Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) has announced its intent to acquire OpenDNS, a privately held security company based in San Francisco. According to a Cisco press release, the OpenDNS technology provides "advanced threat protection for any device, anywhere, anytime." Cisco says the acquisition will boost its Security Everywhere approach by adding broad visibility and threat intelligence from the OpenDNS cloud-delivered platform.
In the release, Cisco notes that "the burgeoning digital economy and the Internet of Everything (IoE) are expected to spur the connection of nearly 50 billion devices by 2020, creating a vast new wave of opportunities for security breaches across networks."
"The faster customers can deploy a solution, the faster they can detect, block and remediate these emerging security threats," adds the company. "OpenDNS' cloud platform offers security delivered in a Software-as-a- Service (SaaS) model, making it quick and easy for customers to deploy and integrate as part of their defense architecture or incident response strategies. By providing comprehensive threat awareness and pervasive visibility, the combination of Cisco and OpenDNS will enhance advanced threat protection across the full attack continuum—before, during and after an attack."
Combining OpenDNS' broad visibility, unique predictive threat intelligence and cloud platform with Cisco's robust security and threat capabilities is expected to increase awareness across the extended network, both on- and off-premise, while reducing the time to detect and respond to threats, and mitigate risk of a security breach. "Typically devices and people connected to the network are easier to identify and track for potential security threats," notes Cisco. "However, in a world in which devices and people can connect from anywhere at anytime, enterprise IT teams have increasingly limited visibility into potential threats from these unmonitored and potentially unsecure entry points into the network, creating tremendous security risk."
The OpenDNS team will join the Cisco Security Business Group organization led by David Goeckeler, senior vice president and general manager. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay $635 million in cash and assumed equity awards, plus retention based incentives for OpenDNS. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of fiscal year 2016, subject to customary closing conditions.
"As more people, processes, data and things become connected, opportunities for security breaches and malicious threats grow exponentially when away from secure enterprise networks," concludes Hilton Romanski, Cisco chief technology and strategy officer. "OpenDNS has a strong team with deep security expertise and key technology that complements Cisco's security vision. Together, we will help customers protect their extended network wherever the user is and regardless of the device."
