Renton D’Souza from Comstor MEA and Bassel Zaraaneh from Aligned Edges explore how Cisco’s unified security architecture is enabling enterprises to modernise and protect their digital infrastructure.
Security leaders today are navigating an increasingly complex threat landscape shaped by multicloud adoption, hybrid workforces, and the growing impact of AI-driven attacks. Cisco has responded with an integrated security strategy that empowers partners and customers alike to move away from siloed tools and embrace a unified, AI-native platform. In this interview, Renton D’Souza, Vice President at Comstor MEA, and Bassel Zaraaneh, Founder and CEO of Aligned Edges, share insights into Cisco’s competitive advantages and how their partnership delivers proactive, scalable cybersecurity outcomes for customers across critical sectors.
Interview Excerpts:
Q: Can you give us an overview of Cisco Security solutions and what makes them stand out in the market?
Renton: Cisco Security solutions provide comprehensive protection across networks, cloud environments, endpoints, and email, enabling organizations to secure everything that matters from anywhere. What sets Cisco apart is its unified, end-to-end security architecture grounded in zero trust, powered by Cisco Talos threat intelligence and AI-native technologies. This approach simplifies security operations, improves scalability, and delivers faster detection and response to sophisticated threats, helping customers reduce risk and improve ROI by consolidating vendors and closing security gaps everywhere.
Q: How does Cisco’s integrated approach benefit organisations compared to deploying point solutions from different vendors?
Renton: Cisco’s integrated portfolio shares threat intelligence across all products, enabling faster detection and response. Automation helps reduce manual intervention, and unified management simplifies policy enforcement and reporting. This approach also improves ROI by consolidating vendors and minimizing security gaps.
Q: Can you describe your company’s relationship with Cisco and your experience as a reseller of Cisco Security solutions?
Bassel Zaraaneh: As a long-standing certified Cisco partner, our organization has cultivated a deep and strategic relationship with Cisco, particularly in the cybersecurity domain. We have extensive experience delivering Cisco Security solutions across a wide spectrum of industries—including finance, healthcare, manufacturing, government, and notably, the data centre industry.
In the data centre space, where uptime, scalability, and data integrity are paramount, Cisco’s security architecture provides the robust, scalable protection needed to safeguard critical infrastructure. We’ve successfully implemented Cisco’s advanced threat protection, segmentation, and zero trust frameworks in both enterprise and colocation data centres, ensuring compliance, operational continuity, and resilience against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.
In today’s age of AI-driven cyberattacks and digital transformation, our partnership with Cisco is more vital than ever. Cisco’s unified security platform, powered by Cisco Talos threat intelligence and enhanced by AI and machine learning, enables us to deliver proactive, intelligent protection across the entire digital estate—from the core data centre to the cloud and edge.
This partnership allows us to offer end-to-end security solutions that are not only comprehensive but also adaptive, helping our clients stay ahead of evolving threats while simplifying security operations and reducing risk.
Q: What makes Cisco Security solutions stand out compared to other vendors you offer or have evaluated?
Bassel Zaraaneh: Cisco distinguishes itself through its holistic and integrated approach to cybersecurity. Unlike many point-solution vendors, Cisco offers a unified security architecture that spans the entire digital footprint—network, cloud, endpoints, applications, and email. This integration is not only seamless but also intelligent, powered by Cisco Talos, one of the world’s largest commercial threat intelligence teams.
What truly sets Cisco apart in the AI era is its use of machine learning and behavioural analytics to detect anomalies and respond to threats in real time. Cisco’s solutions are designed to reduce alert fatigue and manual intervention through automation and orchestration, which is a game-changer for IT and security teams facing resource constraints.
Moreover, Cisco’s commitment to open standards and third-party integrations ensures that organizations can protect their existing investments while building a future-ready security posture. This flexibility, combined with Cisco’s global support and innovation roadmap, makes it a standout choice in a crowded market.
Q: What are the most common security challenges your customers face today, and how do Cisco solutions address them?
Bassel Zaraaneh: In today’s digital-first world, our customers face a trifecta of challenges:
- Security complexity due to managing multiple, siloed tools from different vendors.
- Lack of visibility across hybrid and multicloud environments.
- The need for secure, seamless access for a distributed workforce.
Cisco addresses these challenges head-on with its Cisco Security Cloud, a unified, AI-powered platform that simplifies operations and enhances visibility across all environments. By consolidating security functions—such as firewall, zero trust access, secure web gateway, and XDR—into a single pane of glass, Cisco helps organizations reduce complexity and improve response times.
Advanced features like Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), AI-driven threat detection, and automated incident response ensure that users can securely access resources from any device, anywhere, without compromising performance or compliance. Cisco’s solutions are built to adapt to the dynamic threat landscape, making them ideal for organizations navigating the intersection of cybersecurity, AI, and digital transformation.
Image Credit: Westcon-Comstor & Aligned Edges
