To allow IT to be capable of meeting the varied and often conflicting demands of users and security, we have developed Systems Manager Sentry. Sentry brings together the mass of data available in a Cisco Meraki IT infrastructure, to provide context aware automatic security. Hear more about the headline features in Sentry in the following podcast with June Odongo (Product Manager for Systems Manager) and George Bentinck (Solutions Architect).
Let’s for a minute stop to think about the importance of context. Imagine an iPhone that belongs to the VP of operations for a high street retailer. This VP of operations needs to check inventory levels on a company server to make sure they get their manufacturing orders placed on time.
One evening an iPhone accesses the server over a VPN and looks at the stock levels.
Should anyone be concerned by this? The answer is you don’t know without context. Let’s look at the same situation again.
One evening the VP’s iPhone accesses the server over a VPN and looks at the stock levels. The iPhone is no longer in Paris where the VP lives, it is in Bulgaria and the time there is 3:39AM.
With context can come automation, and with automation comes an agile, simple, and secure IT world. The IT team no longer needs to be alerted by a user that their device needs sensitive information removed due to it being lost or stolen. Dynamic policies can look at device specifics and using the context available, such as the current owner of the device and the location, it can act automatically.
In the past it was difficult to collect, store, and then find information, but today it is trivial to access data on almost anything; from the latest weather to the morning news, or your friend’s location to what restaurant to go to. The challenge now is taking this overwhelming wealth of data, and making sense of it all.
Sentry is unique in the EMM market for being a complete solution for enabling the secure dynamic network of the future. This gives the IT team time to work with the organisation on defining policies, not being tied up with configuration. Device on-boarding, settings assignment, application management, and network access, are just some IT responsibilities that can be simplified, automated, and dynamically updated with Sentry.
Cisco Meraki Systems Manager is a best in class Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution founded on Meraki’s pioneering cloud architecture. We understand the IT challenges faced by technology users in enterprises, education, or government based on our extensive experience of next generation cloud deployments.
Contact your Cisco Meraki representative today to find out how Systems Manager Sentry can provide automation to your IT world, and simplify your security. Alternatively sign up to a specialist Sentry webinar here or watch a recorded version of the webinar below.
The notion of most employees using their personal devices for work is practically a foregone conclusion. Instead of resisting this trend, responsible IT organizations see BYOD as a means to boost employee productivity and take advantage of today’s always connected lifestyle. But what happens when a company’s sensitive information gets into the wrong hands? What happens if a device goes missing or an employee leaves the company? While BYOD can be liberating, there are important security implications for every organization to address.
When employees bring their mobile devices into the workplace, they tend to use resources like email, the corporate network via WiFi or over VPN, shared documents on servers, and enterprise apps.
These uses set the stage for a key question about how corporate IT thinks about mobile security: How can you remove access to those resources without completely wiping the device or affecting personal data on the device?
Selective Wipe
With the new Systems Manager selective wipe feature, we provide the “easy button” to address this challenge. Selective Wipe removes everything previously pushed to the device through the Cisco Meraki Systems Manager dashboard, including configuration profiles, apps, and documents.
Selective wipe provides a new way to remove secure data from lost or stolen devices
A device that has been selectively wiped is still enrolled in the Systems Manager network, so location tracking and over live tools will remain functional but the corporate provisioned data and settings are removed. This is a convenient way to handle employee devices that are missing or stolen, since IT will be able to track the device if and when it reconnects to the internet.
Auto-Quarantine on Enrollment
We’ve also introduced a second capability to increase security when devices are enrolled into a Systems Manager network. With the new auto-quarantine feature, IT has the option to explicitly approve enrolled devices before they receive any configuration profiles and mobile apps.
Auto-quarantine is easily configured to enhance security in the enrollment process for all new devices.
With auto-quarantine, organizations can allow users to self-enroll into a Systems Manager Network, while maintaining strict control over network access credentials, or sensitive apps and data that would otherwise be automatically pushed to newly enrolled devices.
Administrators have one-click access to authorize newly enrolled devices or to selectively wipe data
Bring on BYOD
With these new additions Cisco Meraki Systems Manager continues to make it easy to support BYOD while providing flexibility fo varying security needs. And as always—we’re excited to bring all these feature to you 100% free! If you haven’t already tried Cisco Meraki Systems Manager, try it here and get started today.
