I had an interesting conversation yesterday with Bob Gleichauf, chief technology officer with Cisco's security technology group. With corporations becoming more aware and more pro-active about protecting their networks from hacker attacks and viruses, Gleichauf said Cisco expects strong growth from its security business, which became the first of the company's advanced technology units to surpass $1-billion in annual sales. Within the next four to five years, he said Cisco expects security sales to be $5-billion to $7-billion. This forecast is obviously based on two assumptions: the overall market will grow and Cisco will be able to win market share. There is no doubt security has become one of the hot markets as companies look for security solutions and lean toward a single supplier. This has led to a flurry of M&A deals, highlighted by Juniper's $4-billion acquisition of NetScreen. Cisco made a small move last December by purchasing Protego for $65-million. Gleichauf expects more deals as the industry consolidates and customers look for "solutions" rather than cobbling together best of breed applications. It was interesting to hear that he has not seen much of Nortel in the security market given Nortel CEO Bill Owens repeatedly talks about security being one of the company's growth pillars.