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Cisco Meraki presents numerous advantages over competitors in an integrated framework.
Robust Security – Meraki hardware provides some of the strongest security features available anywhere both natively and through the use of numerous API integrations. Let’s examine a few here.
AMP – Advanced Malware Protection – Backed by Talos Meraki’s AMP inspects file downloads allowing you to benefit from crowd sourced.
Cisco Talos, the World’s largest private Cybersecurity research team, provides the engine for Cisco’s security intelligence. Talos researches, identifies, analyzes and provides guidance for cybersecurity threats. Talos’s expertise is used in depth within the Meraki MX Security Appliance as well as across Cisco’s entire suite of security hardware and software solutions. By leveraging Cisco and Meraki hardware around the glove, threat information is learned early and remediation applied to other customers. Cisco “sees” over half of all global internet traffic.
IPS – Intrusion Prevention with integrated Snort engine containing Talos Intelligence customization. The Snort engine is World’s most deployed Intrusion Prevention software, combine the Snort engine with custom Talos inspections and you’ve got class leading layer 7 inspection running on your network
VPN – The Cisco Meraki MX security appliance is able to terminate multiple types of VPN (Virtual Private Networks).
IPSec site to site tunnels from third parties terminate with no problem as IPSec standards are supported. This enables you to use Meraki to connect to other vendor’s hardware within your Wide Area Network.
Auto VPN site to site tunnels enable relatively simple dynamic VPN tunnel support with other Meraki MX appliances. For reliable fast tunnel terminations, the Meraki site to site VPN design will keep your WAN up and running. Dynamic functionality means that sites in larger networks are able to connect to other sites dynamically and without static configuration of every endpoint. The cloud based controller enables this to work by automatically being the source of knowledge of all locations and the individual subnets within them.
HTTPS/TCP Port 443 VPN with Cisco Anyconnect client (also known as Cisco Secure VPN Client) support means that you can use Cisco Anyconnect software for clients to access the businesses network via VPN over port 443.
The Cisco Anyconnect client also support third party client VPN tunnels built over IPSec. This allows you to use the same client for varying hardware vendors.
Umbrella DNS Security integration provides strong security at the first step of an attack. Meraki MX security appliances and MR wireless access points can run Umbrella onboard allowing you to get that DNS inspection quickly implemented and as close to your user’s PC as possible. For devices without roaming clients, the network will intercept those DNS requests and make sure that they’ve been checked for safety. Before any traffic is transferred with a malicious device, DNS can block that access. We call it the first layer of protection. Umbrella is known to stop 90% of phishing attacks and C&C (Command and Control) traffic on hosts that are already compromised. Being alerted to this can protect your organization from a pending phishing attack.
Full featured firewall. With support for objects and object groups for devices and protocols, the Meraki MX firewall is a full featured firewall covering filtering of multiple layers of the OSI model. With the advanced security license, traffic can be filtered by geolocation (country), specific applications or categories of applications can be quickly blocked, This equates to another highly effective layer to further reduce residual threats in your environment. Administrators can also configure access lists for the SD-WAN VPN tunnels and as group policies capable of being granularly applied to individual hosts, even those within the subnet of other hosts with different group policies.
In addition to the Meraki MX security appliance firewall capabilities, the Meraki MR wireless access points have their own integrated firewall with multi-layer filtering capabilities and Cisco Umbrella integration, right on the AP. This provides a much improved security posture even at installations that don’t have a proper security appliance. A NAT’d IP address pool can be configured directly on the access point in order provide the additional security features of NAT.
Management integration with Cisco cloud manager. Using Cisco’s cloud manager software your Meraki MX security appliances can be managed along with Cisco Firepower firewalls and other Cisco security solutions, allowing single pane managing multiple different devices. This allows convenience for those customers that may have a Firepower firewall in the Datacenter and Meraki devices for the SD-WAN.
Meraki can scale. With Global installations populated by thousands of remote networks, Meraki can scale you the Wide Area Network. Many large scale deployments prove that Merak can scale beyond reasonable expections while maintaining reliability and cross site connectivity, especially for a mid-size WAN.
Detailed analytics at your fingertips. The Meraki dashboard provides the ability to obtain very detailed data on each remote network. Be it through analytics, the security center, real time packet captures, real time logging and various other features, everything is there to successfully troubleshoot network layer issues quickly and effectively.
Value and cost effectiveness. With so many features and security layers already embedded into the fabric, Meraki hardware demonstrates a strong value proposition for your business network. Many functions requiring various other solutions are tightly integrated into the platform already.
Reliability
Compliance. Meraki can be used to meet a number of compliance requirements. The Meraki dashboard includes the feature of running PCI DSS specific reports. While PCI may not apply to all customers, the framework overlaps with many other frameworks and checks, thereby allowing it to be a useful function for most customers.
SD-WAN – Software Defined Wide Area Networks have overtaken the traditional WAN. They offer the convenient topological flexibility of VPN tunnels with the great price point of Internet Service Providers. Depending on the technology and vendor, they can be difficult to manage though. Meraki is a pioneer in this space and is one of the longest players in the business. The central cloud based controller model went mainstream by Meraki.
Cisco Meraki SD-WAN functionality on the MX Security Appliance allows fast deployment and configuration by allowing configuration tasks to be handled remotely.
“When we installed our Meraki access points, our wireless network issues disappeared. It just works. It’s been years now.” Jeff S.