Since November 17, 2011, the Cisco Certified Security Professional (CCSP) certification has been retired and will not be offered anymore from Cisco. People who are already certified (like myself) as CCSP professionals, will keep their certification until it expires within the usual 3 year period that Cisco certifications last.
For example, looking at my certification progress here, I have been certified as CCSP since 7/25/03 and I have been renewing my certification since then. It will expire on 2/25/14 and after that I will lose this certification because Cisco decided out of the blue to just retire CCSP. This really sucks. I remember taking 4 exams to earn CCSP at the first place, and then taking 3 more exams over the years to renew it. And now what? In 2014 I will not have a certification anymore?
Cisco states that if you are still interested in a professional level security certification, you must pursue the new CCNP Security certification. Also, those professionals who are already CCSP certified, may be eligible to receive credit towards some of the exams of the new CCNP Security certification. Basically, people who have just recently taken the newest CCSP exams (like 642-617 FIREWALL v1.0 , 642-627 IPS 7.0, 642-637 SECURE v1.0, 642-647 VPN v1.0) they are given credit towards all the CCNP Security exams and thus they don’t need to take other exams . HOWEVER, people who took older exams (like myself) and got certified, we are in BAD LUCK. Basically from all the exams I have taken, only one can be used towards the new CCNP Security and therefore I have to take 3 more exams to become CCNP Security certified. With a full time job, a family and two kids, it will be a real struggle for me. More info about Retired CCSP here.