Cisco focuses on security as it plots cloud expansion

Security is being embedded in the core of Cisco's engineering efforts as the networking company looks to expand upwards and into the cloud, according to chief executive John Chambers.

Chambers, who was speaking at Cisco Live in London after a visit to the World Economic Forum at Davos, told the audience that "economists on a global basis are saying [employee] productivity can grow two, three, four, five percent a year. They’ve never said that before."

"I think the number one challenge facing the innovation and productivity opportunity we set in front of us just then is security," he said.

Digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes said in November that cloud-computing providers must build security into their products to tempt companies into the cloud.

For this reason, security has been placed as a keystone in Cisco's future roadmap by being made a priority of every engineering unit within the company, Chambers said, to prepare for the intersection of the cloud with security architectures.

“Security is an architecture play,” Chambers said and security should be viewed as an end-to-end entity, “almost like the human body”.

The company's current main priorities are, in order, collaboration, datacentre virtualisation and video; security architecture and the cloud; and, at the long way out, the smart grid.

"Networking… will determine our ability to participate in this global economy," Chambers said.