Picture this – you are a network administrator for an enterprise that relies on a Cisco network. There are multiple challenges associated with complex asset management, wherein you have to keep track of Cisco devices across multiple locations, each with different configurations, lifecycles, and software versions.
Authored by Ali McKeand, Chief Technologist – Innovation and Omkar Patwardhan, Content Marketing Manager
You also have to monitor software vulnerabilities and respond to alerts, many of which can be misleading. Any budget constraints in your organisation limit your options for better tools or additional resources. Additionally, lack of operational insights into your network health can lead to inefficiency, missed opportunities, and increased risks.
This is where Network Intelligence, a unique network monitoring and health tool from CAE Labs, was designed to bring more visibility and insights into your Cisco network.
What is Network Intelligence?
At CAE, we understand the importance of quality data when deriving the next best step, whether it's asset discovery or strategy and transformation. This is why we developed Network Intelligence to offer actionable insights, provide more visibility, and support our customers to make better-informed decisions across their Cisco technology.
The CAE Labs-powered Network Intelligence is our Cisco API-integrated platform that was developed from the ground up. It offers detailed insights into the full lifecycle of your network, further enabling organisations to be proactive and overcome complexities as well as optimise the performance and security of their Cisco and Meraki infrastructures.
Here are some examples of how this unique solution can help you –
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Streamlined asset management & real-time inventory tracking
Network Intelligence can automatically identify, classify, as well as monitor all Cisco network devices and their minor serviceable parts, regardless of their location or quantity. This can allow a network administrator to have a granular and up-to-date view of all network assets. This further reduces the manual effort and errors associated with maintaining the network inventory in a traditional static way, such as a CMDB.
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Automated software threat monitoring
The CAE Labs Network Intelligence solution can continuously check Cisco network devices for potential software vulnerabilities and security threats. This is achieved by using data sourcing directly from Cisco advisories. A network administrator can then review timely and relevant alerts about the security status of the network devices while gaining direct links to recommendations on patches to apply or configuration changes to address the vulnerabilities and prevent potential attacks.
- Improved incident response and issue resolution
Network Intelligence can correlate, prioritise, exclude, and filter the alerts generated across various network devices through the use of Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) categorisation. This allows a network administrator to focus on only the critical and urgent issues, identify the root cause and come up with possible solutions. Our unique solution reduces the noise and clutter of duplicate or irrelevant alerts and eliminates the time & effort required to address the incidents across your Cisco network.
- Actionable insights for smarter decisions & budget management
By leveraging data visualisation and actionable data, the CAE Labs-powered Network Intelligence solution can deliver valuable insights such as clearly identifying hardware and software lifecycle risk. This allows any organisation to make smart decisions on where to allocate future project resources, plan budgets accordingly, and build out a future strategy to execute against. CAE’s team of consultative Solution Architects utilise all of this refined data to create an easy-to-absorb 5-Year Forward View report that supports your digital transformation journey.
As a secure and reliable way to protect your network, our unique solution offers security and field notice alerts that can help you mitigate current and future risks, such as a potential cyber breach or extended network downtime. Only you understand the needs and objectives of your organisation. This combined with the expertise and experience of our team, Network Intelligence will undoubtedly lead to smarter decisions.
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