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With what is considered the next phase of their Self-Defending Network, yesterday, Cisco Systems announced the development of the Adaptive Threat Defense (ATD).

ATD helps to minimize network security risks by addressing threats at multiple layers. Aspects of the multiple approaches used by Cisco consists of: Security features, multilayer intelligence, application protection, network-wide control and threat containment within high-performance solutions.

The self-defending effort concentrates on three areas:

Anti-X defenses: Prevent and respond to network threats through a combination of innovative traffic and content-oriented security services. Core security enforcement technologies include firewall, intrusion prevention system (IPS), anomaly detection and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mitigation fused with application-inspection services such as network anti-virus, anti-spyware, and URL filtering

Application security: Provide advanced business-application protection through the use of application-level access controls, application inspection, and enforcement of appropriate application-use policies, web-application control, and transaction privacy.

Network control and containment: Network intelligence and the virtualization of security technologies provides the ability to layer sophisticated auditing and correlation capabilities to control and help protect any networked element or service such as Voice over IP (VoIP) with active management and mitigation capabilities.

"Because the network is a strategic customer asset, the protection of its business-critical applications and resources is a top priority," said John Chambers, president and CEO of Cisco Systems, Inc. "Today's announcement is part of Cisco's ongoing commitment to deliver a more secure portfolio designed around the evolving demands of global businesses - from their design and architectural needs at inception to helping protect their long-term network investments."

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.