Security Partners seeing a more cohesive front from Cisco

Partners are seeing a more cohesive front from Cisco, with some even stating that the vendor is bringing the “swag” into network and cybersecurity, says Brian Feeny, VP, Global Security Partner Sales at Cisco.

While there were numerous announcements made at Cisco Live 2025 in San Diego recently, one of the most exciting one for both customers and partners would be the integration capabilities being enabled between Cisco and Splunk following the acquisition.

With more solutions now capable of supporting capabilities, the no-cost ingestion in particular between Cisco firewalls and Splunk has been well received by many partners.

“There has been overwhelming excitement from security partners about the Cisco Firewall ingestion of Splunk. Partners actually felt that is a major go-to-market proponent for them because many of them have large Splunk practices, and that's a great opportunity to bring more Cisco Firewalls into the mix,” said Brian Feeny, VP, Global Security Partner Sales at Cisco during an interview with CRN Asia.

According to Feeny, partners are seeing a more cohesive front from Cisco, with some even stating that Cisco is bringing the “swag” into network and cybersecurity. With Cisco360 going live next year, Feeny also mentioned that security partners are excited with the integration of not just the solutions, but on the partner program as well.

“The Cisco 360 Partner Program is a wonderful transformation that really meets security partners where they've been at. And a great example is we can bring in, say, a managed detection and response provider, which typically would not be part of the historical Cisco channel. These are MDR providers in the SOC, and they have a path to reach the highest levels of the Cisco Partner Program,” said Feeny.

Feeny believes that the Cisco360 Partner Program has really given them the ability to go after boutique partners, security peer plays, and show them a path to the highest level of profitability and preferences within that program.

At Cisco Live 2025, the key message highlighted throughout the event was how Cisco is capable of providing both networking and security capabilities as well as AI to ensure businesses have all it takes to remain productive and efficient.

For Feeny, this story of conversion of network and security has really resonated with both partners and customers, and it's brought many of them to a much more significant posture with Cisco security. For example, the opportunity with the Hybrid Mesh Firewall is something partners believe has a strong opportunity in converging both the network and security buyers.

Keeping partners happy

While partners were excited with all the opportunities, Feeny also pointed out that partners need to be aligned with Cisco.

“As we generate significant amounts of deal-rich pipeline creation, it's a very prescriptive approach. We connect on three or four accounts, between our rep and their rep. We determine which is the ideal customer profile, what's the sales use case for that, and then we're bringing in the right technical resources from our side, training their teams, whether it's pre-sales or post-sales, and then we're taking it through to completion. And that's really bearing fruit right now,” explained Feeny.

As such, Feeny hopes for a more collaborative approach in working with customers as they lead through a channel-first approach. Secondly, he aims to work with partners in a way that is profitable for their business and provides secure outcomes for customers. Lastly, he really hopes partners invest in learning the latest and greatest from Cisco.

“It starts with the sales engineers (SEs). We have to win the hearts and minds of our partner SEs, because there's been a tremendous amount of innovation in the last two years from Cisco Security. So that's my lean-in right now. I have 44 roadshows coming up globally in the next 90 days, and it's all targeted to partner SEs with technical enablement,” said Geeny.

In ensuring that Cisco understands the demands of the industry and how their competitors are faring up, Geeny pointed out that Cisco has dedicated advisory councils in all three major geographic areas.

“It's always a two-way street. My view on this is Cisco's going to lead with humble confidence. We're not going to dictate and tell partners this is what you do. We want to hear from them. So, the partner advisory councils for security tell us exactly what is needed as well as what they see from our competitors. This is what we're winning with. And then we collaborate on how we can give them, hopefully, an even better solution and a simpler experience,” said Geeny.

With that said, Geeny also highlighted that there's an explosion of requests from partners stating customers are asking how they can handle AI better. Findings from Cisco’s Cybersecurity Readiness Index study also revealed similar situations with only 4% of organizations globally fully ready and having the position that they need for cybersecurity incidents.