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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even with the comprehensive set of security products Juniper and Cisco have developed, integrators are still finding holes that can be filled by innovative security companies with specialized tools.<\/p>\n
In particular, with applications like VoIP and 802.11 wireless networks, security concerns are only starting to emerge, so the reliability of protection from attacks is very much in doubt, according to several VoIP specialists.<\/p>\n
VARs say they’d like to see Cisco’s SDN platform include an integrated management tool that links all the products together, and a solution for spam, content filtering and virus control, all of which are handled by third-party products with SDN.<\/p>\n
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