When Cisco CTO told me I am wasting my time

When Cisco CTO told me I am wasting my time

When we introduced the first network firewall back in 1993, Cisco then-CTO looked me in the eye and told me we are wasting our time. Who needs a separate security box on the network when the router can perform this function? Since then, generations of networking companies, big and small, failed miserably to integrate security into the data plane. Not because it was a bad idea, but because the data plane was HW based and too rigid for the dynamic nature of the network security stack. The real promise of SD-WAN is an intelligent and secure data plane able, for the first time, to provide transport agnostic overlay, policy based routing and a full network security stack.


Mike Flannagan

Corporate Vice President, Customer Success at Microsoft

7y

Wrong as he may have been, that CTO had a lot more of a clue than some who followed.

Frank Darden

Technical Scuba Diver, Photographer, Entrepreneur. Founder/Former VP Mission Critical Systems, Inc.

8y

I am so very glad that you did not listen to him! Much success to you in 2017 Shlomo!

Steve Schledt

Brand Ambassador & Customer Advocate

8y

As commented earlier, it may not have been an issue, but it was still a Problem that created a Platform of its own for Cyber Hacks & Compromises that we are still trying to figure out 20 some odd years later, or am I off my router...

Steven J. A.

CEO | 😇 Investor | 🤓 Blockchain | 🤴 SportingArms | 🏘️🏞️ Real Estate | AI | DLT | XRPL | ISO 20022 | BTC | ETH | @Ripple @Hedera @Stellar @Algorand | Gold | Silver #NotFinancialAdvice #DYOR #ForEducationPurposesOnly

8y

Thanks Shlomo Kramer for sharing your story. Happy New Year to you and yours as well. Make it a great year!

Dr. Manish Kumar Srivastava

Addl. General Manager at NTPC Ltd

8y

those days security was not a prime concern and people were happy to apply acls .. in that sense cisco were right but not visionary towards growing threats and vulnerabilities in the the deployed servers, applications etc. on the growing internet (where cisco itself acting as a catalyst).

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