5/9/2005 -- At last week’s Interop (formerly known as Networld + Interop) trade show, Cisco Systems Inc. announced a new family of multi-function security appliances, the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) 5500 Series. Cisco says its new ASA 5500 Series offerings are based on security features found in its PIX Security Appliance, IPS 4200 Series, and VPN 3000 Concentrator product families.

Cisco’s ASA 5500 Series is a 1U offering that’s available in 350, 400 and 650 Mbps versions. It features an expansion slot, which is nominally designed to accommodate an intrusion detection system (IDS) card, but which—Cisco stresses—can also support other applications or services, when they emerge.

According to Joel Conover, a principal analyst for enterprise infrastructure with consultancy Current Analysis, Cisco couldn’t have announced its ASA 5500 Series appliances at a better time. “[T]he new platform addresses competitive weaknesses in its aging PIX and Cisco VPN 3000 product lines, and provides it with a highly differentiated set of integrated security technologies in a form factor that is specifically optimized for the enterprise mid-market,” he writes.

Conover likens the ASA appliance to a “god box” that integrates firewall, VPN, intrusion prevention, anti-spyware/malware/adware protection, URL/Web filtering, and SSL VPN capabilities. What’s more, he says, Cisco also plans to build a number of “Anti-X” technologies (e.g., anti-spam) into its ASA stack, too. Of course, in tackling the “god box” model, Conover points out, Cisco has its work cut out. “The concept of a multi-service ‘god box’ is not new, but to date, most competitors have failed on the integration front, either lacking a unified management interface or lacking the ability to manage performance and latency effectively when multiple security services are processing data,” he says.

Cisco, for its part, claims to have everything well in hand, Conover observes. “Cisco has effectively leveraged its existing portfolio of products to create a new hybrid device with a single, unified management interface, and it claims to have solved the challenge of managing latency and maintaining performance even in a multi-service environment, though those claims remain to be proven.”

In the final analysis, writes Conover, Cisco’s new ASA appliance is a pivotal product entry for the networking giant. And it also shines a light on Cisco’s successful track record on the integration front, too. “The ASA is a critical advancement for Cisco in cost-effectively addressing the security needs of enterprise customers,” he concludes. “Because Cisco’s product development strategy depends heavily on acquisition, it is faced with the difficult burden of integrating those technologies in a meaningful way. The ASA is proof that, given enough time, Cisco eventually assimilates the best of its acquired technologies into better multi-function devices.” -Stephen Swoyer