Cisco IOS Security is a mature product with extensive capabilities, serving as the base for the defense layer. It offers good network visibility, which helps in rapid response through the Rapid Threat Containment feature. Its deployment and configuration are straightforward.

From a networking perspective, for instance, Cisco IOS incorporates time-tested security features.

The zone-based firewall feature has significantly influenced our network security management. For instance, when managing multiple geolocations, it's essential to apply geographically appropriate policies. 

If a customer operates within the UK zone, I need to implement UK-specific policies. This approach is also applicable to customers in the Asia Pacific and UK regions. It enables me to tailor security policies based on the geographical location of my customers, such as adjusting policies for customers in China or Japan. This flexibility helps in creating a comprehensive zone list.

Additionally, this feature allows for seamless service agreements between all zones from headquarters, providing access to all zones within the firewall we create. Essentially, it facilitates the creation of zones within the firewall.

Cisco IOS Security enables communication between our network nodes. The solution provides authentication like policy enforcement, QOS, and intelligent routing. We use Cisco IOS Security for administration purposes.

Cisco IOS Security helps us with splitting the DNS between a specific perimeter.

We are able to filter a lot of traffic. The is especially effective when a lot of the traffic is in layer 7 — the internet aspect of security for application services.  

The solution does not do anything for us directly as we use it with other clients. We are a large IT company. We hear from clients who tell us what they want. We just find solutions for what they tell us they need. Everyone has a different flavor of what they are looking for and what they are looking to fix.  

The Cisco IOS (Internetwork Operating System) firewalls are mostly set up for branch offices in small to medium business environments or for managed services. Those are the clients we usually use this solution for. It is usually only used for a specific thing to fill a specific need. It might be NAT (Network Address Translation), it might be a guideline or restrictions, it might be that they can have the option to make a solution work on cloud or on-premises. It could be deployed so they have the option to either use CapEx or OpEx. It helps to create options for those types of things.  

Cisco IOS Security has not improved my organization. We use it for our clients. It helps their workers to be more secure in operations.

Cisco IOS Security gives us a level of trust at the edge as far as being the first line of defense for anything that's trying to get into our network.

This has improved the way our organization operates very well.

In certain spots it has improved our security program's maturity, for example around virtualization and network segmentation.

Cisco IOS allows us to keep the same security features as our principal offices.

• Increased monitoring level for KPIs normally not tracked by network management systems.
• Ability to correlate events and report back in a predefined format/customized message on the switch.
• Making a Cisco switch act as a network event sensor is enhancing visibility on the network.

DMVPN as a technology, not necessarily for security, has allowed my customers to be more agile in their connectivity, without having to rely on a hub-and-spoke topology. Rather, they can leverage a full mesh topology, which is essentially SD-WAN.

IPsec allows us to overlay that, which means we can obfuscate the underlying infrastructure, whatever the transports are. Whether it is a secure private transport like MPLS or just public internet, we can commoditize the underlying transports and trust that everything is secured from prying eyes. 

I didn't think that they would put servers in the DMZ. It also protects us from hackers; we haven't had any issues with them.

As a Cisco partner/reseller, security has been a concern for many years. Cisco has a security concept that begins right when you try to connect to the network. Security is a complete system and is not just put on security devices at the perimeter or between tiers inside a data center.

iOS on routers is a mature solution, allowing easy setup of a traditional ISAKMP V1 or V2 VPN, and a very mature proprietary VPN flavor called DMVPN. DMVPN allows on-demand VPN establishment with minimal setup configuration and creates a pseudo full mesh avoiding bottlenecks. 

Cisco Technical Assistance Center works on a follow-the-sun concept and gives real 24x7 customer support, which is a great advantage when you have a service contract with them.

Previously, anyone in the organization would see any data point in the wall. They could just go and connect their machine with that data point and could access the network. But now, even if someone came and tried that, they will not be given access. Because Cisco IOS will ask for the identity. So, you will now need to give your identity. If you are not part of the organization, you will not be given access.

I'm able to securely transfer data over the internet network. With the GRE I'm able to transfer data within one site to another sites in a public way, like the internet. The communication is encrypted and is private. It gives me added privacy.