The FUTURE of Information Security Engineers - Cisco Security Automation (DNA CENTER)
About this video
Filmed after Cisco Live in June, in a Cisco-sponsored video, he argues security engineers must become developers as automation and programmability reach security, not just routing and switching. The centrepiece is Cisco DNA Center, described as an SDN controller ‘on steroids’ and a single portal to design, monitor, provision and automate APs, routers and switches, now open via APIs so third-party and custom apps can integrate. For security he focuses on StealthWatch with Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA): routers and switches send metadata and flow telemetry so StealthWatch can, he says Cisco claims with high certainty, judge whether encrypted traffic contains malware without decrypting it — avoiding expensive decryption hardware, slowdowns and privacy issues. He cites an estimate in the video that by 2019, 70% of all attacks/malware will be encrypted. A show-floor demo ties it together: StealthWatch detects WannaCry-style ransomware, DNA Center surfaces it, an integration with ServiceNow automatically opens a ticket, the engineer taps quarantine on a notification, ServiceNow tells DNA Center via API, DNA Center quarantines the user and reports back — work he says took Cisco three weeks to program. His conclusion is to embrace programmability and learn Python rather than fear job loss.
Key takeaways
- Cisco’s message at Cisco Live, as he reports it, is ‘you are a developer’ — automation now applies to security, collaboration and wireless, not only routing and switching.
- DNA Center is presented as the single management and automation hub for the network, and its open APIs are what allow integrations like ServiceNow ticketing.
- StealthWatch plus ETA aims to detect malware in encrypted traffic from metadata and baselined flow behaviour, without decrypting the traffic itself.
- In the demo workflow the human does almost nothing: detection, ticket creation, quarantine and confirmation are automated once the engineer approves quarantine from a notification.
- He frames automation as removing mundane tasks so engineers can build solutions, and urges learning programmability/Python and the CCNA rather than resisting the change.
Episode details: published August 17, 2018 · 15:34 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are NetworkChuck’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
← Previous: I PASSED THE CCNA EXAM!! - ICND2 Exam Tips · Next: Network Engineers and AWS (Amazon Web Services) FEAT. Anthony Sequeira | CCNA | CCENT →
All NetworkChuck videos · NetworkChuck profile · NetworkChuck on YouTube
