Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire OpenDNS

Every day, more people, processes, data and things become connected. As this trend continues to grow exponentially, so too, do opportunities for security breaches and malicious threats. With an estimated 50 billion devices being connected by 2020, enterprise customers will face greater challenges in protecting their ever-expanding networks. To address these risks Cisco is focused on providing solutions across the extended network for its customers, what we call Security Everywhere. We are embedding threat protection capabilities from the enterprise infrastructure to the data center, from mobile to the cloud, and on the endpoints within their environment.

To enhance our strategy, I am pleased to announce our intent to acquire OpenDNS, a leading provider of advanced threat protection for any device, anywhere, anytime, delivered in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. The acquisition will extend our ability to provide customers enhanced visibility and threat protection for unmonitored and potentially unsecure entry points into the network, and to quickly and efficiently deploy and integrate these capabilities as part of their defense architecture. This acquisition builds on Cisco’s security strategy, adding broad visibility and predictive threat intelligence from OpenDNS’ cloud platform, accessed by more than 65 million users daily.

To build on Cisco’s advanced threat protection capabilities, we plan to continue to innovate a cloud delivered Security platform integrating OpenDNS’ key capabilities to accelerate that work. Over time, we will look to unite our cloud-delivered solutions, enhancing Cisco’s advanced threat protection capabilities across the full attack continuum—before, during and after an attack.

The OpenDNS team will join the Cisco Security Business Group under the leadership of Senior Vice President and General Manager David Goeckeler. Their deep security expertise and key technologies will be a natural fit to Cisco’s security vision and the Security Business Group. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of fiscal 2016.