Cisco Systems will begin offering IronPort’s security filtering tools to its firewall customers after the networking giant’s acquisition of the company closes on today.
Cisco Systems will begin offering IronPort’s security filtering tools to its firewall customers after the networking giant’s acquisition of the company closes on today.
On tour to evangelize the benefits of the buyout, top Cisco security executives and IronPort Chief Executive Scott Weiss said that the combined company will move quickly to create a software upgrade package that will provide content filtering functionality and behavioral reputation intelligence into the networking market leader’s 2.5 million existing firewall systems.
The for-pay security add-on derived from IronPortwill allow customers to employ what the company has dubbed as “wide traffic inspection” at the firewall, arming users with more comprehensive network traffic analysis tools, the executives said.
“The e-mail and Web filtering capabilities we bring into Cisco’s self defending network vision will allow customers to do more granular filtering of traffic traveling across ports that have traditionally been left open by firewalls,” Weiss said. “Today, most threats are coming into the network as links embedded in e-mail messages; putting this type of intelligence at the firewall will increase its efficacy in stopping those attacks.”
Through blending the malware-distribution data gathered by IronPort’s SenderBase IP address reputation service into Cisco’s Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) firewalls, the devices will become more dynamic security filtering gateways that can detect a far greater number of potential attacks before they enter the network, the companies claim.
After moving to integrate the filtering specialists’ tools into its firewall business, Cisco will begin adding IronPort’s technologies into its Integrated Services Router (ISR) products.
