What are you waiting for?

For years, Cisco partners have been at the forefront, advising our mutual customers on everything networking by leveraging Cisco's broad portfolio of networking products. But now the opportunity is here for you to grow your business by also selling Cisco security - and here are four key reasons why.

1. Take advantage of one end-to-end security portfolio

Every day, Cisco security protects 100% of the Fortune 100. That's right, 100%. Over the past 15 years, Cisco has built one of the broadest security portfolios on the market. Today, more than 300,000 customers trust Cisco with their security.  And, by the way, our security solutions are not just for ENT (enterprise networking) customers.  Our fastest growing segment of security customers are SMBs, as more and more of them undergo digital transformation and move their applications to the cloud.

Why is Cisco bringing an end-to-end security portfolio to market important in helping you grow your business?

According to one survey, the average enterprise utilizes 75 disparate security tools from different vendors. That's 75 different point tools for your customers to navigate, which can slow down response times during possible attacks.

This is why 79% of CISOs say it's challenging to manage security alerts from multiple vendor products. And why according to Gartner, 75% of organizations are pursuing security vendor consolidation.  With Cisco's broad security portfolio, Cisco partners can greatly reduce their number of security vendors.

In addition, security tools sourced from multiple vendors likely weren't designed to work together as one unified shield when executing security management process workflows. As a result, your customers end up with a fragmented security architecture. Every tool that does not natively integrate with an existing end-to-end security architecture creates siloed visibility and complexity. This leads to higher threat dwell times due to security workflow gaps, putting your customers at risk of delayed responses, regulatory fines, and unhappy customers.

When your customer deploys Cisco security, they gain an arsenal of natively integrated tools designed to work together.  In addition, all Cisco security products use the Cisco Talos Intelligence Group. Given 80% of the world's internet traffic flows through Cisco networking, Talos enjoys a strategic advantage with access to this data: the ability to identify security threats more quickly and accurately.

2. Reduce operational complexity

Managing security tools from multiple vendors also adds operational complexity to an already intricate technology landscape. Perhaps your customer is burdened by supporting a variety of security tools, likely all with inconsistent integrations and incompatibilities. This is happening during a time when IT - with its limited resources - is being asked to do more with less budget. This increases the risk of missed security patches and maintenance, potentially creating vulnerabilities in your customers' security infrastructure.

Customers lean on Cisco partners to help reduce complexity. You're already their trusted advisor and managed services provider reducing complexity in networking, so why not also deliver value helping to simplify their security tools landscape with Cisco's natively integrated, end-to-end security portfolio? And you'll grow your business with recurring software revenue at the same time.

3. Simplify procurement, benefit from incentives

Deploying security tools from a wide variety of vendors can also translate into complexity when it comes to procurement. All those licenses must first be purchased and then managed. And if there is a security breach, the last thing your customer wants is to get bogged down in a long procurement cycle to remediate the breach with the right security software.

As a Cisco partner, you can leverage the Cisco Enterprise Agreement 3.0 (EA3.0) buying program to help accelerate the procurement process. The Cisco EA3.0 provides a simplified and consistent purchasing experience across the entire Cisco Enterprise software portfolio, including Cisco's security portfolio, under a single agreement.

Let's say your customer gets hacked, and the CISO needs the vulnerability plugged immediately. With the EA3.0 partial commit capability, your customer can quickly test and deploy Cisco security software focused on the breach and then expand the software across the enterprise later.

And the opportunity only gets better. Not only does selling Cisco's security portfolio help to grow your business by addressing customers' high-priority concerns, but you also get access to financial incentives provided by Cisco in the form of discounts, additional backend rebates, and lifecycle incentives.

4. Train to become a security selling rockstar

Everyone knows selling security is not the same as selling networking. To become a security selling rockstar, Cisco offers the Fire Jumper Academy, which is a partner training program for security sales and engineering that covers security selling basics and Cisco's security portfolio.

Research shows that Fire Jumpers achieve up to 5x higher security bookings. A trained Fire Jumper can deliver the Cisco Security story, understands the Cisco Security Reference Architecture, has deep knowledge of the Cisco Secure portfolio for the chosen competency, and can explain key Cisco security portfolio capabilities, integration aspects, and differentiators.

Grow your business while helping secure your customers

As a Cisco partner already selling networking, you have a great opportunity to expand your business selling Cisco's broad security portfolio. Improve your customers' security while reducing complexity. Take advantage of the Fire Jumper Academy,  financial incentives and promotions, including Connect and Protect and  the SMB 5% Off for the First Half Promo, where new and existing Cisco Meraki and Webex SMB customers receive an additional discount of up to 5% on Cisco Secure Access by Duo and Cisco Secure Umbrella as well as select Cisco cameras and headsets.

So, what are you waiting for? Now is the time to take a serious look at selling Cisco's security portfolio.

You can learn more here.

Cisco Partners check out how you can grab your share
of the Cisco Security opportunity

How about you? I would like to hear your thoughts.  How many point security tools are your customers deploying today? And how can Cisco support you in building your security business?  Post a comment below.

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