Introduction
As cybersecurity threats become more sophisticated and pervasive, organizations must rethink their security strategies to stay ahead of emerging risks. With security teams being under growing pressure to manage complex environments, prevent evolving threats, and maintain agility, Binary Global recognized the need to lead with intelligence, not just defense. In 2025, the company launched a state of art – Center of Excellence (CoE) to demonstrate and deliver real-world, AI-optimized security, Cloud & AI and Collaboration experiences to its customers. At the foundation of this initiative is Cisco Security Cloud Control (SCC), integrated with the full Cisco Security portfolio and powered by AIOps. Binary’s vision is simple: drive smarter and efficient operations, reduce manual intervention, and create scalable, future-ready security practices and services.
Challenges
Like many service providers and solution integrators, Binary Global encountered several pain points while scaling its security architecture internally and for customer engagements:
- Traditional security operations rely heavily on manual processes, siloed tools, and reactive threat management. These methods often lead to delayed responses and alert fatigue, which can compromise an organization’s security posture
- A growing number of disparate tools made it difficult to enforce consistent policies or maintain end-to-end visibility.
- Overlapping firewall and SSE policies increased overhead and risk.
- Manual tasks such as rule reviews, access provisioning, and incident triage slowed down response times.
- Teams experienced alert fatigue, leading to missed or delayed investigations.
- Security was seen as a roadblock to user experience, especially for remote workers and cloud-first apps.
- Skill set availability and retainability across multiple security architectures is a big challenge faced by the industry.
The future of network and security operations lies in integrating AI and automation to enable proactive, intelligent, and efficient threat management.
The Cisco-Driven Solution
At the core of an AI-led security posture is a unified view across all network and security environments. Cisco Security Cloud Control (SCC) ensures simplified operations, enhanced, AI-embedded protection, and reduced time spent on manual tasks. It provides centralized visibility, policy management, and consistent enforcement across on-prem, cloud and hybrid environments.
This platform acts as the brain of the network and security operation, aggregating data from multiple sources for comprehensive analysis. This cloud-based solution eliminates complexity, enhances organization’s protection against evolving threats, boost efficiency by cutting large number of repetitive security tasks, and elevate security standards while reducing intricacies.
Binary chose to build a tightly integrated architecture with Security Cloud Control for centralized management, AI-powered insights, and automation across Cisco’s security stack.
The implementation included:
- Cisco Security Cloud Control as hybrid mesh firewall platform for all policies, users, and applications
- Secure Firewall for advanced rule enforcement with policy insights
- AIOps for Policy Optimization, Best Practice Recommendations and Proactive insights to simplify operations and enhance security posture
- Secure Access (SSE) for secure and seamless ZTNA-based access to both internet and private applications
- Cisco Duo for identity validation, MFA, and behaviour-based access control
- Cisco XDR to consolidate security telemetry and drive AI-led threat detection
- ISE and Secure Client for endpoint compliance and secure user onboarding
- Secure Email to prevent phishing, data loss, and malware campaigns
- AI Assistant and built-in automation to streamline decision-making and configurations
Implementation Highlights
Binary’s Center of Excellence implemented Security Cloud Control in a phased approach, emphasizing operational intelligence and automation from day one.
1. Configuration Hygiene & Recommendations with AIOps
Using AiOps, Binary was able to:
- Identify and remove rule anomalies such as redundant or conflicting rules, expired rules with Policy Analyzer and Optimizer and thereby reduce policy volume by over 30%, leading to clearer enforcement and reduced misconfigurations
- Apply best practice recommendations to streamline policy structures improve security posture
- Feature adoption to maximize your ROI
- Software Upgrade Planner which helps in determining what version to upgrade to
2. Smarter, Unified Visibility
Binary integrated its Firewall, Secure Access, Email, XDR, and Duo environments into a single operational view through SCC. With this:
- Security teams gained real-time threat insights across all surfaces
- Correlated alerts from XDR reduced noise and improved focus on true positives
- Built-in playbooks helped automate containment, especially for endpoint incidents
3. Zero Trust Enforcement Without Complexity
With a hybrid workforce and BYOD users accessing cloud and on-prem systems, Binary utilized Duo, Secure Access, and ISE to:
- Implement ZTNA-based private and internet access
- Apply dynamic controls like geo-fencing, user behavior tracking, and device posture checks
- Leverage ThousandEyes integration for application performance insights
4. Secure Collaboration and Data Protection
Secure Email policies and DLP controls enabled Binary to:
- Prevent leakage of sensitive information via email and cloud tools
- Enforce controls over file types and browser-based actions
- Automatically restrict code or confidential uploads to public platforms
Measurable Impact
Operational Efficiency: Up to 25 hours/month saved by automating common security tasks like rule tuning, report generation, and alert triage
- Policy Clean-up: Over 35% of firewall rules consolidated or removed based on AI recommendations
- Faster Response: Reduction in mean time to detect and respond by 40%, thanks to alert prioritization and workflow automation
- Compliance Agility: Audit-ready dashboards and logs accelerated policy reviews and compliance checks
- Customer Experience: Unified access policies improved connectivity while maintaining security posture
Conclusion
The future of cybersecurity lies in harnessing AI’s capabilities to deliver proactive, intelligent, and automated security operations. Cisco’s solutions, from the unified Security Cloud Control to AI-powered insights and threat intelligence empower organizations to build resilient, adaptive security centers. By establishing a Cisco-powered Center of Excellence, organizations can lead the way in innovation, ensuring robust defense against tomorrow’s threats today.
Teams Involved
- CEO: SS Dhingra
- Chief Technology Officer: Rajender Singh Bhandari
- Senior Security Consultant: Pankaj Kumar Rai
- Alliance Head: Jai Sood
Partner Perspective
“Cisco Security Cloud Control has helped us flip the script on security operations. With AIOps at the center, we have shifted the paradigm from being reactive to proactive. Our CoE now reflects the kind of security our customers need: integrated, intelligent, and infinitely scalable.”
Rajender Singh Bhandari, Chief Technology Officer at Binary Global
“Binary Global’s “Center of Excellence” (CoE) is a strategic investment, hands-on showcase of real customer use cases built on leading Cisco security products, designed to turn vision into validated outcomes. As a Cisco Gold Partner and trusted systems integrator, our CoE accelerates customer confidence and OEM collaboration – driving faster decisions, stronger security adoption, and measurable business value.”
Amit Garg, Chief Revenue Officer at Binary Global
What the Industry Can Learn
Use AI to clean up policy sprawl
- Even well-managed environments accumulate redundant or conflicting rules over time. AIOps can clean house intelligently.
Make Zero Trust practical
- With the right identity, posture, and access layers in place, it’s possible to secure users without friction.
Integrate your telemetry
- One threat may surface across email, endpoint, and firewall. XDR and SCC together help bring the pieces together in real-time.
Automate where it counts
- From containment workflows to AI-generated policy updates, automation is key to scaling without hiring endlessly.
Show, don’t tell
- Building a CoE like Binary’s is not just for internal enablement – it’s a platform for customers to experience what future-ready security truly looks like.
