How Cisco's Sourcefire acquisition impacts its security prospects

It's interesting how the tech industry works. In late 2011, Cisco was in the midst of revamping itself, its stock was a shade under $14/share, and its investors calling for CEO John Chambers to resign. Today, as Mike Reno from Loverboy used to sing, “The kid is hot tonight, whoa, so hot tonight.” Indeed, Mr. Chambers is on quite a roll, Cisco stock is a shade under $26/share, investors are happy, the entire network product line has been revamped in the past year, and the company is creating some distance between itself and its network completion.

However, despite the momentum by Cisco, it’s hard to say the company has been firing on all cylinders. One of the cylinders that hasn’t been firing well is security. Last year, in a hot market, Cisco security sales fell 4% year-over-year. Over the past couple of years, companies like Palo Alto Networks, Imperva, and Fortinet have grabbed the media headlines in security and made Cisco security look old. In fact, on past earnings calls, Chambers actually called out security as an area that needed to be fixed and something that would be addressed in the future.