When Cisco first launched into network security, its Self-Defending Network (SDN) strategy sounded more like a wishful marketing pitch than reality. To wit, up until this year it was received with a mixture of skepticism and optimism. But with the slow and steady acquisitions of security vendors and updates to its existing products, Cisco’s SDN strategy is coming of age quickly despite ongoing challenges to its hegemony from competitors such as Avaya and Juniper Networks. The proliferation of viruses, worms, malware, denial-of-service attacks and other threats have made security a top priority for companies connected to the Web. “SDN still has a ways to go, but if you had asked me a year ago, I would have said a long way,” says Jay Kirby, vice president of sales at Troubadour, a Houston-based solution provider. “If you’re looking at a best-of-breed [multivendor] solution, you may not have a lot of cooperation or communication when you open a support incident.” The flip side of the integration story is that while the Cisco products do work in mixed-vendor networks, they are not based on open protocols, so other security vendors are limited in their abilities to develop their products to work with SDN.