More confident with Air-Gap: Cisco reorganises portfolio for EU customers

Network equipment provider Cisco wants to meet European customers' demand for digital resilience and sovereignty with new offerings. With “Sovereign Critical Infrastructure,” the manufacturer is now announcing a customisable air-gapped portfolio for customers in Europe who have specific requirements for setting up their local, sovereign infrastructure. This will include both hardware and software solutions. The aim is to give customers more control over their infrastructure again.

Previously, the manufacturer had increasingly moved new products to the cloud and also introduced a license check via the cloud. This effectively created a “kill switch” for the customer's infrastructure in the hands of a US company. In contrast to this so-called “smart licensing” of the manufacturer, in which the components have to contact the manufacturer's cloud license portal either directly or indirectly, the new offering is intended for operation in an air-gap environment. This is intended to allay customer concerns about Cisco shutting down services remotely. At the same time, however, a subscription model for the products remains in place.

No feature parity between Cloud and Air-Gap

Customers in Europe have increasingly requested sovereign solutions, which was already a topic at this year's Cisco Live in-house exhibition in San Diego. CEO Chuck Robbins explained that customers do not want to be “at the mercy of any kind of decision.” He was probably alluding to the current political situation. Cisco names public administration, banks, and manufacturing companies as potential customers.

Cisco Sovereign Critical Infrastructure can be operated by customers or their Cisco partners as a local deployment according to their requirements and under their management on their premises. Cisco also wants to enable its customers to fulfill compliance requirements with EU and country-specific certifications and standards. Accordingly, most products are Common Criteria certified, and there is already a clear roadmap to achieve the new European Union Cybersecurity Certification (EUCC).

The sovereign portfolio is to cover all core products and the product groups for routing, switching, WLAN, security, and collaboration, and observability. However, Cisco has not yet announced a concrete list of the products on offer. When asked by iX, Cisco stated that there is no complete feature parity between cloud and air-gapped environments, as these are rolled out faster in the cloud. However, the important features would be available in the air-gapped version.

Self-managed encryption

The portfolio could be customized to meet security and compliance requirements, for example, through encryption managed by the customer themselves. This means that data sovereignty remains directly with the customer. This should also be possible in hybrid environments, which require a high degree of local control in addition to the full range of features for cloud-based services.

With the new portfolio, Cisco is responding to increased customer enquiries, which is very welcome. At the same time, however, it remains to be seen which specific products will be available and with which functions. The monetary impact for customers and patch processes is also unclear. The portfolio should already be available and can be purchased directly from partners or Cisco.

(mki)