Cisco has announced new enhancements to its Secure Application, now offering data security and cloud security capabilities - standalone features of its Cisco Observability Platform. The enhancements are aimed at helping organisations to secure their cloud-native applications and ensure the safety of sensitive data at scale. The evolution of Cisco's application comes amid rising data breaches, of which 74% are the result of human actions such as privilege misuse. These breaches carry a hefty cost; with estimates stating that the global average cost for a data breach is approximately $4.45 million, a cost which has risen by about 15% over the past three years.

The Secure Application supports two modules: the first is the new Data Security module, while the second is the Cloud Security module. These modules are purpose-built to offer organisations a higher degree of flexibility and choice to secure their data and cloud native applications either separately or as part of an all-in-one offering.

Ronak Desai, the Senior Vice President and General Manager for Cisco AppDynamics, highlighted that many firms face complex security challenges, with continuous threats emerging to exploit sensitive data. These risks necessitate an increased level of protection and compliance with data handling regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. He stated, "As the amount of data created and used grows exponentially, the need to ensure that it's secure is more important than ever." However, Desai asserts, traditional solutions were insufficient due to their lack of shared context needed to assess risks quickly and align respective teams based on potential business impact.

With its latest offering, Cisco aims to address these concerns. The Secure Application on the Observability Platform enables teams adopting a devsecops framework to streamline the security of their applications. In contrast to the past requirement of coupling the Secure Application with a cloud-native application performance monitoring from Cisco Cloud Observability, teams can now secure their cloud-native applications and protect sensitive data on a larger scale without additional commitments.

The new Data Security Module aids teams in regaining control and securing their sensitive data proactively while ensuring its compliance with the respective regulatory standards. It gives protection against both internal and external threats through continuous monitoring and uses advanced AI technologies to provide deep data visibility. The Module helps to unlock such visibility by discovering and classifying sensitive data on a per-scale bases and also saves time and effort by avoiding manual tasks and ensuring the compliant nature of data with the latest regulatory standards.

Cisco's Cloud Security Module is also a part of the offering, helping companies identify real-time vulnerability issues as well as offering business risk observability for their cloud-native applications. The Module assists teams in knowing where threats and how to address them, helping to triage the threats that carry the most business impact with real-time guidance and actions.