Cisco Spends $183 million To Acquire ScanSafe

Cisco Systems has continued its efforts beef up its presence in the cloud after announcing plans to acquire software-as-a-service vendor ScanSafe.

The deal, made for approximately $183 million (£112 million), is expected to close in the second quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2010, and comes only two weeks after security software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor Purewire was gobbled up by Barracuda Networks.

According to Cisco, ScanSafe’s technology will be used to expand Cisco’s web security portfolio both on-premise and in-the-cloud, building on the capabilities the company added when it acquired IronPort in 2007.

In addition to the deal, the company also announced plans to integrate ScanSafe’s service with Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client to provide a secure mobility solution. Cisco also announced that ScanSafe’s global network of carrier-grade data centers and multi-tenant architecture will be utilised in order to provide new cloud-security services.

“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, in a statement.

“Cisco will provide customers the flexibility to choose the deployment model that best suits their organisation and deliver anytime, anywhere protection against web-based threats,” he added.