Sys-Admins attending CeBIT 2004 in Hannover, Germany, this week have been swinging by the Cisco Systems booth to check out the updated Catalyst line of intelligent switches.

Cisco has added security features and the "Cisco Smartports" management feature across its entire product family. The new security features include protection against a variety of attacks, including identity theft and address hijacking.

According to Steven Shalita, a senior manager of worldwide product marketing for Cisco, who presented the new features at a news conference in Hannover, the enhancements to the switch software include:

• DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) snooping to stop clients attacking the switch
• Port Security to stop MAC (Media Access Control) flooding attacks
• port-based ACLs (access control lists) to restrict network access
• dynamic ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) inspection to tie MAC and IP (Internet Protocol) addresses to specific ports
• IP Source Guard to prevent identity theft and IP address hijacking