Cisco's the king of network security commanding almost a quarter share of the worldwide $6.8 billion market, according to IDC. But can it hold the fort? Tops in selling firewalls, VPNs, intrusion-prevention systems (IPS) and unified threat management (UTM) gear, Cisco nonetheless fights an ongoing battle to be recognized as best-of-breed as it jousts against Juniper and a host of pure-play security vendors, including Fortinet, McAfee and TippingPoint. Complicating matters is the fact that Cisco sells a substantial portion of its security wares not as purpose-built stand-alone gear, such as appliances, but as software in-tegrated-services modules that are installed inside Cisco routers and switches. While all customer networks have different traffic patterns, there's growing doubt about how well these firewall, VPN and IPS modules hold up trying to handle process-intensive security functions.
展开▼
