cisco’s SSE platform, called Secure Access, which includes zero-trust network access (ZTNA), secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), firewall as a service (FWaaS), DNS security, remote browser isolation (RBI) and other security capabilities. It’s designed to secure any application via any port or protocol, and it can optimize performance and continuously verify and grant trust from a single, cloud-managed dashboard, according to the vendor. It authenticates users through a secure, encrypted tunnel, letting users see only applications and services they have permission to access, according to Cisco. 

Gartner describes SSE services as including access control, threat protection, data security, security monitoring, and acceptable-use control enforced by network-based and API-based integration (SSE is essentially SASE minus the SD-WAN, according to the analyst firm). SSE is primarily delivered as a cloud-based service, and it may include on-premises or agent-based components.

“Our collaboration with Cisco enables Kyndryl to help customers better anticipate security incidents using the right tools and capabilities aligned with Kyndryl’s cyber resilience framework,” said Michelle Weston, vice president of global offerings for security and resiliency at Kyndryl, in a statement.

The SSE services expand on an existing alliance between Cisco and Kyndryl. Last August, Kyndryl boosted its own cyber resiliency offering with Cisco’s Security Cloud platform, which includes security components such as Cisco’s Duo access control, extended detection and response features, and Multicloud Defense, which orchestrates security and policy across private and public clouds.

Security Cloud operates as a layer on top of the infrastructure across a customer’s cloud services – including Azure, AWS, GCP and private data-center clouds – to protect core applications, Cisco said. It features a unified dashboard, support for flexible trust policies, and open APIs to encourage third-party integrators. By correlating data and employing artificial intelligence and machine learning, Cisco Security Cloud can detect and remediate threats quickly throughout an organization, Cisco says.

In 2022, Cisco and Kyndryl announced their first alliance, which focused on helping enterprise customers implement a range of connectivity technologies including software defined networking (SDN), WAN, and private 5G.

Palo Alto Networks is also a partner of Kyndryl, which offers a number of managed security services, including SD-WAN and SASE, that integrate Palo Alto’s security technologies.