CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Cisco vs Elastic

Cisco sells security products that protect users, devices, apps, and data. Elastic sells Elastic Security, an open, agentic security operations platform that offers SIEM, endpoint security, and native automation. 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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  • Cisco
  • Elastic
Cisco vs Elastic: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
CiscoCisco sells security products that protect users, devices, apps, and data.cisco.comElasticElastic sells Elastic Security, an open, agentic security operations platform that offers SIEM, endpoint security, and native automation.elastic.co
What it sells
  • 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.
  • Elastic Security[1][3][5][13]An open, agentic security operations platform that offers SIEM, endpoint security, and native automation.
  • SIEM[1][5]A SIEM offered as part of the Elastic Security platform.
  • Elastic XDR[1]Elastic XDR investigates and surfaces findings for approval when something slips through.
  • Attack Discovery[1]Correlates alerts into attack chains.
  • Cloud detection and response[5]A capability of Elastic Security that takes a vendor-agnostic, data-centric approach to cloud security.
  • Elastic Observability[3]Elastic Observability covers logs, metrics, traces, and APM.
  • Elasticsearch[3][7]A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine.
Categories
Headquarters
San Jose, United States[3][13]Not stated on its pages
Founded
1984[4]Not stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Public (NASDAQ: CSCO)[1][2][10][12][13]Not stated on its pages
Named customers
  • Marriott[5]
  • United States Golf Association[6]
  • Rosen Hotels & Resorts[7]
  • Elon University[8]
Not stated on its pages
Recent news
  • 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]
  • October 7, 2026Elastic introduced AlertZero, an AI SOC automation feature for Elastic Security that uses four agents, each with one job.[13]
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: listed, seen November 5, 2026[12]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: listed, seen November 10, 2026[14]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
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.Financial institutions are a named audience, with Elastic saying it helps them harness all their data to uncover insights and optimize operations. Security teams that already run cloud security tools can bring their analytics into Elastic Security. Elastic offers deployment in the cloud, on-premises, or serverless for organizations that require a particular environment.
Last verified
October 10, 2026November 3, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Cisco and Elastic are both filed under SIEM.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Cisco's primary category is Firewalls and NGFW; Elastic's is SIEM.
  • Cisco is also filed under SASE and SSE and Network access control. Elastic is also filed under EDR and XDR and SOAR and security automation.
  • Cisco lists Cisco Hypershield, Cisco Secure Access, Cisco Duo, Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), Splunk Enterprise Security and 1 more. Elastic lists Elastic Security, SIEM, Elastic XDR, Attack Discovery, Cloud detection and response and 2 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: Elastic

What Elastic Security does[1][3][5][13]
Agents work the full lifecycle from ingestion through response and show how they got there. The platform includes native SIEM, XDR, and automation capabilities.
What SIEM does[1][5]
Elastic Security chases down alerts, finds correlations and gives visibility into what it found. Elastic Security offers continuous monitoring and detection across cloud workloads, containers, infrastructure, network traffic, APIs, audits, and system logs, directly within the SIEM.
What Elastic XDR does[1]
When something slips through, Elastic XDR and the agentic layer investigate and surface findings for approval. Elastic Security offers endpoint security as part of its platform.
What Elastic Observability does[3]
Elastic Observability is one of three solutions that Elastic offers. Elastic Observability is available via Elastic Cloud Serverless, Elastic Cloud Hosted, or self-managed deployment.
What Elasticsearch does[3][7]
Elasticsearch is a distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine that can store every shape of data efficiently. Elasticsearch is the core component of the Elastic Stack and is built on Apache Lucene, an open source search library. Elasticsearch covers enterprise search, vector search, vector database, and RAG.

