CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Alphabet vs Cisco

Alphabet sells a full suite of security products and services to protect workloads and meet digital sovereignty requirements. Cisco sells security products that protect users, devices, apps, and data. CISO Tribune files both under SIEM. This page sets the two records side by side: what each sells, where it is based, who owns and funds it, the customers it names and its recent news, each fact numbered to its source.

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  • Alphabet
  • Cisco
Alphabet vs Cisco: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
AlphabetAlphabet sells a full suite of security products and services to protect workloads and meet digital sovereignty requirements.cloud.google.comCiscoCisco sells security products that protect users, devices, apps, and data.cisco.com
What it sells
  • Google Threat Intelligence[1][2]Threat intelligence for understanding threat actors and potential attack vectors.
  • Mandiant Consulting Services[2]Consulting services for understanding threat actors and potential attack vectors.
  • Security Command Center[1][3]A platform for defending against threats to Google Cloud assets.
  • Identity Platform[3][5]A customer identity and access management (CIAM) platform for apps.
  • reCAPTCHA Enterprise[3][5]Helps protect a website from fraudulent activity, spam and abuse.
  • Google Cloud Armor[3]Helps protect applications and websites against denial of service and web attacks.
  • Cisco HypershieldA security architecture for data centers that segments workloads and closes exploit gaps at scale.
  • Cisco Secure AccessA secure access service edge (SASE) product that unifies networking and security policy for a distributed workforce.
  • Cisco Duo[1]An identity security product that gives visibility into an organization's identity ecosystem and enforces access policy.
  • Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)A network access control product that uses data from across Cisco's stack to enforce policy, manage endpoints and grant trusted access.
  • Splunk Enterprise Security[1]A security information and event management product that detects and responds to threats using collected logs and events.
  • Cisco Talos[1]A threat intelligence and research organization that supplies threat data used across Cisco's security products.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesSan Jose, United States[3][13]
Founded
Not stated on its pages1984[4]
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesPublic (NASDAQ: CSCO)[1][2][10][12][13]
Named customers
Not stated on its pages
  • Marriott[5]
  • United States Golf Association[6]
  • Rosen Hotels & Resorts[7]
  • Elon University[8]
Recent news
  • December 22, 2025Alphabet said it would buy clean energy developer Intersect for $4.75 billion in cash, plus assumed debt.[7]
  • August 12, 2026Cisco reported fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 revenue of $17.3 billion for the period ended July 25, 2026.[2]
  • May 13, 2026Cisco reported fiscal third-quarter 2026 revenue of $15.8 billion for the period ended April 25, 2026.[9]
  • May 4, 2026Cisco announced its intent to acquire Astrix Security, a non-human identity security company, and completed the acquisition on June 29, 2026.[10]
  • April 9, 2026Cisco announced its intent to acquire Galileo Technologies, Inc.[11]
  • November 25, 2025Cisco completed its acquisition of EzDubs, a privately held AI software company based in San Francisco.[13]
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: listed, seen November 5, 2026[12]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
From its own pages, Google Cloud addresses organisations that own intellectual property in the form of highly sensitive data or that handle sensitive data subject to data protection regulations such as PCI DSS. Our reading is that Google Cloud addresses organisations migrating from on-premises to the cloud that want to replicate their on-premises network based security architecture as they move data to Google Cloud. Alphabet addresses customers that, as part of a migration to the cloud, may need to validate its compliance documentation, certifications and controls. Alphabet publishes regional compliance papers on the telecommunications industry. Alphabet's industry solutions range from improving retail product discovery to detecting bank fraud.From its own pages, Cisco sells mainly to enterprises that need to secure hybrid environments spanning data center, cloud, campus, and IoT. Cisco addresses organizations with a global workforce that need secure access for humans, things, and agents under one consistent policy model. Cisco addresses enterprises that want to govern an agentic AI workforce. Security teams are addressed with unified intelligence and operations for visibility across users, systems, and AI agents.
Last verified
November 2, 2026October 10, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Alphabet and Cisco are both filed under SIEM.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Alphabet's primary category is SIEM; Cisco's is Firewalls and NGFW.
  • Alphabet is also filed under Threat intelligence, Incident response and forensics and Cloud-native application protection (CNAPP). Cisco is also filed under SASE and SSE and Network access control.
  • Alphabet lists Google Threat Intelligence, Mandiant Consulting Services, Security Command Center, Identity Platform, reCAPTCHA Enterprise and 1 more. Cisco lists Cisco Hypershield, Cisco Secure Access, Cisco Duo, Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), Splunk Enterprise Security and 1 more.
  • Cisco is headquartered in San Jose, United States.
  • Cisco was founded in 1984.
  • Cisco is a public company listed on NASDAQ as CSCO.
  • Cisco publicly names Marriott, United States Golf Association, Rosen Hotels & Resorts and Elon University.

