How to enhance security in the networking field continues to be a burning issue.

As the zero trust versus virtual private network debate continues to make airwaves, Cisco Systems Inc. looks at the other side of the coin, joining the two so that users are freed from the plumbing headache, according to Tom Gillis (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of the Security Business Group at Cisco.

“You can get some of the apps into a zero-trust framework, and others have to live in a VPN,” he said. “We put the burden on the user to know the difference. The choice of VPN versus zero-trust tunnel, that’s plumbing. One of the points of differentiation here at the show is that we’ve brought together traditional VPN and modern zero trust into one seamless end-user experience — no more plumbing.”

Gillis spoke with theCUBE industry analysts John Furrier and Dave Vellante at Cisco Live, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how Cisco is boosting network security by incorporating both VPN and zero-trust frameworks, as well as the inventiveness of the company’s Cisco Multicloud Defense.

Streamlining security: A single control-plane approach

To simplify security complexity and attain multidirectional protection across clouds, Cisco Multicloud Defense provides a single control plane in the form of software as a service. It also acts as a software or architectural gateway that makes the multicloud or supercloud concepts a reality from a security standpoint, according to Gillis.

“It’s software as a service, and it’s shipping now,” he stated. “You log into it in a cloud-delivered service. It’s true multicloud, cloud-native. It understands the language of each one of the clouds … we make it a dropdown menu for the administrator to say, ‘This app could talk to this customer database and only this customer.’”

Cisco Multicloud Defense borrows a leaf from the least privilege and zero-trust concepts. It also serves as the translation layer for enhanced security, Gillis pointed out.

“You need a translation layer that can speak the language of the public cloud in the language of the private cloud and set up that least privileged app-to-app communication,” he noted. “Two big announcements today. One to do least privileged user to app, and then the other is when an app wants to talk to another app, how we can do that across clouds.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Cisco Live:

Photo: SiliconANGLE