Cisco this week will announce its presence as a player in the intrusion-prevention system market with five appliances and software that adds IPS capabilities to Cisco switches, firewalls and routers.
The network-based IPS appliances, set for delivery next month, will range from a low-end 80M bit/sec offering to one that runs at a maximum 7G bit/sec, Cisco says. The ability to identify and block network attacks will work identically across the Cisco appliances, routers, switches and the PIX firewall. The new lineup, which will be unveiled at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, will pose an obvious threat to a growing field of competitors that includes Internet Security Systems, McAfee, Symantec, 3Com's TippingPoint Technologies, Top Layer Networks and start-ups such as V-Secure Technologies.
Concern about computer worms and automated attacks is prompting IT managers to deploy IPSs both at the Internet perimeter and inside the corporate LAN, in spite of the danger of false positives that might cause IPSs to block legitimate traffic.
Cisco, which also announced the VPN 3000 Concentrator for combined SSL- or IPSec-based tunneling, calls the security products rollout its "adaptive threat defense," says Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco's security technology group.
The design of the Cisco IPS will include the ability to generate a "risk rating of the event and asset value of the target" when an attack is identified and blocked, Ullal says. Like other IPS appliances, the Cisco line will be able to work in a passive-detection mode like an intrusion-detection system.
Ullal says Cisco's IPS is intended to function well in VoIP networks without disrupting traffic. "The IPS is going to protect voice gateways from attack," she says.
Industry analysts say Cisco's push into IPS is a reaction to growing market demand for more proactive options than that of intrusion detection.
"So far, they've only had detection capability," says Paul Stamp, an analyst with Forrester Research. "But Cisco has a good reputation in detection, so IPS shouldn't be too hard for them."
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