Cisco has announced its intent to acquire privately-held Duo Security.
The deal will purportedly see Cisco pay $2.35bn in cash and assumed equity awards for Duo Security’s outstanding shares, warrants and equity incentives on a fully-diluted basis.
Duo Security, headquartered in Michigan, provides unified access security and multi-factor authentication through the cloud, offering zero-trust authentication and access products.
“In today’s multicloud world, the modern workforce is connecting to critical business applications both on- and off-premise,” said David Goeckeler, executive vice-president and general manager of Cisco’s networking and security business.
“IT teams are responsible for protecting hundreds of different perimeters that span anywhere a user makes an access decision. Duo’s zero-trust authentication and access products integrated with our network, device and cloud security platforms will enable our customers to address the complexity and challenges that stem from multi-and hybrid-cloud environments.”
The deal is expected to be completed at some point during Q1 of Cisco’s fiscal year 2019, with Duo Security, which will continue to be led by Song, joining Cisco’s Networking and Security business led by Goeckeler.
“Our partnership is the product of the rapid evolution of the IT landscape alongside a modernizing workforce, which has completely changed how organizations must think about security,” said Dug Song, Duo Security’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “Cisco created the modern IT infrastructure, and together we will rapidly accelerate our mission of securing access for all users, with any device, connecting to any application, on any network.”