Since 2009, the compound annual growth rate of detected IT security incidents has risen 66% year over year; this growth figure is low because it doesn’t take into consideration undetected and unreported attacks, reports Rob DeFrancesco in Smart Tech Investor.

Seeing the expanded opportunity in enterprise network protection, Cisco Systems (CSCO) is putting more emphasis on its security unit, which, in the latest quarter, delivered revenue growth of 29% versus flat top-line growth.

Cisco announced the introduction of its first threat-focused next-generation firewall (NGFW). The Cisco ASA firewall is now integrated with intrusion-prevention technology and advanced malware protection from the company’s $2.7-billion acquisition of Sourcefire.

Cisco ASA with FirePOWER Services provides an integrated threat defense for before, during, and after a breach. The new solution offers better protection, while at the same time lowering operating costs and reducing complexity.

Organizations are now able to operate a more secure network with fewer security devices to deploy and manage, making the entire operation less complex.

Many traditional NGFWs are poorly integrated and unable to share intelligence between security layers, leading to lower threat effectiveness and the inability to address advanced attacks, according to David Stuart, senior manager of network security product marketing at Cisco.

Cisco ASA with FirePOWER Services is an integrated threat defense platform, unifying security across all defense layers, delivering improved threat protection and scalability across large datacenters, branch offices, and endpoints.

One important feature is that, in addition to continuous analysis, the new Cisco solution offers retrospective security, which enables IT teams to look at historical records to help identify, contain, and remediate malware that initially found its way into the network. Cisco remains a ‘Buy’ up to $25.

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