Networking giant Cisco’s broad portfolio of security products and services is about to get even bigger. Cisco announced today the formation of a Services Security Practice that will deliver new offerings.
Bryan Palma will lead the Services Security Practice. No stranger to the security industry, Palma previously held high-level IT security roles in the U.S. Secret Service, Boeing and PepsiCo.
Palma told Enterprise Networking Planet that he’s joining Cisco in part to help grow out the existing base of products and services. Palma plans to focus on a number of specific areas.
“You will see us pressing to do more up-front consulting, whether that’s network security assessments as well as traditional attack and penetration testing,” Palma said.
Additionally, Palma’s group will be working on the backend for incident response. He explained that Cisco will be working on its customers in situations where they need assistance dealing with security incidents. A managed threat defense capability is also in the works.
“With our product portfolio, including our recent acquisition of SourceFire, we’ll be using those tools to help our customers close the gap,” Palma said. “We’ll be going beyond that traditional and foundational kind of things to help our customers get to the next level.”
Palma has barely been at the company for a week but already has a plan for helping Cisco achieve its goals. He explained that the the first 30 days are all about listening and understanding what is going on and what is needed.
The next 60 days will involve analysis that will leverage Palma’s experience and understanding of where the market is going. And in the following 90 days, an action plan will be put in place.
“In a market like this, we have significant opportunities so we’ll be pretty aggressive,” Palma said. “John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, is squarely behind this, and I think we have a lot of wood behind the arrow.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Enterprise Networking Planet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist
