In case you had been at Cisco Stay US in June—and even in case you weren’t—you heard the excellent news: the launch announcement of Cisco Id Providers Community (ISE) 3.4.
For lots of community and safety directors, listening to concerning the new capabilities of the most recent model of Cisco ISE could be a little bit of a tease—we all know that you just need to get your arms on it and see the way it’s going to strengthen your community. At present is the belief of these lengthy weeks of ready as Cisco ISE 3.4 is prepared so that you can obtain and deploy in your community.
In case you haven’t heard about what’s accessible within the newest iteration of Cisco ISE 3.4, let this be your primer. The largest takeaway is Widespread Coverage which entails fixing considered one of our clients’ greatest issues: fragmented and inconsistent insurance policies throughout disparate domains.
Widespread Coverage is designed to streamline and unify safety coverage enforcement throughout a company’s complete community. This answer permits directors to seamlessly apply constant entry and segmentation controls to all gadgets, customers, and functions. These segmentation and entry insurance policies are constructed primarily based on the exchanged info garnered from these finish gadgets.
Utilizing Cisco ISE as a central trade hub, the answer integrates community and safety domains, normalizes contextual info, and facilitates safe communication between totally different elements. This progressive method enhances zero-trust safety throughout numerous entry patterns and areas by simplifying the administration of advanced community environments. At the moment in beta, Widespread Coverage is anticipated for common launch this fall.
As a part of the Widespread Coverage answer, we re-wrote our integration with Utility Centric Infrastructure (ACIs), permitting the customers to arrange a bi-directional connection to a number of APIC Information Facilities—together with single pod and multi-pod materials—straight from Cisco ISE and begin exchanging SGT/EPG/ESG context.
Along with Widespread Coverage, the Cisco ISE 3.4 launch is jam-packed with many different options too.
Lively Listing most popular DC choice
Beginning with Cisco ISE 3.4, directors can now manually prioritize Area Controllers (DC), giving them extra management over which DC is used for authentication and authorization. Within the occasion of an Lively Listing failure, Cisco ISE will routinely swap to the subsequent DC on the listing, making certain that customers can nonetheless entry sources. As soon as the popular DC is obtainable once more, Cisco ISE will seamlessly failback, restoring the unique precedence order.
Nice information for many who hate ready! With the discharge of Cisco ISE 3.4, system restart occasions have been dramatically lowered to mere minutes, various barely relying on the precise position of every node. No extra lengthy espresso breaks between reboots.
Constructing on the pxGrid Direct framework launched in Cisco ISE 3.2, which simplified integration with Configuration Administration Database (CMDB) servers missing native pxGrid help, Cisco ISE 3.4 will convey forth a number of key enhancements:
- Sync now: In situations the place vital adjustments happen inside the CMDB, directors will not want to attend for scheduled updates. Cisco ISE 3.4 will empower admins to provoke on-demand synchronization, guaranteeing Cisco ISE entry to essentially the most up-to-date endpoint info.
- URL pusher and chronic database: Prospects will now have the pliability to straight push a JSON file containing endpoint knowledge into Cisco ISE’s persistent database. This opens new potentialities for these and not using a CMDB, as they’ll nonetheless leverage pxGrid Direct by conveniently pushing knowledge into Cisco ISE. Not like the interior endpoint database, this database might be persistent and gained’t be purged.
Retention of use settings
In earlier variations of Cisco ISE, any customizations to desk shows, like column choice, order, or width, could be reset upon leaving the web page. With Cisco ISE 3.4, the popular desk settings might be saved and retained, even when switching browsers or gadgets. No extra repetitive changes – the personalised view is right here to remain.
Localized ISE Set up
This enhancement permits directors to reinstall ISE straight from a neighborhood ISO file saved on the ISE server, considerably decreasing the set up time from the normal 5-7 hours to only 1-2 hours. This streamlined course of is especially useful in situations the place a reinstall is critical, reminiscent of system restoration or upgrades. By minimizing downtime and accelerating the set up course of, the Localized ISE Set up characteristic enhances operational effectivity, ensures faster restoration occasions, and in the end saves priceless time for IT groups. This enchancment underscores Cisco’s dedication to offering sturdy, user-friendly options that optimize the efficiency and reliability of the community safety infrastructure.
FQDN to SGT Mapping
In Cisco ISE 3.4, we’ve tackled the challenges confronted by TrustSec directors in situations with geo-distributed or cloud deployments, the place the identical Totally Certified Area Title (FQDN) would possibly resolve to totally different IP addresses relying on the DNS server. This could make it tough to persistently apply the identical SGT to all situations of the FQDN.
Cisco ISE 3.4 introduces an enhanced FQDN-to-SGT mapping characteristic. Directors can now choose a number of nodes to resolve the FQDN, making certain that each one ensuing IP addresses are precisely related to the corresponding SGT. This new functionality streamlines coverage enforcement throughout numerous community environments, no matter variations in DNS decision.
Pac-less Communication between Cisco ISE and TrustSec NADs
Cisco ISE 3.4 introduces Pac-less Communication, a simplified method to communication between Cisco ISE and TrustSec community gadgets. This innovation eliminates the necessity for directors to handle PAC recordsdata, decreasing overhead and streamlining the method. Pac-less communication requires Cisco IOS-XE 17.5.1 or later, on community gadgets, however no configuration adjustments are wanted on the Cisco ISE aspect. The community gadgets themselves will inform Cisco ISE of their supported capabilities, additional simplifying deployment and administration.
Log file administration
We have now heard from you that troubleshooting Cisco ISE beneath a heavy load could be a problem, particularly when log recordsdata refill quickly and demanding info would possibly get buried. Cisco ISE 3.4 addresses this with enhanced log administration capabilities. Now, directors have granular management, permitting them to set each most file measurement and the variety of log recordsdata to maintain per part. This implies no extra worries about lacking essential particulars throughout peak occasions.
As you’ll be able to inform there’s so much packed into the most recent model of Cisco ISE that’s going to make your job simpler. Click on right here for extra info on Cisco ISE.
We’d love to listen to what you assume. Ask a Query, Remark Under, and Keep Linked with Cisco Safety on social!
Cisco Safety Social Channels
Share:
