As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, and companies across sectors tighten their purse strings as the global economy worsens, customers prefer to stick with vendors they know, said Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins.

“Customers in times like these want to go with people they trust and know, and I think that will work in our favor,” Robbins said on Cisco’s third-quarter 2020 earnings call. Specifically, he’s talking about areas like campus networking where Cisco dominates the market.

However, Robbins also sees places where Cisco can gain market share. Because the pandemic spread so quickly and essentially shut down business as we knew it across the globe, companies want to make sure they are prepared for the next disaster.

While Cisco and its customers have faced other disasters in the past such as the Great Recession, “the one difference that I see in this one is that this came upon us so quickly and so consistently around the world,” Robbins said. “I do think customers are now stepping back and asking themselves, ‘what do I need to do to harden my infrastructure and to better prepare my business for the next time something like that happens?’”

To this point, Robbins said he believes Cisco can gain market share in hyperscale and service provider sales, specifically with its new 8000 Series Routers, which he previously said will help service providers reduce the cost of building and operating internet-scale and 5G networks.

“Both of those sets of customers will continue doing evaluations and new deployments because they have to, because they have requirements that are increasing on a daily basis,” he said on the Q3 earnings call. “I feel good about where we are, and the things that we are in control of right now. I think we’re in a pretty good position.”

Wall Street agreed with Robbins and Cisco stock inches up in after-hours trading today despite the networking giant reporting an 8% year-over-year revenue decline for the third quarter. Cisco reported 79 cents in earnings per share on $12 billion in revenue, narrowly beating analysts’ expectations.

Cisco’s total product revenue dropped 12% compared to last year to $8.6 billion. Infrastructure platforms, which include switches and routers, took the biggest hit, dropping 15% compared to last year to $6.4 million. “This is the area that was most impacted by the supply chain challenges,” Cisco CFO Kelly Kramer said. Meanwhile, Cisco’s applications revenue dropped 5% to $1.4 million.

However, its security business grew 6% to $776 million as customers scrambled to secure their now-remote workforce and devices. “Being the largest enterprise security company in the world, we are uniquely positioned to safeguard our customers, wherever they work,” Robbins said.

Later on the call, Robbins said Cisco expects customers’ security spending to continue even after the pandemic. “And we’re definitely going to continue to accelerate the development and work around our security portfolio as it relates to remote work and cloud connectivity, because we think that’s only going to accelerate as well.”

Moor Insights and Strategy President Patrick Moorhead said considering the pandemic, Cisco performed well during the quarter.

“All things considered, Cisco had a good third quarter. The product lines you would have expected to be up (given COVID-19) were up, like WebEx, subscriptions, and security,” he said. “Longer-term, I believe the company is well-positioned to take advantage of opportunities in collaboration, edge networking (SD-WAN), security, highest-speed networking/inter-networking, and hybrid cloud.”

The company expects revenue to decline 8.5% to 11.5% in Q4.