Description
FREE RESEARCH PAPER: Cisco in the Grid
What It Means for Investors and Utility CISOs: Five Findings from Our Cisco Systems (CSCO) Vendor Assessment
Cisco is the incumbent leader of network security: first in firewall revenue and the supplier of much of the network inside substations, plants and control centers.
But its security business is barely growing while Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks grow at 19 to 25 percent.
This free 2-page research paper summarizes what we found.
What You’ll Learn
Cisco leads firewall revenue and is the network incumbent in the grid
Dell’Oro ranks Cisco first in 2025 hybrid mesh firewall revenue (25 percent share), and its rugged switches and routers are widely deployed in substations and plants.
Security is large but slow
Security revenue was $8.23 billion in fiscal 2026, up 2 percent, while networking grew 22 percent on AI demand.
Embedded OT visibility is Cisco’s strongest OT argument
Cyber Vision runs inside Cisco’s industrial switches and routers, which suits the internal network monitoring that NERC CIP-015 requires at control centers from October 2028.
The trust question has shifted to security and SD-WAN products
Cisco has 101 CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities entries, the most in our set, but only 2 of the 27 added since 2025 are in its network operating systems.
Cisco is the value option in the cohort
At 21 times forward earnings against 42 to 82 times for security rivals, Cisco returned $12.7 billion to shareholders in fiscal 2026.
Who Should Read This?
- Utility and independent power producer CISOs and security architects
- Substation, plant and control-center operators with Cisco networking already in place
- Investors following Cisco (CSCO) and the cybersecurity sector
- Compliance teams preparing for NERC CIP-015-2
Want the Full Assessment?
The free paper gives the headline findings. Our full Cisco Systems (CSCO) Vendor Assessment goes further, with 10 chapters, 12 charts and a companion Excel dataset covering:
- The security franchise and Splunk
- Cyber Vision mapped to the Purdue model
- NERC CIP-015-2 and IBR implications
- Exploited flaws by product family
- Patents, a peer benchmark and OT scorecard
- Scenarios and a risk register
Comparing vendors? The four-report bundle (Fortinet, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and the cohort report) is 20% less than buying them separately.
Information only; not investment, legal or compliance advice, and not a rating or recommendation.
Published by GO-IBR.com Research
Research and analysis covering energy, infrastructure, industrial technology, AI and the changing power market.
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