Cisco ventures deeper into security

The paltry sales have equipment vendors looking for creative ways to generate revenue, just like the service providers they are selling to. Today, Cisco Systems revealed that it has beefed up its security services offered on its Catalyst 6500 series of multilayer switches. Cisco is targeting campuses, WANs and MANs for the deployment.

The new capabilities make security end-to-end for those environments as well as transparent. The new modules are the Firewall Services, IPSec VPN, Secure Sockets Layers Services and Network Analysis.

“We are seeing some implementations in Internet data centers,” a Cisco spokesman said, but the devices will primarily be going into high-end enterprises, campus, WAN or MAN environments.

“This was our plan with the 6500 series,” the spokesman said. “To introduce service modules for it like security services,” he said.

The idea behind the new modules is to allow users to implement the security services without the need to manage a separate system. That way, customers will be able to deploy the 6500 as a dedicated security platform or consider security like another network service, according to the spokesman.

The security services module uses the same technology as the Cisco VPN and PIX Firewall products. That is supposed to help reduce confusion because existing customers may already be familiar with those products.