Cisco Security System Shuts Out Third-Party Tools

alphadogg writes "Cisco has finally publicly acknowledged it won't add support for new third-party devices to its security information and event monitoring appliance, ending months of speculation about the future of its Monitoring, Analysis and Response System. Some claim it's the beginning of the end for MARS as a multi-vendor SIEM device. 'MARS customers can expect non-Cisco network device data and signature updates to continue for currently supported third-party systems, but no new third-party devices will be added,' Cisco declared in a statement, noting that 'Cisco MARS continues to focus on supporting Cisco devices for threat identification and mitigation.' Cisco's SIEM competitors this week have eagerly grabbed at the topic of Cisco MARS freezing third-party support because of a Gartner research memo published Oct. 29 in which analyst Mark Nicolett stated, 'Cisco has quietly begun informing its customers of a decision to freeze support for most non-Cisco event sources with its [MARS].'"

Comments

Thank Heavens for Competition

[chill]

Try something that works WITH you as a SECURITY appliance, as opposed to yet another sales opportunity. There is lots of competition that easily beats MARS in functionality, ease of use and comprehensive support. TriGeo, for one.

Re:Cisco is discontinuing MARS

[DarkOx]

Right, its not a big deal and anyone who has been making purchase decisions in IT long enough to know what MARS does knows you don't EVER EVER consider a Cisco solution unless:

They are giving you a sweat heart deal to run some other vendor off, so you don't care about scrapping it later.

They have been selling the product for at least two years, otherwise it has a 50pct change of just disappearing

Their offering still has the features that you are primarily interested in after they have existed in the product for two years, otherwise said product is likely to morph into something completely different in operational characteristics.