APIs and Our Dedication to Simplicity

Cisco Meraki API Launch at DevNet Create

At Cisco Meraki we are dedicated to simplifying powerful technology to free passionate people to focus on their mission. For many groups, simplicity isn’t just about an intuitive user interface or complete visibility. Simplicity is a network that responds to the business – a network that is a seamless part of the processes and initiatives running throughout an organization.

In many cases the only true path to simplicity is automation. This is why we have committed to an open Meraki platform and why we’ve invested so much into an open and extensible API framework for the Meraki cloud. We are committed to helping our users and partners rapidly and creatively develop custom solutions that are meaningful to their businesses.

Making it easy to provision a device when a new employee arrives is great… automatically provisioning that device with a welcome message is SIMPLE. An alert that indicates too many people are in the checkout line is great… automatically paging for more help at the cash registers… is SIMPLE.

This strategy is key to enabling massive automation, customization, and orchestration across various industries. To date we have over 75,000 active API users leveraging these services and 30 million daily API requests to our platform.

Developers are using these APIs in powerful and unique ways to:

• streamline the provisioning and monitoring of Meraki environments
• create rich reports and analytics
• integrate third party applications
• efficiently scale their businesses

I was lucky enough to speak at DevNet Create, where we announced that Meraki is launching full support for the OpenAPI Specification. This industry standard for describing APIs will make it even easier for anyone looking to develop on the Meraki platform… after all, developers deserve a little simplicity too.

Find resources on the Meraki Developer Hub

We have also partnered with Cisco DevNet to release a new and improved Meraki Developer Hub and Meraki Marketplace. For those looking to trial, purchase, or build with the Meraki platform, these immersive and demo-rich sites provide interactive API documentation, code libraries, sandbox environments for experimentation, as well as turnkey solutions, and many other resources for developers and customers.

We are incredibly excited about the developer adoption we’ve seen so far on Meraki APIs and cloud services, and I can’t wait to see what our partner and developer community will build next.

Cisco 2019 Organizations Gaining Business Benefits from Data Privacy Investments:

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which focused on increasing protection for EU residents’ privacy and personal data, became enforceable in May 2018. Organizations worldwide have been working steadily towards getting ready for GDPR. Within Cisco’s 2019 Data Privacy Benchmark Study, 59 percent of organizations reported meeting all or most requirements, 29 percent expect to do so within a year, and 9 percent will take more than a year. “This past year, privacy and data protection importance increased dramatically. Data is the new currency, and as the market shifts, we see organizations realizing real business benefits from their investments in protecting their data,” said Michelle Dennedy, Chief Privacy Officer, Cisco. “At Cisco, we absolutely believe in both protecting our customers and driving business success by maximizing the value of data and minimizing risk.”

Customers are increasingly concerned that the products and services they deploy provide appropriate privacy protections. Those organizations that invested in data privacy to meet GDPR experienced shorter delays due to privacy concerns in selling to existing customers: 3.4 weeks vs. 5.4 weeks for the least GDPR ready organizations. Overall the average sales delay was 3.9 weeks in selling to existing customers, down from 7.8 weeks reported a year ago. GDPR-ready organizations cited a lower incidence of data breaches, fewer records impacted in security incidents, and shorter system downtimes. They also were much less likely to have a significant financial loss from a data breach. Beyond this, 75 percent of respondents cited that they are realizing multiple broader benefits from their privacy investments which include greater agility and innovation resulting from having appropriate data controls, gaining competitive advantage, and improved operational efficiency from having data organized and catalogued.

More than 3,200 global security and privacy professionals in 18 countries across major industries responded to the Cisco survey about their organizations’ privacy practices. Key findings include:

• 87 percent of companies are experiencing delays in their sales cycle due to customers’ or prospects’ privacy concerns, up from 66 percent last year. This is likely due to the increased privacy awareness brought on by GDPR and the frequent data breaches in the news.
• Sales delays by country varied from 2.2 to 5.5 weeks, with Italy, Turkey and Russia at the lower end of the range, and Spain, Brazil and Canada at the higher end. Longer sales delays can be attributed to areas where privacy requirements are high or in transition. Delayed sales can cause revenue shortfalls related to compensation, funding, and investor relations. Delayed sales also can become lost sales if a potential customer buys from a competitor or decides not to buy at all.
• Top reasons cited for sales delays included investigating customer requests for privacy needs, translating privacy information into customer languages, educating customers about an organization’s privacy practices, or redesigning products to meet customer privacy needs.
• By country, GDPR-readiness varied from 42 percent to 75 percent. Spain, Italy, UK and France were at the top of the range, while China, Japan and Australia were on the lower end.
• Only 37 percent of GDPR-ready companies experienced a data breach costing more than $500,000, compared with 64 percent of the least GDPR-ready companies.

Preparation Guide For Cisco Certified Network Associate Cyber Ops Exams: