Secure Device Connector

The Secure Device Connector (SDC) is an intelligent proxy that allows your Cisco devices to communicate with Security Cloud Control. When onboarding a device that is not directly reachable over the internet to Security Cloud Control using device credentials, you can deploy an SDC in your network to proxy communications between the devices and Security Cloud Control. Alternatively, if you prefer, you can enable a device to receive direct communications through its outside interface from Security Cloud Control. Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA), Meraki MXs, Secure Firewall Threat Defense devices, and Secure Firewall Management Center devices, generic SSH and IOS devices, can all be onboarded to Security Cloud Control using an SDC.

The SDC monitors Security Cloud Control for commands that need to be executed on your managed devices, and messages that need to be sent to your managed devices. The SDC executes the commands on behalf of Security Cloud Control, sends messages to Security Cloud Control on behalf of the managed devices, and returns replies from the managed devices to Security Cloud Control.

The SDC uses secure communication messages signed and encrypted using AES-128-GCM over HTTPS (TLS 1.3) to communicate with Security Cloud Control. All credentials for onboarded devices and services are encrypted directly from the browser to the SDC as well as encrypted at rest using AES-128-GCM. Only the SDC has access to the device credentials. No other Security Cloud Control service has access to the credentials. See Connect Security Cloud Control to your Managed Devices for information explaining how to allow communication between an SDC and Security Cloud Control.

The SDC can be installed on any Ubuntu instance. For convenience, we provide an OVA for a hardened Ubuntu 22 instance which includes the SDC CLI pre-installed. The CLI helps you configure your VM, install all required system packages, and bootstrap the SDC as a Docker container on the host. Alternatively, you can roll your own Ubuntu instance (versions 20 through 24 are currently tested) and download the CLI separately.

Each Security Cloud Control tenant can have an unlimited number of SDCs. These SDCs are not shared between tenants, they are dedicated to a single tenant. The number of devices a single SDC can manage depends on the features implemented on those devices and the size of their configuration files. For the purposes of planning your deployment, however, expect one SDC to support approximately 500 devices.

Deploying more than one SDC for your tenant also provides these benefits:

  • You can manage more devices with your Security Cloud Control tenant without experiencing performance degradation.

  • You can deploy an SDC to an isolated network segment within your network and still manage the devices in that segment with the same Security Cloud Control tenant. Without multiple SDCs, you would need to manage the devices in those isolated network segments with different Security Cloud Control tenants.

Multiple SDCs can run on a single host, follow the bootstrap procedure for each SDC you want to run. The initial SDC on your tenant incorporates the name of your tenant and the number 1 and is displayed on the Secure Connectors tab in the Services page of Security Cloud Control. Each additional SDC is numbered in order.

For more information, see Deploy a Secure Device Connector Using Security Cloud Control's VM Image and Deploy a Secure Device Connector On Your VM.