Managed Service

Cisco Meraki Benefits: Advantages of Cisco Meraki Wifi

22nd May 2019 | 6 min read

Cisco Meraki Benefits: Advantages of Cisco Meraki Wifi

Founded in 2006, Cisco Meraki is now a full stack vendor and has grown to become an industry leader with Google and Apple as early adopters.

An industry leader with over 230,000 customers and 3 million network devices worldwide, Cisco Meraki comprises of a comprehensive set of IT and Network Solutions that includes wireless, switches, firewalls and CCTV – leveraging the power of Cloud to provide a one of a kind experience. These are all managed through Meraki’s Cloud-based dashboard interface which Cisco Meraki is essential for any business looking to take a proactive stance in the high-end security and maximum efficiency of their businesses Wi-Fi network and the devices that rely on it.

Secure, powerful Connectivity solutions for organisations is more critical than ever. With Cloud technology becoming more advanced every day and similarly, external threats becoming more sophisticated as time passes, how do you keep your business network secure? How is that your organisation can manage users across multiple sites, each that have different needs? Lastly, how can you react quickly if things go wrong or you set up new locations with ease without compromising quality or security?

The Business Benefits of Cisco Meraki:

Easily Managed

Cisco Meraki is managed via a Cloud-based dashboard that boasts powerful multi-site management tools for both wired and wireless networking hardware. The centralised and intuitive dashboard shows your businesses networks under a single dashboard including wireless and switching. This enables for zero-touch provisioning for rapid deployment of your Cisco Meraki products. The speed of deploying Cisco Meraki products also enables network administrators to manage and identify faults remotely with minimal on-site visits required. This in turn saves time and reduces management costs. The Meraki dashboard also provides deep network insight that enables smarter working network management.

Scalability

Your business network needs to be able to scale alongside the growth of your organisation without compromising on security or performance. Cisco Meraki’s Layer 3 switches simplify expansion, reduce congestion within your business network, and provide redundancy for mission critical environments.

Cisco Meraki benefits all business sizes and is a scalable networking tool that benefits organisations from SME level requirements to enterprise businesses, Meraki Solutions grows with your business and adapts to suit your needs.

How does Cisco Meraki work?

All Cisco Meraki products are 100% Cloud-managed and have fully integrated networking and security features under a single dashboard. Cisco Meraki devices are automatically connected to the Cisco Meraki Cloud over a Secure Socket Layer (SSL), register with your network, and downloaded with their configuration.

The inbuilt analytics and intelligence enabling your Network Manager to have full visibility of the Wi-Fi network usage down to a specific user’s browsing activity. Cisco Meraki also enables admin users to make restrictions, making the bandwidth on the network easily controlled when the network becomes overloaded. Traffic can be closely monitored to quickly identify the sources that slowing down the network. Admin users can also set application specific policies and rules can be set that disallow the use of certain applications, websites permanently or for a specific time period. This flexibility promotes efficiency, enables performance monitoring and improves productivity within the workplace.

Optimum security is also one of the top features of implementing a Cisco Meraki solution. Cisco Meraki products come with Layer 7 visibility technology out of the box, which was previously available only through costly overlay appliances. This is included in Cisco Meraki switches at no additional cost.

Cisco Meraki Features

Cisco Meraki has built-in analytics and intelligence that enables a Network Manager to have full visibility of Wi-Fi network usage across the business, down to a specific user’s browsing activity. The Network Manager is then able to make restrictions.

Layer 7 visibility technology comes out of the box with Cisco Meraki. Previously, this was only available through overlay appliances which are costly but is included with Meraki products at no additional cost. All traffic to and from the management interface is sent through an encrypted and secure traffic layer. Your business can also be confident that Meraki complies to applicable data laws such as GDPR and ISO 20071.

The Cisco Meraki service has multiple global highly redundant, secure datacentres which ensures that you are never without access to the network environment. Two-factor authentication can also be enabled to add an extra layer of security to an organisations network by requiring access to an administrator’s phone, in addition to their username and password in order to access Cisco Meraki cloud services at no additional cost.

Management traffic is segregated from the regular network communication, which limits any malicious attempts to the management interface. AirMarshal is Meraki’s own intrusion prevention solution which looks for threats over the wireless network and neutralises them. AirMarshal is integrated into every Cisco Meraki Access Point proving flexible, intuitive and state of the art protection from cyber threats.

Automatic updates

Cisco Meraki products are automatically updated with the latest features and firmware.

Automatic updates come as standard with any Cisco Meraki Cloud dashboard-enabled devices. Patches, firmware updates and new features are rolled out each quarter for no additional cost, with updates also being able to be triggered manually. This means that your business is never left without the latest software and updates as well as being safe and secure.

Accessibility

As the Meraki is a Cloud-managed platform, its possible to access your network even when you’re not in the office. Not only can the Meraki Cloud Dashboard be accessed by any internet-enabled device, it is also always available which means in the event of a network outage or incident that brings any part of your network down. Another Cisco Meraki benefit is that the dashboard will always be able to serve your business.

Infinity Group are Cisco Meraki partners and an official Cisco Meraki reseller which means our staff are also Meraki certified. If you are keen to find out more please do get in touch.

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