Cisco completes Sourcefire purchase

Cisco has bolstered its threat-protection portfolio after completing the $2.7 billion acquisition of US-based network security vendor Sourcefire.

Cisco paid $76 in cash per Sourcefire share in a deal first announced in July. With the transactions complete, Sourcefire has now been delisted from the NASDAQ.

As part of the merger, Sourcefire founder and CTO Martin Roesch has been named vice president and chief architect for Cisco’s Security Group. Sourcefire employees have joined this business group.

Cisco plans to use the acquired technology and capabilities to further develop both its own ASA firewall family product line and Sourcefire's FirePOWER platform.

Christopher Young, senior vice president of the security group, said the acquisition was planned to support the company's ambition of developing a threat-centric security model capable of addressing the full attack continuum.

“To truly protect against all possible attack vectors, our focus is to examine the nature of modern networked environments and devices and to defend them by deeply understanding and analysing the mindset of the attackers,” he said.

Cisco advised shareholders that it expects the Sourcefire acquisition to be “slightly dilutive” to the company's core earnings for its current fiscal year.

Image courtesy of Leonardo Rizzi under CC

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