Cisco Cloud Consumption as a Service

2016: Announcement of Cloud Consumption as a Service

On January 13, 2016 the American producer of network equipment Cisco announced the service allowing the companies to monitor how employees use cloud services at work. The product received the name Cloud Consumption as a Service (CCaaS).

It automatically collects information on traffic from firewalls and gateways of network security by means of the protocol Netflow. Software fixes visits of public cloud services (Google Gmail Dropbox etc.) in corporate network. Not only services, but also specific users who come into them and also visit time are defined.

Cisco will tell the companies what cloud services employees use

On the basis of this information IT administrators can estimate risk of leakage of confidential data and prohibit access to the most dangerous clouds. Also CCaaS allows to compare cloud activity of the serving different companies.

The hidden use of IT solutions by employees is the growing problem for the companies. In the majority the organizations with the state more than 5000 people in computer infrastructure are deployed about 90 cloud services which are not authorized by IT departments, however their number can exceed often 1200, the representative of Cisco Bob Dimicco said. According to him, more than 40 similar services treat to group of the increased risk.

CCaaS is offered as a cloud service which cost is $1–2 a month counting on one employee of the company. Similar products released IBM, Cloudability, Netskope and Skyhigh earlier. At this Cisco claims that its solution profitable differs from others in providing more detailed information on use of cloud services and each their supplier separately. For example, CCaaS will tell about whether this or that cloud provider conforms to requirements to cyber security, and for this purpose the service will use information from the additional sources collecting data on reliability of the IT companies reports Reuters agency.^[1]

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