Cisco Mobility Express and Cisco Umbrella – Security Simplified!

We’ve had a few busy months with our Cisco Mobility Express solution. How busy? Read Part One and Part Two of my blog series to look at all the recent Mobility Express enhancements. Following in this trend of new innovations, I am excited to share another key enhancement to the Mobility Express solution: Cisco Umbrella integration with Mobility Express via the latest AireOS 8.8.111.0 release.

With today’s digital consumers, providing Wi-Fi in your business is a necessity rather than simply a luxury. On top of that there is increasing complexity caused by the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, wearables and IoT end points that are beyond IT’s direct control. According to Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI), 49% of global traffic in 2020 will be Wi-Fi based. With this explosive Wi-Fi growth in the network, providing a safe and secure connection is of paramount importance. Threats continue to increase in sophistication and have reached exponential levels, increasing in speed with every passing year.

So how do you secure your wireless network if you’re a small to medium-sized organization with a lean or nonexistent IT department? How will you keep pace with your competitors while successfully deploying, managing, and securing your network?

Enter Mobility Express and Umbrella.

Limited budget? No problem. IT team of one? That’s okay too. With these integrated solutions, it’s easier than ever to quickly deploy and secure an on-premise wireless network. Mobility Express offers industry-leading wireless LAN technology with a built-in virtual controller, and Umbrella provides the first line of defense against threats on the internet wherever users go. And you don’t have to sacrifice enterprise-class performance and reliability.

Umbrella is a cloud-delivered security platform that protects against threats like malware, ransomware, and phishing. With Umbrella, you gain visibility and enforcement at the DNS layer, so you can block requests to malicious domains and IPs before a connection is ever made. The Umbrella integration across the Cisco wireless LAN controller (WLC) portfolio – including Mobility Express, WLC 3504, 5520 and 8540 – provides comprehensive security coverage that is simple to deploy and manage.

Deploy and Protect in Minutes
You can quickly and easily enable Umbrella policies per SSID in three easy and intuitive steps from the Cisco Mobility Express WebUI itself. The ability to map granular policies on a per-SSID basis allows the network to evolve rapidly to your changing business needs. All of this added protection is enforced without any additional latency, so the end user experience is not impacted.

Step1: Enable Umbrella and enter the Umbrella API Token

Step2: Create profile and register the profile with Umbrella

Step3: Apply the profile to the WLAN

Licensing & ordering Umbrella with Mobility Express

With AireOS 8.8.111.0 release, this feature is available to all customers and there is no additional license on Mobility Express to enable this feature. However, customers who wish to use Umbrella with Mobility Express will need an Umbrella license and account.

With the amount of Mobility Express innovations coming from Cisco, make sure to bookmark this blog page so that you’re always up-to-date.

For more information, visit Mobility Express. If you’re interested in seeing Umbrella in action, sign up for a free trial today.