Cisco pitches square against Symantec, McAfee, and packet shaping vendors

Cisco quietly made a couple of product releases recently that pitches it square against established competitors in the field, including Symantec and McAfee. Cisco's Application Performance Assurance (APA) Network Module NME-APA-E3 2.0 adds Layer 7 packet shaping, while the latest version (6.0) of its Cisco Security Agent (CSA) adds an antivirus and data leakage prevention client. Cisco CSA security client runs on Windows, Linux, and Solaris - both servers and desktops. As for APA, Cisco claims APA can control more than 1,000 applications and report on its findings with 100-plus built-in reporting templates.

According to Cisco security expert and Cisco Subnet blogger Jamey Heary, "CSA has never been able to capture that valuable desktop and server footprint like Mcafee, Symantec, etc. have. By moving CSA simultaneously into both the hot DLP market and the capital rich AV market Cisco hopes to change that."

Read more about APA and CSA at Jamey Heary's blog. 

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