Mobile devices are only becoming more pervasive with each passing moment. In fact, the forecast calls for 7 billion mobile devices in use by the year 2015. From smart phones, to laptops, to tablets, your workforce is adopting and creating new ways of working and collaborating—with or without IT support—and sometimes without IT’s knowledge.

Adding more firewalls and security devices isn’t the answer. Neither is trying to forbid access from personally-owned devices or allow them free rein. The sooner IT network managers address how to securely allow any device to access the network from anywhere they need to, the more strategic the network will become as a corporate asset that improves productivity.

One comprehensive answer to this network security challenge is the combination of Cisco SecureX Architecture with Cisco AnyConnect™ Secure Mobility Client 3.0.

Take a look at this brief video to learn a bit more about Cisco AnyConnect:

Cisco SecureX Architecture delivers pervasive visibility and control with full context awareness to provide security across the network, regardless of location (headquarters, branch office), type of worker (in-house, remote), or type of connection (wired, wireless).

Cisco SecureX includes an identity services engine that helps IT to create, distribute and monitor policies based on a contextual language across the entire network. This engine acts as the “single source of truth” for attributes, including connection status, user and device identity, location, time, and endpoint health. Enforcement may include actions such as blocking access to data or devices or initiating data encryption.

Cisco AnyConnect comes in when devices that IT does not control require access to the corporate network. While IT may not control the end device, the Cisco AnyConnect client allows IT to provide a common method for network access. Cisco AnyConnect runs on most widely used operating systems and mobile devices, enabling wired or wireless 802.1x and remote SSL or IPsec VPNs. This means that IT only has to support a single common client, thus lowering operational costs and management complexity.