3/7/2005 -- By now, even the most confirmed of Luddites has probably heard that Cisco announced a major product security blitz last month. But what will Cisco’s security push mean for competitors and customers alike?

If nothing else, say analysts, the improvements should at least bring Cisco to feature parity with its competitors in several different markets.

“Cisco has been competitively behind in both markets where these products compete,” writes Joel Conover, a principal analyst for enterprise infrastructure with Current Analysis Inc. “The introduction of Cisco’s application firewalling technology in the PIX brings it up to the competitive level of key competitors Check Point and Juniper, while its SSL VPN enhancements deliver the baseline features necessary for Cisco to pose a significant competitive threat.”

At the same time, few industry watchers believe that Cisco has recast itself as a security innovator in these spaces -- at least, not overnight.

“The impact of Cisco’s enhancements on the overall security market is low, though it should be noted that the overall Adaptive Threat Defense launch significantly expanded the breadth and functionality of its security offering in a positive manner,” Conover concedes. “The features specific to the existing firewall and SSL VPN markets are reactive moves that ensure Cisco can better compete with competitors that have moved faster than Cisco to date. These features protect Cisco’s ability to compete by leveling the playing field.”

But if Cisco’s actions in the future correlate with its rhetoric at last month’s RSA 2005 security confab -- which served as the venue for Cisco’s security push -- the networking giant could recast itself as a security innovator.

It was at RAS 2005, after all, that Cisco CEO John Chambers promised that security innovation -- or, at the very least, security leadership -- will be a major theme for Cisco in the years to come. Chambers, many of you will recall, outlined an aggressive security strategy in which, he promised, Cisco will innovate on its own to enhance the security of its products, but won’t hesitate to look elsewhere to acquire key technology assets either. Cisco has already made more than half a dozen acquisitions in the last 12 months, including several vendors that specialize in network security solutions.

For Cisco to be successful in this regard, analysts say, will require nothing less than a neat inversion of its current approach to security innovation. “Cisco needs to continue to innovate and move at the speed of more focused competitors that often move at a faster pace of innovation,” Conover writes. “Cisco’s ability to successfully sell and gain/maintain a leading market share position hinges directly on its ability to rapidly innovate and respond to the changing competitive landscape, and Cisco has historically been very slow to respond to new competitive threats in the security market.”

Nevertheless, Conover concedes, it’s admirable that Cisco is making so public a push, in spite of the fact that to do so is to tacitly acknowledge the shortcomings of its existing product stack. “Its new features bring into question the performance impact on Cisco’s aging firewall and VPN product portfolio,” he says. “The company still needs a solid solution to address the scalability of its current solution, which realistically tops out around 500 users per device. In contrast, some competitors offer solutions with support for more than 2,000 users, although those claims are shrouded in marketing cloaks.” -Stephen Swoyer