The Security Strategy from Cisco has become vague and ill defined. The rumoured death of CS-MARS and EOL of Cisco Security Agent show a change in focus away from end point protection to network protection. And the fact that Cisco still doesn’t have an application proxy (other than IronPort which is for web and email only, and still looks like an independent company suggesting that Cisco executives have moved into the top jobs yet) means that their edge / network strategy has some very big holes in it.
What about VPN ? First a push into SSL VPN, then a backflip to support IPSec again. The ASA stateful firewall is same product from five years ago except for minor tinkering. IDS systems have the same problem, minor tinkering and lack of a good management platform (no, Cisco Security Manager is NOT a good platform for managing IDS).
Cisco Security Manager won’t get the LONG overdue updates for another six months, and the important new features until late next year.
I guess all the R&D money got spent on developing Android tablets and Flip cameras. Oh and Telepresence, that’s not going to so well for HP or Cisco either.
Cisco Security Strategy.(Click for a full size image)
Other posts in the series
- Poster: Manager, Engineer, Architect, ITIL Consultant
- Poster: Keep Calm, Do Networks Everywhere
- Poster: Cloud Price Negotiations
- Poster: Cloud Kittens
- Poster: The Eight Levels of Vendor Acceptance
- Poster - Cisco VPN Client Licensing
- Poster: Servers, Tablets. Just Desktops and Printers to Go.
- Cisco and their Security Strategy (This post)
- Poster - Reassuringly Expensive
- Cisco Borderless Networks Motivational Marketing Poster
