Cisco's Chambers on Security

Cisco Systems Inc. CEO John Chambers talked yesterday about competition, partnerships, security and emerging markets to reporters at the company's 11th annual Worldwide Analyst Conference at Santa Clara yesterday. Among other things, here were his comments on security vulnerabilities with Cisco IOS and other products.

"Security is something that will be with us for another decade and beyond. As quickly as you evolve a solution, another set of problems comes up. We made the decision as a company 10 years ago that security was an architectural play, and acquired 15 companies to handle the problem -- and have over 1,500 Cisco employees in the security area. We have begun to build self-defending networks.

Like any architecture that works end to end, there are elements you add to constantly improve, and it's a constant battle. Do we have issues we have to address with security? Yes. And we encourage security researchers. But you don't get ahead by putting [a vulnerability] on the front page of a paper, because you hurt everyone. Let us address it and find the right way to go about [fixing vulnerabilities]. We have 60 partners working on Network Access Control. You can call us the Switzerland or a leading player in this partnership.

This challenge will slow down the whole industry. Most security researchers want to help and don't intend to hurt people. We don't [want] anybody to take this tremendous asset and cause exposures, to bring down hospital networks and 911 networks. "

CATEGORIES : 1vulnerabilities, 1ciscogate, 1disclosures, 1nac