Silicon Valley tech giant Cisco just announced that it’s bringing a Chicago company into the fold.
On Friday, Cisco announced its intent to acquire Kenna Security. The deal, the terms of which were not disclosed, is expected to close in Q4 2021.
Kenna Security has created a cybersecurity platform that uses machine learning to spot potential cyber risks, and then identify which ones pose the biggest threat. This triaging is important because a single company can sometimes have millions of potential vulnerabilities, but only have the resources to take care of a fraction of them. Kenna’s software helps them identify, prioritize and fix vulnerabilities without having to handle every single issue.
As the Colonial Pipeline hack from this week shows, companies of all kinds are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks. Operators had to reportedly pay $5 million to get the pipeline up and running again, but in the meantime, gas prices went up across the country with shortages in a handful of places. In short, these cyberattacks have real-world consequences.
Cisco is planning to integrate Kenna’s offering into its own cybersecurity platform, SecureX, which already combines endpoint, network, cloud and app protection, along with security automation and a range of security tools.
“Hybrid work is here to stay, and the increasing complexity of cybersecurity is our customers’ biggest challenge. We must radically simplify security to stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape,” Cisco Security and Collaboration SVP Jeetu Patel said in a statement. “Our goal is to unify all critical control points into a single platform. With the addition of Kenna Security, we will fundamentally strengthen our platform experience by giving customers the ability to prioritize vulnerabilities based on a robust risk methodology that is tuned to their unique needs.”
Kenna Security CEO Karim Toubba added: “Cisco is on a mission to reshape the way we think about security, and together we have a unique opportunity to fundamentally transform how organizations effectively manage risk at scale. As malicious actors continue to evolve their methods, we need to make it easier than ever for customers to predict, detect, prioritize and respond to the security threats that matter. The breadth and scale of Cisco coupled with Kenna Security’s mastery of machine-learning and data science will reshape how the entire industry addresses cyber risk.”
Cisco has been on an acquisition spree lately, acquiring Sedona Systems on Tuesday and Socio Labs on Wednesday. That makes Kenna Cisco’s third acquisition of just this week. This rapid acquisition strategy will likely accelerate growth for an already massive company.
Cisco plans to onboard the Kenna team into its Security Business Group.
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