Cisco Beefs Security with Lancope

Cisco (News - Alert) has announced its intent to acquire Lancope, Inc. The goal behind the acquisition is to further develop and advance Cisco's Security Everywhere strategy, which provides advanced threat protection. This is a full attack approach that is not only defensive, but proactively follows up an attack with enhanced security and information.

Lancope, Inc. is an American company founded in 2000 with its headquarters in Alpharetta, Georgia. The company specializes in flow analysis for security and network performance monitoring. Its best known product series is StealthWatch, which collects and analyzes NetFlow, IPFIX, sFlow and other types of data to provide network visibility and detect problems which might impact security or performance.

If all goes as planned, the deal will close sometime in the second quarter of next year. The deal has Cisco paying $452.5 million in cash and equity deal. After 15 years of being in business, Lancope has only raised $24.6 million from its investors, so this is a very substantial deal for the company.

Once the deal has been completed, the Lancope team will become part of the Cisco Security Business Group. Apparently, this collaboration is nothing new, according to Cisco’s vice president of corporate development Rob Salvagno. The two companies have worked well together in the past.

In a statement, Salvagno said, “As enterprises digitize, security challenges rapidly evolve. Real time visibility and understanding of the behavior of every machine or device on the network becomes critical in adapting the ability of enterprises to identify and respond to the next wave of cyber threats. Cisco is committed to helping organizations defend their networks and devices. Together with Lancope, our combined solutions can help turn a customer’s entire network into a security sensor.”