Cisco Announces Isovalent Acquisition to Boost Security

Cisco announced plans to acquire Isovalent, an open-source cloud-native networking and security firm, as part of an effort to enhance its secure networking capabilities and services.

See Also: 2023 Threat Horizons Report

Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration, said Thursday the acquisition will allow Cisco to build new multi-cloud security and networking capabilities to aid customers in accelerating their digital transformation.

“Imagine in today’s distributed environment – of applications, virtual machines, containers and cloud assets – having security controls with total visibility, without hindering networking and application performance,” Patel said. “The combination of Cisco and Isovalent will make this a reality.”

Cisco did not disclose its price for the privately held company, known for developing the critical open-source technology called eBPF, which provides developers with comprehensive operating system insights.

Isovalent also oversees Cilium, an open-source initiative the company launched to provide developers with enhanced visibility into cloud-native applications. Patel said Cisco plans to “build on the open-source power of Cilium” to create new multi-cloud security capabilities.

Cisco has made significant investments in security through a series of recent acquisitions, most notably a $28 billion agreement to purchase the security platform Splunk that was announced in September. At the time, then-Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins told investors the deal would combine Cisco’s extended detection and response platform with Splunk’s security information and event management platform to help predict and prevent critical cyberthreats (see: Cisco to Bring XDR, SIEM Together With $28B Splunk Purchase).

Cisco purchased Lightspin in March to help address cloud security risks and announced plans to buy a startup called Valtix in February as part of an effort to help clients streamline processes across public cloud environments. The company acquired Armorblox in May to bring generative artificial intelligence into its portfolio.