If you happen to had been at Cisco Stay US in June—and even if you happen to weren’t—you heard the excellent news: the discharge announcement of Cisco Identification Companies Community (ISE) 3.4.
For lots of community and safety directors, listening to concerning the new features of the most recent model of Cisco ISE generally is a little bit of a tease—we all know that you just wish to get your palms on it and see the way it’s going to strengthen your community. Immediately 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.
If you happen to haven’t heard about what’s obtainable within the newest iteration of Cisco ISE 3.4, let this be your primer. The largest takeaway is Widespread Coverage which includes fixing one in every of our prospects’ 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 resolution permits directors to seamlessly apply constant entry and segmentation controls to all units, customers, and functions. These segmentation and entry insurance policies are constructed based mostly on the exchanged info garnered from these finish units.
Utilizing Cisco ISE as a central change hub, the answer integrates community and safety domains, normalizes contextual info, and facilitates safe communication between completely different parts. This revolutionary strategy enhances zero-trust safety throughout various entry patterns and areas by simplifying the administration of complicated community environments. At the moment in beta, Widespread Coverage is anticipated for common launch this fall.
As a part of the Widespread Coverage resolution, we re-wrote our integration with Software 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—immediately 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.
Energetic 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 Energetic Listing failure, Cisco ISE will mechanically swap to the subsequent DC on the checklist, making certain that customers can nonetheless entry assets. As soon as the popular DC is offered 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 instances have been dramatically decreased 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 carry forth a number of key enhancements:
- Sync now: In eventualities the place vital adjustments happen throughout the CMDB, directors will now 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 protracted database: Clients will now have the pliability to immediately push a JSON file containing endpoint information into Cisco ISE’s persistent database. This opens new potentialities for these with out a CMDB, as they’ll nonetheless leverage pxGrid Direct by conveniently pushing information into Cisco ISE. In contrast to the interior endpoint database, this database can 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 can be saved and retained, even when switching browsers or units. No extra repetitive changes – the personalised view is right here to remain.
Localized ISE Set up
This enhancement permits directors to reinstall ISE immediately from a neighborhood ISO file saved on the ISE server, considerably decreasing the set up time from the normal 5-7 hours to simply 1-2 hours. This streamlined course of is especially useful in eventualities the place a reinstall is important, 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 instances, and finally saves useful time for IT groups. This enchancment underscores Cisco’s dedication to offering strong, 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 eventualities with geo-distributed or cloud deployments, the place the identical Totally Certified Area Title (FQDN) may resolve to completely different IP addresses relying on the DNS server. This could make it tough to persistently apply the identical SGT to all cases 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 various 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 strategy to communication between Cisco ISE and TrustSec community units. This innovation eliminates the necessity for directors to handle PAC information, decreasing overhead and streamlining the method. Pac-less communication requires Cisco IOS-XE 17.5.1 or later, on community units, however no configuration adjustments are wanted on the Cisco ISE facet. The community units 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 generally is a problem, particularly when log information refill quickly and important info may 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 information to maintain per element. This implies no extra worries about lacking essential particulars throughout peak instances.
Lua scripting
Recognizing the necessity for better customization, Cisco ISE 3.4 introduces a robust new characteristic for superior customers: Lua scripting for RADIUS attribute manipulation. With this enhancement, prospects can now execute Lua scripts immediately after processing authorization profiles, permitting them to switch or add RADIUS attributes as wanted. This flexibility empowers Cisco ISE Admins to tailor Cisco ISE to their distinctive use instances and necessities, going past the capabilities of the usual coverage engine. The Lua script gives entry to all RADIUS attributes, granting full management over the authorization course of.
As you possibly can inform there’s quite a bit 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.
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