What it sells: Alphabet

What Google Threat Intelligence does[1][2]
Google Threat Intelligence is used to understand threat actors and potential attack vectors. Google Threat Intelligence is offered alongside Mandiant Consulting Services.
What Mandiant Consulting Services does[2]
Mandiant Consulting Services is offered to understand threat actors and potential attack vectors. Mandiant Consulting Services is offered alongside Google Threat Intelligence.
What Security Command Center does[1][3]
Security Command Center is a platform for defending against threats. Security Command Center covers Google Cloud assets.
What Identity Platform does[3][5]
Identity Platform is a customer identity and access management (CIAM) platform for adding identity and access management to apps. Identity Platform integrates with the reCAPTCHA Enterprise API to enhance security for users. With bot protection, Identity Platform provisions score-based reCAPTCHA keys in the customer's project.
What Google Cloud Armor does[3]
Google Cloud Armor helps protect applications and websites against denial of service attacks. Google Cloud Armor covers web attacks against applications and websites.

Questions about Alphabet and Cisco

What do Alphabet and Cisco sell?
Alphabet sells Google Threat Intelligence, Mandiant Consulting Services, Security Command Center, Identity Platform, reCAPTCHA Enterprise and 1 more. Cisco sells Cisco Hypershield, Cisco Secure Access, Cisco Duo, Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), Splunk Enterprise Security and 1 more.
Are Alphabet and Cisco in the same category?
They share SIEM. Alphabet's primary category is SIEM and Cisco's is Firewalls and NGFW.
Where are Alphabet and Cisco headquartered?
Cisco is headquartered in San Jose, United States.
When were Alphabet and Cisco founded?
Cisco was founded in 1984.
Who owns Alphabet and Cisco?
Cisco is a public company listed on NASDAQ as CSCO.
Which customers do Alphabet and Cisco name?
Cisco publicly names Marriott, United States Golf Association, Rosen Hotels & Resorts and Elon University.
Who are Alphabet and Cisco sold to?
From its own pages, Google Cloud addresses organisations that own intellectual property in the form of highly sensitive data or that handle sensitive data subject to data protection regulations such as PCI DSS. From its own pages, Cisco sells mainly to enterprises that need to secure hybrid environments spanning data center, cloud, campus, and IoT.
What have Alphabet and Cisco announced recently?
December 22, 2025: Alphabet said it would buy clean energy developer Intersect for $4.75 billion in cash, plus assumed debt. August 12, 2026: Cisco reported fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 revenue of $17.3 billion for the period ended July 25, 2026.

About Alphabet

Alphabet sells a full suite of security products and services to protect workloads and meet digital sovereignty requirements. Alphabet offers security products that help customers meet policy, regulatory and business objectives. Google Threat Intelligence and Mandiant Consulting Services are offered to understand threat actors and potential attack vectors. Google Security Operations is used to detect, investigate and respond to threats.[1][2][3]

Security Command Center is a platform for defending against threats to Google Cloud assets. Assured Workloads provides compliance and security controls for sensitive workloads. Identity and Access Management is a permissions management system for Google Cloud resources. Google Cloud Armor helps protect applications and websites against denial of service and web attacks. Cloud Key Management is used to manage encryption keys on Google Cloud. Confidential Computing encrypts data in use with Confidential VMs. Cloud NGFW is a global firewall to protect cloud resources. Shielded VMs are virtual machines hardened with security controls and defenses. Secret Manager stores API keys, passwords, certificates and other sensitive data.[1][3]

Cloud Data Loss Prevention is a platform for inspecting, classifying and redacting sensitive data. Sensitive Data Protection is a fully managed sensitive data protection service. Access Transparency provides cloud provider visibility through near real-time logs. Cloud Asset Inventory is used to view, monitor and analyze Google Cloud and Anthos assets across projects and services. Secure Web Proxy monitors and secures egress web traffic to help protect cloud workloads. Web Risk detects malicious URLs on a website and in client applications. Chrome Enterprise Premium is a zero-trust platform with integrated threat and data protection. Assured Open Source Software lets developers incorporate the same OSS packages that Google uses into their own developer workflows. Sovereign Controls by Partners provides partner-operated sovereignty controls for Google Cloud to meet digital sovereignty requirements.[3]

