Cisco Buying Kenna Security for Vulnerability Management

Cisco is acquiring Kenna Security, a privately held company that provides risk-based vulnerability management technology.

Kenna’s technology allows organizations to work cross-functionally to identify, prioritize and remediate cyber risks. Its technology integrates with all major industry vulnerability assessment platforms.

With Kenna’s technology, Cisco Security will combine threat and risk-based vulnerability management as part of its SecureX platform. That will expand the platform experience, and enable scorecards for security controls and threat response performance.

The acquisition should close this summer. Cisco isn’t disclosing financial details of the transaction.

Finding Threats Faster

Al Huger is vice president and general manager of platform and response for Cisco Security.

Cisco’s Al Huger

“Combining SecureX’s … threat intelligence with Kenna’s vulnerability management capabilities will help customers find threats faster, improve collaboration between security and IT teams, and ultimately reduce the attack surface,” he said.

Cisco believes a more efficient and effective approach is to integrate threat management and cyber hygiene together, Huger said.

“That’s why we chose Kenna Security,” he said. “Combining their … vulnerability management platform with Cisco’s open SecureX platform will create the industry’s largest endpoint security footprint. We believe Cisco will transform the way security and IT teams collaborate to reduce the attack surface, and the time it takes to detect and respond.”

Seven thousand customers have adopted the Cisco SecureX platform, Huger said. By adding Kenna, customers will be able to address critical challenges by generating prioritized lists of vulnerabilities. That will further streamline collaboration between security and IT Ops, and automate remediation to improve their overall security.

Cisco, Kenna Partner Impact

“There is no impact or change to partners at the time of this announcement,” Huger said. “Between now and when the acquisition closes, Cisco and Kenna will continue to operate as separate companies with each providing their current offers. Timing of the availability for Cisco partners to sell Kenna solutions, and more information about how Cisco and Kenna will come together will be available after the close of the acquisition.”

Karim Toubba is Kenna’s CEO.

“Cisco is on a mission to reshape the way we think about security,” he said. “And together we have a unique opportunity to fundamentally transform how organizations effectively manage risk at scale. The breadth and scale of Cisco coupled with Kenna’s mastery of machine learning (ML) and data science will reshape how the entire industry addresses cyber risk.”