Cisco to Acquire Duo Security for its Multi-Cloud Efforts

Cisco announced that it plans to acquire privately-held Duo Security. Cisco will pay $2.35 billion in cash and assumed equity awards for Duo Security’s outstanding shares, warrants and equity incentives on a fully-diluted basis.

One of the ways to access enterprise systems is compromising user passwords or devices. The current trend to access such critical enterprise systems remotely is on the rise, by employees, customers, and partners.

Duo security delivers unified access security and multi-factor authentication through the cloud by verifying the identity of users and the health of their devices before granting them access to applications. Acknowledging this, Cisco and Duo Security are closely aligned in the approach of designing infrastructure for the extended enterprise where users, devices, and applications are the center of the modern security architecture, the announcement said.
Cisco customers will able to securely connect to any application on any network, devices and cloud security platforms once Cisco integrates Duo security's zero-trust authentication and access products

Integration of Duo security solution with Cisco's network, device, and cloud security platforms will help,

• Extend intent-based networking into multi-cloud environments. The on-premises network access control capabilities of Identity Services Engine (ISE) will be extended by Duo’s software as a service-based (SaaS) model to provide cloud-delivered application access control.
• Simplify policy for cloud security. Cisco’s Secure Internet Gateway, Cloud Access Security Broker, Enterprise Mobility Management, and several other cloud-delivered products will leverage Duo's trusted identity awareness capabilities.
• Expands endpoint visibility coverage. Duo acquisition will bring visibility into mobile and unmanaged devices in addition to 180 million Cisco managed devices.

Duo Security’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Dug Song, said, “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 securityCisco 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. By joining forces with the world’s largest networking and enterprise security company, we have a unique opportunity to drive change at a massive scale, and reshape the industry.”

Executive vice president and general manager of Cisco’s networking and security business, David Goeckeler, said, “In today’s multicloud world, the modern workforce is connecting to critical business applications both on- and off-premise. 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.”

According to the announcement, the acquisition is expected to close during the first quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2019.