The analyst believes the growing cloud ecosystem of Cisco to be the primary driver behind the announcement as the company felt the need for a robust and efficient security service for its cloud business. The company has raised roughly $30 million from investors including Ascent Venture Partners, Cedar Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce.
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The Massachussetts-based startup, launched in 2007 by three co-founders who met while serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, provides cloud access security broker (CASB) technology that allows organisations to monitor the security of cloud-based content and enforce access policies regardless of the device used to access the data. The acquisition will further enhance Cisco’s security portfolio and build on Cisco’s Security Everywhere strategy, created to provide protection from the cloud to the network to the endpoint, the company said.
Industry observers said CloudLock stands out from similar firms in that it is cloud-native and builds on the APIs used by other cloud platforms, while competitors have often focused on extending familiar security methods based on on-premises software.
The $293 million deal for the closely held company includes a combination of cash and assumed equity awards, Cisco said. CloudLock’s team will join Cisco’s Networking and Security Business Group under its Senior Vice President and General Manager David Goeckeler, and the acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of the 2017 fiscal year, pending certain conditions.
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The CloudLock deal is just the latest in a long line of security-based acquisitions by Cisco. Combined, Cisco’s purchases have stitched together an enterprise IT play with a strong bent on cloud and network security. CloudLock is also expected to provide Cisco with a competitive edge and speed up the process of cloud adoption as security has been of great concern to many enterprises that are still utilizing traditional host server database architecture. The stock now trades at $27.66 having risen by 1.26% since the open.
