Cisco and EMC have announced the intention to expand their strategic alliance to offer customers holistic data security solutions that span different layers of the information technology (IT) infrastructure, including storage, servers, networks and data centre security. The companies plan to build on their existing collaboration to develop integrated products, services and best practices by taking advantage of resources and technology from Cisco, EMC and RSA, the Security Division of EMC.

"The data security market is very fragmented with add-on point tools at every layer of the IT stack which leads to management complexity for customers," said Robert Gleichauf, chief technology officer of Enterprise, Services and Security at Cisco. "Cisco, along with EMC and RSA, its security division are strongly positioned to provide a holistic approach to addressing businesses’ data security needs encompassing products, services, and best practice processes across the network and the other layers of the IT infrastructure."

Cisco and RSA intend to collaborate in various areas of Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and provide a set of DLP professional service offerings to enterprise customers.

Cisco and RSA also intend to continue to collaborate in the area of data center security, data encryption and key management. The two companies also also plan to expand on their PCI reference architecture which helps enable customers to audit and run reports on their systems to ensure compliance with PCI regulations.

"Data security is very challenging. Due to regulatory and non-regulatory drivers, customers need to secure sensitive data and gain stronger visibility into where that data resides. The answer lies in coordinated product innovation, strategic partnership and professional services," said Dennis Hoffman, Vice President and General Manager for Data Security and Chief Strategy Officer at RSA, the Security Division of EMC. "By working with industry leaders, like Cisco, we are helping our customers solve these challenges. By developing solutions with Cisco, customers can discover, monitor, and enforce the use of sensitive data directly into the infrastructure – no matter where it moves, how it moves or where it is stored."