Cisco upgrades security systems

Updated tools should improve company security

Cisco has announced a slew of new security products, including a new Incident Control System (ICS), which is based on malware-recognition capabilities from antivirus vendor Trend Micro.

Cisco updated other tools so they can work with ICS. These include new versions of its Monitoring and Analysis Response System (CS-Mars) and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), and version 12.4(4)T of its IOS operating system.

ICS can help firms combat new types of online threat, said Cisco security consultant Kevin Regan. "What we're trying to address with ICS is the situation where there is a new kind of threat that customers typically struggle to contain quickly enough, because they need a specific [malware] signature to prevent the spread."

Regan added, "The heart of the system is the ICS server software, which is a Windows-only server application and will get updated in real time, with the majority of the info coming from Trend Micro."

Andy Kellet of analyst Butler Group said, "[The ICS development] is just an extension of Cisco's current strategy, which is not that different to what other firms are doing. It's important because there's a consistency there."

Cisco's Mars system has been upgraded to improve the way it works with IPS event correlation and aggregation, including firewall log and network anomaly detection data. As a result, Mars can update ICS with the latest real-time information.
Version 5.1 Cisco's IPS software and its Distributed Threat Management system with IPS is available now as part of version 4.1 of the CS-Mars package, and customers on standard Cisco contracts can upgrade free. IOS version 12.4(4)T will be available in November.

A report from research firm Infonetics released at the end of August showed worldwide spending of network security appliances and software grew four percent to $1bn in the first quarter of this year. Infonetics predicts the total for 2005 will be $4.4bn rising to $6.4bn by 2008.

Cisco is the market leader with 34 percent of the total, Check Point is second with 10 percent and Juniper is third with eight percent. Cisco's ICS system is available priced from $9,200 (£5,200).