IBM’s technology services group is adding new support options for Cisco’s Secure Firewall platform and Hybrid Mesh Firewall.
IBM Technology Lifecycle Services has added Cisco’s firewall technology to its enterprise menu, expanding the range of technical services TLS offers for virtual and physical firewalls.
IBM TLS will service Cisco’s Secure Firewall platform which is a core part of its Hybrid Mesh Firewall system. The Cisco Secure Firewall handles deep packet inspection, intrusion prevention, malware and threat detection and zero-trust segmentation. Cisco’s Hybrid Mesh Firewall technology features a distributed security fabric and zero-trust security framework integrated into the network for segmentation, AI application protection and advanced threat protection across diverse environments.
Most recently, Cisco added a Mesh Policy Engine that lets customers define a single intent-based policy that can be enforced across Cisco and third-party firewalls. The policy engine is implemented in Cisco’s Security Cloud Control management platform.
With the expanded Cisco partnership, IBM TLS can now support the lifecycle of these Cisco firewalls, whether physical, cloud or virtual, by planning, designing, purchasing, installing, de-installing, and supporting them, helping clients to optimize their core or AI infrastructure, according to Atul Dhall, vice president of product management and global solution design for TLS.
“As organizations migrate workloads to the cloud, virtual firewalls can provide scalable and flexible protection, in addition to integrating seamlessly with cloud-native tools, offering enhanced visibility, and helping to simplify management across complex hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructures,” Dhall wrote in a blog about the news. “By emphasizing virtual firewall capabilities, enterprises can fortify their cybersecurity defenses and address the risk of breaches in an evolving threat landscape.”
This is not the first time IBM’s TLS group has worked with Cisco. In 2024, TLS added support for Cisco’s software-defined networking and SD-WAN packages and rolled out the IBM Network Health Check for Cisco networking service. That service offering promised to optimize infrastructure, reduce the time spent on hardware support, and provide insight into what needs attention in the network infrastructure.
In addition to its Cisco partnership, TLS partners with Juniper, F5, Fortinet, Checkpoint, and Palo Alto. TLS competes with a variety of vendors in the service arena, including HPE and Cognizant and others.
