Source: RSA in talks with Cisco on securing new servers

Sources within RSA suggest the EMC-owned security vendor is about to sign a new deal with networking giant Cisco Systems.

Sources told iTnews to "look for an announcement" in the next two months regarding Cisco Systems and RSA.

Cisco recently announced partnerships with RSA parent EMC and the EMC-owned VMware as part of its 'Unified Computing' initiative, which will see the networking giant release its own line of high performance servers.

"Cisco is plugging these new servers straight into the network fibre," a source within RSA told iTnews. "That's what you need for virtual machines, to allow them to move all over the place.  And that means we need more controls."

Security was noted as a conspicuously absent feature when Cisco announced its 'Unified Computing' initiative in March.

EMC has been talking up its ties with Cisco Systems ever since the networking vendor announced the forthcoming server products.

In March, EMC vice president of marketing Chuck Hollis pitched RSA's portfolio of security products as being able to "provide the architectural foundation for next-gen security frameworks that will be very attractive for many of these implementations -- a new world where security policy has to move with the virtualised workload."

Cisco and RSA already collaborate on several encryption and key management technologies.