Cisco Completes Acquisition of Lancope for Visibility, Analytics Technology

Cisco Systems (CSCO) has completed its acquisition of security startup Lancope to add continuous visibility and traffic analysis to its network security portfolio.

Lancope’s StealthWatch system provides visibility into suspicious traffic patterns inside a network to help IT administrators quickly detect a wide range of attacks.

The solution helps enterprises reduce the amount of time it takes to become aware of threats and attacks so they can respond to incidents faster, according to the company. It also improves forensic investigations and reduces risks associated with security threats.

The Lancope team has now joined the Cisco Security Business Group organization led by David Goeckeler, senior vice president and general manager of the division.

Cisco unveiled its intent to acquire Lancope in October in a blog post on its website. Under the terms of the agreement the company paid $452.5 million in cash and assumed equity awards, plus additional retention-based incentives for Lancope employees who join Cisco.

Lancope had already been a Cisco technology partner prior to acquisition, Rob Salvagno, vice president of Corporate Business Development, said in the post unveiling the acquisition plan.

“Through a successful partnership between the companies, Lancope has been part of Cisco’s security solution for many years and now we are coming together as one entity,” he said. “The combined solutions secure customers’ resources and critical assets by using their network as a sensor–providing enhanced visibility, context and control over threats.”

Lancope’s technology will also help Cisco deliver its plan to secure the network across all of the billions of devices that will be connecting to it over the next several years, a strategy the company has dubbed “Security Everywhere,” Salvagno said. In this way the network itself becomes one massive security sensor, according to the company’s plan.

“We are embedding threat protection capabilities from the enterprise infrastructure to the data center, from mobile to the cloud, and through to endpoints,” he said in the post.

The Lancope purchase also complements other security acquisitions by Cisco, including OpenDNS, Portcullis and Neohapsis, Salvagno added.