Cisco’s Goeckeler Takes Over Growing Security Business

Cisco Systems has a new leader for its security business, naming 14-year company veteran David Goeckeler to replace Chris Young, who has left Cisco after three years.

Goeckeler most recently served as vice president of product and platform engineering for Cisco’s Security Business Group for the past two years, according to Pankaj Patel, executive vice president and chief development officer at Cisco.

Security has been a key focus for Cisco over the past several years, as the networking giant has worked to expand its reach beyond switches and routers to become a major vendor of enterprise data center solutions and services. The company has complemented in-house development with a range of acquisitions, such as Sourcefire, Cognitive and ThreatGrid.

The company also has been aggressive in building a strong leadership team for the business.

“David maintains a deep bench of security expertise including Marty Roesch, Bret Hartman, Mike Fuhrman, Scott Harrell and Marc Solomon,” Patel wrote in a post on the Cisco blog.

Company officials have said Cisco efforts in the security market are paying off. During a conference call in August with analysts and journalists in August to discuss quarterly financial numbers, CEO John Chambers noted that revenues for Cisco’s security business jumped 29 percent over the same period in 2013, with the network security segment growing 35 percent and content security up 12 percent.

“Product orders grew faster than revenue as we continue to see solid momentum with our advanced threat solutions, including Advanced Malware Protection Everywhere, Sourcefire, ThreatGrid,” Chambers said, noting the growth of revenue stemming from the Sourcefire deal, which “speaks to the power of our combined security architecture in the marketplace today. We have taken security from a lower single-digit growing business to a business that we expect to grow comfortably in double-digits growing forward.”

Most recently, Cisco earlier this month launched its next-generation firewall, which combines its ASA firewall technology with Sourcefire’s FirePower Service.

Cisco officials said Young, who had come to Cisco from VMware, has left the company to pursue other opportunities.