Cisco Systems Inc. has unveiled the first phase of its efforts to integrate the technology it acquired from the purchase of Sourcefire Ltd. with the incorporation of the intrusion detection firm’s Advance Malware Protection technology to Cisco’s email and Web security appliances and its Cloud Web Security Service.
At the RSA Conference 2014 in San Francisco, Cisco also said it is also incorporating open source application detection functionality to the Snort engine. Snort is an open source intrusion detection system developed in 1998 by Martin Roesch, founder of Sourcefire.
Cisco in July last year purchased Sourcefire for roughly $2.7 billion in a bit to extend its network security capabilities.
The Sourcefire integration is a new security model addresses the need for pervasive protection, before, during and after an attack, according to Chris Young, senior vice president of the security business unit at Cisco (NADAQ: CSCO).
Sourcefire’s AMP employs a combination of file reputation, sandboxing and fire retrospection which analyzes threats that manage to enter a network.
In order to help companies remediate intrusion problems, file retrospection monitors user devices that were exposed to malware.
The AMP integration provides Cisco with an anti-malware product and helps it compete with the likes of FireEye (NASDAQ: FEYE), according to Rick Holland, principal analyst for Forrester Research.
Cisco also announced enhancements to the FirePower network security appliance it acquired from Sourcefire. The new FirePower 8300 series increases the throughput of data centres and core networks by up to 50 per cent. FirePower devices provide IPS functionality but customers can add next-generation firewall and AMP functionality.