Slashdot Mirror
Cisco Evolving Into A Security Company
ChipGuy writes "Om Malik has an opinion piece stating his opinion that Cisco Systems is slowly becoming a security company, a move which may prove problematic for traditional security vendors like Symantec. Cisco has bought its way into the market, worried about the security moves of its main rival, Juniper Networks. The company expects to make major announcements at the RSA Conference later this week. "
They are still a "networking" company and networks are becoming security battlefields.
"a move which may prove problematic for traditional security vendors like Symantec."
Which means competition and is therefore good for the user.
Apart from that, another company concerned about security is no bad thing.
And some pretty good stuff, I might add. Popular with PHBs, too. Can we say "No one ever got fired for buying [Cisco]." yet?
This is going to be their major advantage when it comes to security, even down to the linksys brand for home users.
Good, proactive hardware provides real security. Bloaty, reactive software (Norton AV) goes down with the sinking ship (an exploding windows box).
Software, and security software has its purpose and can have value, but Cisco's advantage doesn't lie there.
~Rebecca
...when you ask them why you must use plaintext telnet to maintain routers you bought as recently as a year or two ago...they mumble around and then say "have you heard of our self defending networks?"
Then there are other little things, like the limited authentication options unless you spend bookoo bucks...or the very limited logging/audit functions...or the way PIX assumes all 'outgoing' connections are valid (the very concept of 'outgoing' is a SOHO concept and not an enterprise firewalling concept)...ugh...don't get me started on the pix....
The more you look at Cisco products hands-on, it just highlight what Cisco does: Make networking products.
Granted, they make networking products *very* well and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them over anyone else. But myself and just about every security pro I know sees them as networking devices with security kind of bolted on...NOT security devices. It's more like some IOS networking programmers tried to figure out what security folks need instead of researching what's actually going on out there or getting some real world infosec experience.
If they are becoming a security company, great. But they've said this for awhile now and it hasn't changed the fact that the focus is networking networking networking.