Cisco, the IT and networking veteran, has revealed its plans to acquire CloudLock, a cyber security company, for $293 million in cash and assumed equity awards.
CloudLock team will join Cisco’s networking and security business group under Senior Vice-President and General Manager, David Goeckeler.
CloudLock specializes in cloud access security broker (CASB) technology that provides enterprises with visibility and analytics around user behavior and sensitive data in cloud services, including SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and IDaaS. The acquisition, according to Cisco, will further enhance its security portfolio and build on Cisco’s Security Everywhere strategy, designed to provide protection from the cloud to the network to the endpoint.
“As companies are migrating to the cloud, they need a technology partner that can accelerate that transition and deliver critical security capabilities for all their users, apps and data in a seamless way,” said Rob Salvagno, Vice-President, Cisco Corporate Development. “CloudLock brings a unique cloud-native, platform and API-based approach to cloud security which allows them to build powerful security solutions that are easy to deploy and simple to manage.”
CloudLock serves technology that uses APIs to let enterprises monitor security on their cloud apps. So it can monitor files shared via Box, Dropbox, Office 365, Slack and Amazon Web Services. It claims 700 customers including Office365, Google Drive,HBO, Motorola, the US Army, and NASA.
“As enterprises are retooling themselves and increasingly building their futures in the cloud, security has not only become a top business priority, it is now universally demanded by businesses and individuals alike, as a necessity to keep their cloud applications, their data, and their businesses safe,” CloudLock Co-founder and CEO Gil Zimmerman said. “The ability to protect all of those assets in the cloud now has a name, Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB).”
According to Gartner, CASB solutions will go from five percent penetration in 2015 to over 85 percent by 2020. Zimmerman said that when CloudLock started talking to Cisco about potential opportunities to collaborate it realized how much the companies had in common:
“We share the same vision on the future of security that focuses on a platform that scales to any size, provides immediate value, is simple to manage and leverage, and is easily extensible through APIs. We also realized that by joining forces, we could accelerate the execution of our vision with greater investments in research and development, the CloudLock CyberLab, partner enablement, and global reach which is far greater than we could have ever achieved on our own. Customers will experience new capabilities and offerings that the combined Cisco Security offerings bring, unparalleled in the industry. On all fronts, the customer experience will only improve, even with the bar already set so high.”