RSA: Cisco's Chambers Says Security Must Be Fundamental

Security has to be a fundamental element of IT infrastructure in order to stay ahead of the bad guys, said John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, during a keynote address Wednesday at RSA Conference 2009.

Chambers urged conference attendees to integrate security not only with their IT infrastructures, but also with their business processes.

"Security isn't a stand-alone area. Security is something that has to be embedded in our strategy, it has to be embedded in our technology, it has to be automated," Chambers said at the San Francisco security confab.

Many of the initiatives Cisco is currently pushing are reliant on security in order to be successful, Chambers said. For example, Cisco's vision that content will be available anywhere, anytime on any device across a variety of networks poses security challenges that must be solved, he said.

"You won't know if a processor you're using is on the device in your hand or on your personal computer at home ... you won't know where content is stored. That is exciting to me as a networking player. Boy, I'm going to sell a lot of stuff to tie that together. [But] it is a security nightmare, and it can't be handled in the traditional way," Chambers said. "The only way you can solve this is through an architectural approach."

Other key Cisco initiatives, including collaboration, videoconferencing and Web 2.0, also are heavily dependent on security, he said.

Cisco this week unveiled new cloud-based security services, including a botnet filter and intrusion prevention system to protect against the ever-growing threat landscape.

Chambers was bullish on the future of cloud computing.

"The cloud is going to come -- the concept of internal clouds, external clouds, the federation between the two and how they will evolve," he said.

Andrew R. Hickey contributed to this article.

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