Tech giants Cisco and IBM – both of which have a major presence in the Triangle – are joining forces to help businesses fight the growing threat of cybercrime.

The partnership holds promise, notes SecurityIntelligence in a blog headlined: “Cisco and IBM Raise Cybersecurity to the Power of Two.”

“Great struggles throughout history, regardless of their size, were won by alliances — not individual entities. Now, IBM and Cisco are joining forces to present a newly fortified front in the war on cybercrime,” the website for security pros says. “The aim is to fight this criminal collaborative with a powerful arsenal of data, analytics and free-flowing information sharing.”

In the wake of the global WannaCry ransomware attack and with research indicating cybercrime has become an annual multi-trillion-dollar threat, Cisco and IBM believe that together they can offer some remedies as well as preventive medicine.

The firms already collaborated recently, sharing “threat intelligence” during the WannaCry attac, coordinating responses and trading insights about how the malware was spreading. That coordination is continuing, they noted.

The companies announced a partnership early Wednesday, saying their security experts “will work closely together across products, services and threat intelligence for the benefit of customers.” They plan to offer solutions across cloud environments as well as corporate networks.

Initially, Cisco says it will create new apps designed to help security teams “understand and respond” to what are called “advanced threats” that will run on IBM QRadar security analytics

IBM also will add Cisco Threat Grid to its IBM Resilient Incident Response Platform (IRP).

How can a partnership help?

“One of the core issues impacting security teams is the proliferation of security tools that do not communicate or integrate,” the companies explained.

“A recent Cisco survey of 3,000 chief security officers found that 65 percent of their organizations use between six and 50 different security products. Managing such complexity is challenging over-stretched security teams and can lead to potential gaps in security. The Cisco and IBM Security relationship is focused on helping organizations reduce the time required to detect and mitigate threats, offering organizations integrated tools to help them automate a threat response with greater speed and accuracy.”

IBM’s Security group and Cisco’s security solutions plan to integrate IBM’s QRadar and Cisco Managed Security Service Provider, or MSSP, products.

Both firms also have well-known security groups focusing on research that are known as IBM X-Force and Cisco Talos. These teams also will cooperate on “threat intelligence research and coordinating on major cybersecurity incidents,” the firms declared in the announcement.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

  • VIDEO: Watch a video demo from Cisco Talos at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpFe_h55Vtw

“Cybercrime is expected to cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021. This is why IBM has been a proponent of open collaboration and threat sharing in cybersecurity to change the economics for criminals,” said Marc van Zadelhoff, general manager of IBM Security. “With Cisco joining our immune system of defense, joint customers will greatly expand their ability to enhance their use of cognitive technologies like IBM Watson for Cyber Security. Also, having our IBM X-Force and Cisco Talos teams collaborating is a tremendous advantage for the good guys in the fight against cybercrime.”

Added David Ulevitch, general manager of Cisco Security: “Cisco’s architectural approach to security allows organizations to see a threat once, and stop it everywhere. By combining Cisco’s comprehensive security portfolio with IBM Security’s operations and response platform, Cisco and IBM bring best-of-breed products and solutions across the network, endpoint and cloud, paired with advanced analytics and orchestration capabilities.”

Read more at:

https://securityintelligence.com/cisco-and-ibm-raise-cybersecurity-to-the-power-of-two/

And:

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cisco-and-ibm-join-forces-to-tackle-cybercrime-300465945.html