Cisco Removing access to critical downloads for products that are end-of-support

Removing access to critical downloads for products that are end-of-support

Cisco removes all downloads for products that are past their end-of-support date, making it impossible to obtain software or firmware from official sources for your Cisco product. Cisco claims "Note: For security purposes, upon retirement of a product, Cisco Systems purposely removes documentation, downloads, and product pages from the Cisco.com website, though you may be able to obtain peer support in the Cisco Community."

Cisco's Retired Products page with a note explaining that they purposely remove documentation, downloads and product pages from the Cisco.com website "for security purposes"

Due to the lack of current updates, end-of-life Cisco devices that are still used in production environments have been targeted with seven year old zero-day exploits. Though these exploits have been patched in newer versions there is currently no public way to obtain these updates through Cisco's site.

Consumer response

Some consumers consider Cisco's actions to be security through obscurity. If you, a consumer, have obtained obsolete Cisco hardware and wish to utilize it in a working environment, Cisco has deliberately made it harder to update your device to shield against security issues, or add features.