John Chambers recently said he gave Chris Young, the SVP in charge of Cisco's (NASDAQ:CSCO)...

John Chambers recently said he gave Chris Young, the SVP in charge of Cisco's (NASDAQ:CSCO) security ops, a "blank check" to hire and acquire as necessary over the next 2-3 years. Moreover, sources tell Reuters Cisco has been actively looking for security acquisitions. Chambers' motivation: while Cisco's security ops post modest growth, upstarts such as PANW, FTNT, and FIRE are growing much faster thanks to their focus on segments such as next-gen firewalls, UTM hardware, and IPS systems, products that offer deeper analysis of content/apps than traditional firewalls.