CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Cisco vs SolarWinds

Cisco sells security products that protect users, devices, apps, and data. SolarWinds sells monitoring, observability and service management capabilities on a platform offered in self-hosted and SaaS deployment models. 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
  • SolarWinds
Cisco vs SolarWinds: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
CiscoCisco sells security products that protect users, devices, apps, and data.cisco.comSolarWindsSolarWinds sells monitoring, observability and service management capabilities on a platform offered in self-hosted and SaaS deployment models.solarwinds.com
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.
  • Security Event Manager[1]An on-premise SIEM tool built with threat feeds designed to automatically detect and respond to user, application and network threats.
  • SolarWinds Observability SaaS[6]Observability delivered as SaaS, built to connect data from web applications, their services, and cloud and hybrid infrastructures.
  • SolarWinds Observability Self-HostedSelf-hosted observability that can be deployed behind a firewall or self-hosted in AWS, Microsoft Azure or GCP.
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]
Not stated on its pages
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[4]
  • 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.SolarWinds offers a choice of self-hosted, SaaS or hybrid deployment. SolarWinds offers small business IT solutions and IT education solutions for students, staff and faculty. The federal government is a customer of SolarWinds. SolarWinds Service Desk can be used across the entire organization as an enterprise service management solution.
Last verified
October 10, 2026October 14, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Cisco and SolarWinds are both filed under SIEM.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Cisco's primary category is Firewalls and NGFW; SolarWinds's is Network visibility and traffic brokering.
  • Cisco is also filed under SASE and SSE and Network access control.
  • Cisco lists Cisco Hypershield, Cisco Secure Access, Cisco Duo, Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), Splunk Enterprise Security and 1 more. SolarWinds lists Security Event Manager, SolarWinds Observability SaaS and SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted.
  • 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: SolarWinds

What Security Event Manager does[1]
Security Event Manager comes with hundreds of pre-built connectors that gather logs from various sources, parse their data and put it into a common readable format. Security Event Manager has built-in File Integrity Monitoring capabilities to monitor and alert on suspicious or potentially malicious activity in sensitive files. Active Response provides preconfigured, customizable actions for incident response based on which trigger conditions are satisfied. SEM provides hundreds of out-of-the-box reports for HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX, ISO, DISA STIGs, FISMA, FERPA, NERC CIP, GLBA, GPG13 and more.
What SolarWinds Observability SaaS does[6]
The application performance monitoring solution collects metrics, logs, traces and user experience data. It is extensible with an open-source framework, a public API and out-of-the-box third-party integrations. Through Platform Connect, SolarWinds Observability, the SaaS-delivered observability solution, can consume data from self-hosted Hybrid Cloud Observability.
What SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted does
AIOps capabilities are part of SolarWinds Service Desk, SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted and SaaS. Customers running self-hosted Orion modules on version 2022.2 or later are using the SolarWinds Platform. Self-hosted Hybrid Cloud Observability data can be consumed by SolarWinds Observability through Platform Connect.

Questions about Cisco and SolarWinds

What do Cisco and SolarWinds sell?
Cisco sells Cisco Hypershield, Cisco Secure Access, Cisco Duo, Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), Splunk Enterprise Security and 1 more. SolarWinds sells Security Event Manager, SolarWinds Observability SaaS and SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted.
Are Cisco and SolarWinds in the same category?
They share SIEM. Cisco's primary category is Firewalls and NGFW and SolarWinds's is Network visibility and traffic brokering.
Where are Cisco and SolarWinds headquartered?
Cisco is headquartered in San Jose, United States.
When were Cisco and SolarWinds founded?
Cisco was founded in 1984.
Who owns Cisco and SolarWinds?
Cisco is a public company listed on NASDAQ as CSCO.
Which customers do Cisco and SolarWinds name?
Cisco publicly names Marriott, United States Golf Association, Rosen Hotels & Resorts and Elon University.
Who are Cisco and SolarWinds sold to?
From its own pages, Cisco sells mainly to enterprises that need to secure hybrid environments spanning data center, cloud, campus, and IoT. SolarWinds offers a choice of self-hosted, SaaS or hybrid deployment.
What have Cisco and SolarWinds announced recently?
August 12, 2026: Cisco reported fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 revenue of $17.3 billion for the period ended July 25, 2026.

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

SolarWinds full record

  1. [1]Security Event Manager - View Event Logs Remotely | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed October 14, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]SolarWinds productsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 2, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Observability, Database, and IT Service Management | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 2, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]SolarWinds Observability Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2G2 · undated page, accessed November 2, 2026 · Tier C
  5. [5]Orion Platform now self-hosted on the SolarWinds Platform | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Application Performance Monitoring | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]AIOps Solutions & AI-Powered IT Operations | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Security Resources | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Deployment Services | Customer SuccessSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]IT Service Management Software Solutions | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]IT Asset Management Solutions | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]SolarWinds SolutionsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]IT Service Desk Software | SolarWindsSolarWinds · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A

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