Cisco is enhancing its security solutions to meet the growing daily trend of people, processes, data and things becoming connected. To fulfill the increasing demand for more secure products and services, the company has announced its plans to acquire cloud-based security company OpenDNS, which will build on the company's security strategy and take advantage of OpenDNS' cloud platform, accessed daily by over 65 million users.
Based in San Francisco, OpenDNS offers content filtering and anti-phishing options to the traditional domain name system (DNS). It uses what is known as "predictive intelligence" in blocking threats such as phishing, botnets and malware that are usually undetected by firewalls and antivirus programs. This type of service is delivered to any equipment that is connected to the Internet.
"With an estimated 50 billion devices being connected by 2020, enterprise customers will face greater challenges in protecting their ever-expanding networks," wrote chief technology and strategy officer Hilton Romanski on Cisco's blog page. "We are embedding threat protection capabilities from the enterprise infrastructure to the data center, from mobile to the cloud, and on the endpoints within their environment."
Over the years, Cisco has acquired a number of companies that complement its strong focus on detecting malware and other key security components. This year, it successfully acquired security advisory company Neohapsis. Likewise, it also bought ThreatGRID, a malware analysis company, and Sourcefire in 2014 and 2013, respectively.
According to MarketsandMarkets, a market research firm, growth of the global cybersecurity market is estimated to reach $170.21 billion toward the year 2020, which is a huge leap from the $106.32 billion of 2015.
In addition to the $635 million cash, the deal also includes assumed equity awards and retention-based incentives for each member of the OpenDNS staff. The latter will then be assimilated into the company's Security Business Group and will be placed under the leadership of David Goeckeler, Cisco's senior VP and general manager.
With the two companies working together to deliver enhanced security solutions, customers can expect to get enhanced protection before, during and after an attack on their network.
Cisco's is slated to finalize its acquisition deal in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2016.
