In September 2014, David Goeckeler took over the management of Cisco’s security business, becoming the senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Security Business Group. Goeckeler replaced Chris Young, who is now the general manager of Intel Security. In a video interview with eWEEK, Goeckeler details what his job is all about and what the strategic direction is for Cisco’s security business.
Though Goeckeler has only been the top security executive at Cisco since September, he’s a 15-year veteran at the company and played a key role in shaping the security strategy that Cisco has been executing on the last several years.
Goeckeler explained that there are three key trends driving Cisco’s security strategy. One of those trends is the issue of changing business models and dealing with new mobile and cloud deployments. The other key issue is the dynamic threat landscape and the third issue is about dealing with complexity and fragmentation.
“One of our strengths is the breadth of the portfolio; we have products across all attack vectors, whether it’s Web or email, firewall or next-generation IPSes [intrusion prevention systems],” Goeckeler said.
With Cisco’s 2013 acquisition of SourceFire, threat-focused security became a primary goal, though other security approaches, including network access control (NAC), are still important components of the overall strategy.
“We think about the portfolio across the attack continuum—what do you do before an attack, during an attack and after an attack,” Goeckeler said. “Enterprises will be in all three of those states.”
Watch the full video interview with David Goeckeler below:
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.