Networking giant Cisco is at it again - further building out its formidable security portfolio through startup acquisitions. The latest addition is Isovalent, an emerging leader in providing visibility and control for cloud-native applications. As enterprises rapidly migrate critical systems to the cloud, Isovalent’s innovations help ensure security keeps pace.
Isovalent has made waves by heavily contributing to open source projects like eBPF and Cilium. eBPF offers deep visibility into operating system activities, while Cilium provides the same for cloud native apps. Combined they deliver unprecedented monitoring and governance across cloud infrastructure and workloads. In fact Cilium now secures hosted services from AWS, Google Cloud, and other major platforms.
By snapping up Isovalent, Cisco gains valuable intellectual property and talent around these open standards - along with Isovalent’s own Tetragon tool for security analytics. Rather than lock down these technologies, Cisco commits to championing open collaboration around them. Much like Kubernetes, eBPF and Cilium stand to benefit from vendor-neutral growth.
As Cisco’s Jeetu Patel commented, open standards help the entire security industry “co-innovate” against shared adversaries. The more eBPF and Cilium spread, the more insights vendors can collectively glean. So Cisco seeks to accelerate adoption rather than limit competitors’ access.
For cloud-focused customers, Cisco continues assembling an enviable catalog of security solutions. Offerings now stretch from core networking protections to identity and access management, managed detection and response, email security, and seemingly everything in between!
And the Isovalent pickup further cements Cisco as a preferred enterprise partner for multi-cloud and hybrid environments. It also strengthens integration opportunities with recent acquisitions like Kenna Security, Sedona Systems, Reposify, and ThousandEyes for end-to-end visibility and threat awareness.
So while the acquisition price remains undisclosed, it’s sure to be money well spent by Cisco as it fuses Isovalent’s talents and IP into its expanding security universe. Expect more seamless, intelligent safeguards across on-prem and cloud deployments. And partners worldwide gain a vested advocate of the vital eBPF and Cilium projects within Cisco.
It will likely take months to finalize the acquisition and integrate products and teams. But the long-term outlook shines bright. As cyber risks grow exponentially amid cloud migrations, proactive vendors like Cisco shore up defenses across the modern attack surface. Isovalent provides another breakthrough piece securing the cloud-native frontier.
tl;dr
-
Cisco purchasing cloud-native security upstart Isovalent and its open source contributions
-
Isovalent spearheaded eBPF for network/OS visibility and Cilium for securing cloud apps
-
Acquisition cements Cisco as enterprise leader spanning on-prem and multi-cloud
-
Cisco endorses open standards, will champion eBPF and Cilium community growth
-
Buy continues Cisco’s 2023 acquisition spree strengthening security offerings
-
Deal enhances cloud security for partners and customers amid widespread migrations