VPC Service Controls protects sensitive data in Google Cloud services using security perimeters. VPC Service Controls helps protect against accidental or targeted action by external or insider entities, to minimize data exfiltration risks from Google Cloud services such as Cloud Storage and BigQuery. VPC Service Controls is used to create perimeters that protect the resources and data of services that are explicitly specified. By allowing private access only from authorized VPC networks, VPC Service Controls helps protect against data exfiltration by clients using stolen OAuth or service account credentials. VPC Service Controls adds a layer of security defense for Google Cloud services that is independent of Identity and Access Management (IAM). Google Cloud provides a restricted virtual IP that is integrated with VPC Service Controls. VPC Service Controls lets administrators monitor resource access patterns across service perimeters using Cloud Audit Logs. VPC Service Controls can run in dry run mode to monitor requests to protected services without preventing access. VPC Service Controls configurations are managed at the organization level by default.[3]

Identity Platform is a customer identity and access management (CIAM) platform for adding identity and access management to apps. Identity Platform integrates with the reCAPTCHA Enterprise API to enhance security for users. With bot protection, Identity Platform provisions score-based reCAPTCHA keys in the customer's project. In audit mode for email-password sign-in, Identity Platform creates reCAPTCHA keys that assess traffic to Identity Platform APIs without blocking any requests. For phone authentication, Identity Platform blocks a request that fails the toll fraud assessment and does not send an SMS verification code. reCAPTCHA Enterprise helps protect a website from fraudulent activity, spam and abuse. Identity-Aware Proxy uses identity and context to guard access to applications and VMs. Cloud Identity is a unified platform for IT admins to manage user devices and apps.[3][5]

Google Cloud creates and shares mappings of its security, privacy and compliance controls to standards from around the world. Alphabet regularly undergoes independent verification to achieve certifications, attestations and audit reports. An independent third-party auditor has granted formal certifications, attestations or audit reports covering Alphabet's compliance offerings. Alphabet's certifications and attestations include ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27017, ISO/IEC 27018, ISO/IEC 27701, ISO/IEC 42001, PCI DSS, SOC 1, SOC 2 and SOC 3. Alphabet's compliance offerings include FedRAMP, FIPS 140-2 Validated and HITRUST CSF. Alphabet's compliance offerings include Protected B in Canada, StateRAMP, TruSight and the U.S. Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC). Cloud service providers cannot formally certify a customer's compliance with laws and regulations. Alphabet reviews laws and regulations and, where possible, provides guidance documents, mappings and papers that outline its technical capabilities and legal commitments.[6]

Alphabet's industry solutions range from improving retail product discovery to detecting bank fraud. Gemini platform is a fully managed AI development platform for building and managing AI applications and agents, with access to Agent Studio and 200+ foundation models.[1][2][6]

Alphabet on the record

Sources

Alphabet full record

  1. [1]SecurityGoogle Cloud · cloud.google.com · undated page, accessed November 2, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]AI and Cloud Computing Services | Google CloudGoogle Cloud · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Security and identity products | Google CloudGoogle Cloud · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Overview of VPC Service Controls | Google Cloud DocumentationGoogle Cloud Documentation · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Integrate Identity Platform with the reCAPTCHA Enterprise API | Google Cloud DocumentationGoogle Cloud Documentation · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Cloud compliance and regulations resources | Google CloudGoogle Cloud · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Alphabet to buy clean energy developer Intersect in $4.75 billion deal amid AI pushReuters · published December 22, 2025 · Tier B

Cisco full record

  1. [1]Security Products and Solutions for Cloud and Workforce Protection - CiscoCisco · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Cisco reports fourth quarter earningsCisco · newsroom.cisco.com · published August 12, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]IndexCisco · cisco.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Cisco systems reaches agreement with state city on major land purchaseCisco · newsroom.cisco.com · published April 17, 1996 · Tier A
  5. [5]MarriottCisco · cisco.com · undated page, accessed October 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]cisco.comCisco · cisco.com · undated page, accessed October 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Rosen hotels and resortsCisco · cisco.com · undated page, accessed October 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Elon universityCisco · cisco.com · undated page, accessed October 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Cisco reports third quarter earningsCisco · newsroom.cisco.com · published May 13, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Cisco announces intent to acquire astrix securityCisco · blogs.cisco.com · published May 4, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Making AI Trustworthy and Observable in Real-Time: Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire GalileoCisco Blogs · published April 9, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Cisco Security Services Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2G2 · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier C
  13. [13]Cisco completes EzDubs acquisition - CiscoCisco · published November 25, 2025 · Tier A

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