Networking technology giant Cisco has today announced, what could possibly be one of the biggest acquisitions in the networking space. The giant is buying cloud-based security service provider OpenDNS in a deal worth $635 million.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2016. As per terms of this deal, the OpenDNS team will join Cisco’s Security Business Group. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay $635 million in cash and assumed equity awards, plus retention based incentives for OpenDNS.

The OpenDNS team will now work under the leadership of David Goeckeler, General Manager and Senior Vice President. This acquisition will boost Cisco’s Security Everywhere approach by broad visibility and threat intelligence from the OpenDNS platform.

OpenDNS was founded in 2005 in San Francisco. It provides cloud based cross-platform online threat protection service. With OpenDNS, you don’t need to install any software or hardware at your end. It routes your internet connection through its own servers for protecting it.

Hilton Romanski, Cisco’s Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, said,

As more people, processes, data and things become connected, opportunities for security breaches and malicious threats grow exponentially when away from secure enterprise networks. OpenDNS has a strong team with deep security expertise and key technology that complements Cisco’s security vision. Together, we will help customers protect their extended network wherever the user is and regardless of the device.

The evolution of Internet of Everything (IoE) is expected to spur the connection of nearly 50 billion devices by 2020. This will create a new wave of security breaches across networks. Combining OpenDNS’ predictive threat intelligence and cloud platform with Cisco’s security and threat capabilities, it can reduce the time to detect and respond to threats, and mitigate risk of a security breach. It is expected to enhance advanced threat protection across the full attack continuum—before, during and after an attack.

Earlier, OpenDNS announced that it had more than 10,000 paying customers. It also over 50 million users who are using its free service. The company runs 24 data centers, and claims to have more than 2 percent of the world’s DNS traffic with an ever-impressive 100 percent up-time. The company states that even after this acquisition, free version of OpenDNS will be available.

The company claims that currently more than 65 million people use OpenDNS every day for a safer and faster Internet, including companies from Fortune 500’s to small businesses.

As for Csico, this acquisition will be a part of its continued strategy of building up its security infrastructure business. Last year, Cisco acquired cyber security firm Sourcefire for about $2.7 billion and malware technology company ThreatGrid Inc. About 4.3% of Cisco’s overall revenue of 2014 came from security business.


 

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