12/10/2007 -- Cisco Systems Inc. last week announced its highest-performance intrusion prevention system (IPS) sensor to date, the Cisco IPS 4270.

The IPS 4270 can scale up to 4 Gbps, which Cisco says makes it ideal for media-rich environments. Cisco also markets a 2 Gbps version, which it says is designed for traditional (i.e., transactional) network environments.

Analysts are mostly positive on Cisco's newest IPS deliverable, which they say helps bring it up to par with most its competitors, some of which have already beaten Cisco to the high-performance punch.

"With this announcement, Cisco joins other leading IPS providers in delivering multi-gigabit performance, while reminding the industry of its ability to help customers find new types of vulnerabilities and exploits and apply policy," said Charlotte Dunlap, a senior analyst for enterprise security with consultancy Current Analysis.

Dunlap added, "While Cisco does not claim the highest level of IPS performance, the company is the market leader in this space and continues to invest significant resources into its IPS technology."

There's been a flurry of multi-gigabit IPS activity over the last few months, much of it prompted by the expectation (on the part of IPS vendors, at any rate) of a coming deluge of Web 2.0 applications. Many of these vendors are IPS vendors, Dunlap conceded, but -- thanks to the recognition and penetration of its brand -- Cisco remains a significant threat.

"While Cisco competes largely with pure play security vendors having strong security features, the network infrastructure leader poses a significant threat within the market segment because it makes IPS technology available on many different product levels," Dunlap said.

Elsewhere, according to Dunlap, Cisco's announcement is proof positive that its fast-maturing Security Content Center is now able to react quickly to vulnerabilities and exploits.

"The global IPS signature team is able to react quickly to new vulnerabilities by providing signature updates within hours of newly identified threats in some cases, to help customers apply policies to better guard corporate networks," she said.

Cisco isn't doing this entirely by its lonesome, of course: It has a partnership with Trend Micro to leverage that company's security services in tandem with Cisco's network infrastructure products.

At the same time, while Cisco might have closed the gap with some of its IPS competitors, it still trails rivals TippingPoint, Check Point/NFR, Sourcefire and Enterasys, all of which tout 5- to 10-gigabit performance levels. --Stephen Swoyer