IBM and Cisco are joining forces to help customers improve their cybersecurity efforts, the pair announced on Wednesday. The two companies will collaborate across certain products and services, sharing threat intelligence as well, a press release said.

As part of the partnership, Cisco security solutions will integrate with IBM’s QRadar security intelligence platform to broaden protection across the enterprise. According to the release, this could boost security across endpoints, networks, and the cloud.

Essentially, this part of the collaboration means that Cisco will build applications on the QRadar platform. There are two apps in the works, both focused on threat response, and they will be available on the IBM Security App Exchange, the release said. Also, Cisco’s Threat Grid will get a boost from IBM’s Resilient Incident Response Platform (IRP) to give users better insights into threats and speed their response time.

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IBM will also now support Cisco in its Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) offerings, the release said. For starters, a joint offering will help enhance security in public cloud services, the release noted.

One of the first offerings is designed for the growing hybrid cloud market. As enterprise customers migrate security infrastructure to public and private cloud providers, IBM Security will provide Managed Security Services in support of Cisco security platforms in leading public cloud services.

Additionally, the IBM X-Force threat intelligence team and Cisco’s Talos threat intelligence group will work together on new research and established best practices. Earlier, the two teams had collaborated to provide intelligence on the WannaCry ransomware attacks, the release said.

As part of the announcement, Cisco pointed to the results of a survey it performed with 3,000 chief security officers. The survey found that 65% of businesses are using somewhere between six and 50 security products, creating complexity that can make the work of security professionals even harder. Part of the partnership, the release said, is to ease the complexity and make it easier for businesses to find threats and build automated responses.

“In cybersecurity, taking a data-driven approach is the only way to stay ahead of the threats impacting your business,” Bill Heinrich, chief information security director of BNSF Railway, said in the release. “Cisco and IBM working together greatly increases our team’s ability to focus on stopping threats versus making disconnected systems work with each other.”

The 3 big takeaways for TechRepublic readers

  1. To boost cybersecurity efforts for their customers, IBM and Cisco are joining forces to better equip them to detect and mitigate threats.
  2. In the beginning, Cisco will build applications on IBM’s QRadar platform to help with threat detection.
  3. IBM will act as a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) for Cisco, and the two companies will also join forces on the threat intelligence side of things, too.