Written by Monika Gupta, Cloud Security Products team at Cisco

We've all seen the proliferation of threats across organizations of all sizes. Cyber attacks continue to become more sophisticated and severe, impacting intellectual property, finances, and organizational reputations.  Security is a concern companies face every single day. In theory, service providers can help. Security and connectivity are a natural fit, and delivering a secure connection is a logical way to help customers address a key challenge. However, traditionally it hasn't been easy to deliver security with connectivity. Complex solutions make it difficult to deliver a secure network at scale in a cost effective manner.

Times have changed. And the cloud has changed things.

With cloud-delivered security, service providers can deliver a value-added service to their customers - not just a connection, but a secure connection. An easy way to do that is by using the domain name system (DNS). DNS is the first step that happens when connecting to the internet - it maps the domain names that users request to the IP addresses that enable the connections. It is protocol and port agnostic and is used by every device - mobile, laptops, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices to name a few. We can stop thinking of complexity, customer workarounds, shipping and configuring equipment, and instead begin to think of simple, fast, and comprehensive security that can be available worldwide in minutes.

Cisco Umbrella for Service Providers (SPs) is a new cloud-delivered security service. It helps service providers address a critical need of their customers while creating a new revenue opportunity for their business.  It is easy to provision, deploy, and manage, making it simple to stop threats before they reach their customers' network and endpoints. Cisco Umbrella for SPs is designed for scale and delivered across geographically distributed data centers that provide the fastest, most reliable DNS resolution (100% availability since 2006) for 85 million active users in over 160 countries daily. With Cisco Umbrella, SPs can now offer a clean pipe service all the way to a full MSSP offer across a multi-tenant platform.

From small/midsize customers to large enterprise customers, SPs can now come to market with a diverse range of offers that are cost effective with minimum upfront investment. With Cisco Umbrella, SPs have the ability to easily grow as business scope grows.

With competitive pressure across the board, reduction in total cost of ownership requires a new approach. Cisco Umbrella cloud security is that new approach -it meets the needs of an SP business, increases the value of the offer, and drives new revenue streams while optimizing investments.

Think cloud. Think secure. Think now.