Cisco has taken to calling itself the leader in network security, and the company is trying to back that up with a next-generation firewall announced today.
The Firepower Next-Generation Firewall arrives in advance of the RSA Conference, which starts on Feb. 29. This sort of kick-starts the wave of security hype that’s going to surround the RSA show, taking place in its usual haunt of San Francisco.
Because the term “next-generation firewall” is already well worn by upstarts such as Palo Alto Networks, Cisco is in the amusing position of having to distinguish its own firewall from “legacy” next-generation gear, as the company’spress release words it. In other words, Cisco says next-generation is passé and should make way for the next next generation.
The theme behind Firepower is threat defense — that is, combining Cisco’s stateful firewall with technologies for threat detection and response. Some of those technologies can be supplied by partners.
Cisco’s technology armory includes Sourcefire, acquired in 2013 for $2.7 billion; OpenDNS, acquired last fall for $635 million; and Lancope, acquired in October for $452 million.
The centerpiece of Cisco’s announcement is the Firepower 4100 series of firewalls. Cisco is also announcing the Firepower Management Center, which manages Firepower’s as well as some partners’ gear, such as Radware‘s technology for distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation.
Cisco is also announcing the Security Segmentation Service, which advises organizations on IT security and compliance issues.