Questions about Cisco and Elastic

What do Cisco and Elastic sell?
Cisco sells Cisco Hypershield, Cisco Secure Access, Cisco Duo, Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), Splunk Enterprise Security and 1 more. Elastic sells Elastic Security, SIEM, Elastic XDR, Attack Discovery, Cloud detection and response and 2 more.
Are Cisco and Elastic in the same category?
They share SIEM. Cisco's primary category is Firewalls and NGFW and Elastic's is SIEM.
Where are Cisco and Elastic headquartered?
Cisco is headquartered in San Jose, United States.
When were Cisco and Elastic founded?
Cisco was founded in 1984.
Who owns Cisco and Elastic?
Cisco is a public company listed on NASDAQ as CSCO.
Which customers do Cisco and Elastic name?
Cisco publicly names Marriott, United States Golf Association, Rosen Hotels & Resorts and Elon University.
Who are Cisco and Elastic sold to?
From its own pages, Cisco sells mainly to enterprises that need to secure hybrid environments spanning data center, cloud, campus, and IoT. Financial institutions are a named audience, with Elastic saying it helps them harness all their data to uncover insights and optimize operations.
What have Cisco and Elastic announced recently?
August 12, 2026: Cisco reported fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 revenue of $17.3 billion for the period ended July 25, 2026. October 7, 2026: Elastic introduced AlertZero, an AI SOC automation feature for Elastic Security that uses four agents, each with one job.

About Cisco

Cisco sells security products that protect users, devices, apps, and data. Cisco describes the offering as an open, network-native platform built to handle today's threats and enable the agentic enterprise at scale.

Cisco says its security applies policy, inspection, and enforcement at every connection. Cisco also describes unified data for earlier detection and faster response, powered by AI-driven context.

For cloud protection, Cisco describes securing modern cloud and AI apps at runtime with segmentation that keeps up with change, vulnerability shielding to close the patching gap, and protection for AI workloads. Cisco Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE) is used to find malicious flows in encrypted traffic and to decrypt without sacrificing performance. Cisco says it stops zero days using Snort ML and Talos Threat Intelligence. Cisco offers distributed, optimized enforcement with unified management across a hybrid enterprise, and the same enforcement is described for data center, cloud, campus, and IoT environments.

Cisco describes a security architecture designed to defend modern, AI-scale data centers. Cisco says the architecture closes exploit gaps, segments everywhere, and self-qualifies updates and changes.

For workforce protection, Cisco describes secure access for humans, things, and agents with one consistent policy model. Cisco offers a cloud-native security service edge (SSE) that includes digital experience monitoring. Cisco offers a single-vendor SASE that unifies networking and security for a global workforce. Cisco offers identity security for the workforce that helps see across the entire identity ecosystem. Cisco offers multicloud NAC with zero trust, which uses intel from across the stack to enforce policy, manage endpoints, and deliver trusted access.

For threat intelligence and response, Cisco describes detecting, investigating, and responding faster with unified intelligence and operations. Cisco says this gives a team continuous visibility across users, systems, and AI agents in a single platform. Cisco describes unifying the data fabric, analytics, tooling and AI to automate the mundane, clarify the complex, and proactively mitigate risk.

Cisco also addresses agentic AI. Cisco describes safeguarding the agentic workforce against malicious attacks and data leakage. Cisco says it integrates identity, access, and behavioral controls to govern an agentic AI workforce and reduce risk. At RSAC 2026, Jeetu Patel, Cisco's President and Chief Product Officer, challenged the industry to fundamentally reimagine security.

Cisco Services provide expert guidance to plan, design, implement, operate, and optimize an IT environment. Cisco says support for Cisco Security products is available through the Cisco support hub, which provides product-specific resources, documentation, downloads, and expert assistance.

Cisco on the record

Sources

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

Elastic full record

  1. [1]Elastic Security: Agentic SIEM, EDR, XDR, and automation | ElasticElastic · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]AboutElastic · elastic.co · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Elastic: The search database for AI | Search, AI agents, Observability, and Security | ElasticElastic · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Elastic Cloud Serverless pricing for Elastic Security | ElasticElastic · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Cloud security analytics for (CDR) | ElasticElastic · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]AI in financial services: Elastic for AI-powered search | ElasticElastic · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Official Elastic Cloud pricing — compare serverless and hosted offerings | ElasticElastic · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Elasticsearch Integrations | ElasticElastic · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Product Security at Elastic | ElasticElastic · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Elasticsearch GDPR and Elastic Stack GDPR Compliance | ElasticElastic · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Sitecore protects IT platforms and reduces security costs with Elastic | Elastic CustomersElastic · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Migrate to Elastic across any cloud | ElasticElastic · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Blogs | Elastic Security LabsElastic Security Labs · published October 7, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Elastic Email Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & FeaturesG2 · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier C

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