Networking giant Cisco Systems is pitching itself further in the Cloud security market with the planned $183 million acquisition of security-as-a-service firm ScanSafe.
Assuming the deal goes through, ScanSafe's on-demand web security service will be integrated into Cisco's AnyConnect virtual private network client, while the firm's data centre infrastructure will help to boost Cisco's cloud computing capabilities.
"With the acquisition of ScanSafe, Cisco is executing on our vision to build a borderless network security architecture that combines network and cloud-based services for advanced security enforcement," said Tom Gillis, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Security Technology Business Unit. "Cisco will provide customers with the flexibility to choose the deployment model that best suits their organisation, and deliver anytime, anywhere protection against web-based threats."
A good fit?
The deal should be a good fit, according to analysts. “Cisco sees the ScanSafe technology as complementary to its own web security products, which are largely based on 'reputation filtering' of websites. In the technical world, 'reputation' goes beyond assessing the owner of the site and assesses its history. However, ScanSafe's technology adds a useful dimension,” noted Graham Titterington, analyst with research house Ovum.
“Cisco's strategy is to continue to operate the ScanSafe enterprise service in its current form for the present and to integrate the services over time. Cisco also plans to add ScanSafe technology to its IronPort web security appliances and its AnyConnect VPN client product. Cisco will be able to broaden the perspective of ScanSafe. The main difference between Cisco and most of its competitors is that Cisco implements security in the network rather than on servers.”
Peter Firstbrook of Gartner said the takeover represents “a strategic commitment to the fast-growing market for security services delivered as software-as-a-service”. He said: “ScanSafe's acquisition indicates Cisco's commitment to the security-as-a-service market, and gives Cisco an opportunity to market these services to its large-enterprise customers that need SWG protection for their mobile users and small remote offices.
“Cisco gains ScanSafe's expertise in building and operating multitenant data centres. Gartner believes that Cisco will use these data centers during 2011 to deliver a new security-as-a-service-based e-mail service built on the ScanSafe multitenant architecture. This offering will likely complement Cisco's hosted IronPort e-mail security service.
But he cautioned that it won't be entirely plain sailing. “Cisco faces cultural and product integration challenges with this acquisition, including training a sales force geared toward selling hardware infrastructure to sell services; integrating the ScanSafe endpoint client with Cisco's remote access/AnyConnectVPNclient and delivering a unified IronPort/ScanSafe reporting solution, which Gartner estimates will require at minimum six months; building a unified policy management console to enable consistent policies across S-Series appliances and ScanSafe services, which Gartner believes will take at least a year.”
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