Tech Shout!

Networking leader Cisco Systems has announced that it has finally completed the acquisition formalities of IronPort Systems, Inc., which is privately held provider of e-mail and web security products that offer protection to businesses of all sizes - from small organizations to Fortune 1,000 firms - from spam, spyware, phishing, and other Internet security threats.

On January 4, 2007, the acquisition news had been revealed. $830 million in cash and stock is what Cisco has had to pay to but IronPort. No with this move, IronPort’s products and technology will make it possible for Cisco to expand its Self-Defending Network strategy to now include Wide Traffic Inspection capabilities, making it certain that a new approach blending the depth of network-level security with the breadth of abilities for inspecting e-mail, web and Instant Messaging traffic.

With this acquisition Cisco also gets IronPort’s SenderBase, which is the world’s first and largest e-mail and Web traffic monitoring service. It is a unique database that gathers data from over 100,000 Internet service providers, universities and corporations worldwide. It measures over110 parameters for any active e-mail and Web server on the Internet, helping to decide the reliability of the source of any e-mail or Web traffic. This massive database receives more than 5 billion queries per day, and because of its size and scope, it can provide an enormously precise, global view of the behavior of e-mail and web servers across the Internet.

“The acquisition of IronPort provides Cisco with a proven business that is already respected as a leader in the messaging and Web security space,” Richard Palmer, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Security Technology Group said. “The addition of IronPort represents the next chapter in the evolution of the Self-Defending Network, and it accelerates Cisco’s growth opportunities. Most important, it dramatically extends the solutions we can provide our customers as security threats and demands evolve.”

The addition of IronPort’s content security technology, along with the existing Self-Defending Network, will make it possible for Cisco to provide Wide Traffic Inspection that integrates network and content analysis to stop the most sophisticated threats and protect all major application protocols, endpoints, and the network itself.

“IronPort is known for building industry-leading e-mail appliances, but when we introduced our Web security appliance last year, we realized the power of products working better together. Our e-mail products are better because we have a web product and vice versa. Merging this technology into Cisco’s Self-Defending Network portfolio creates even more powerful solutions for the marketplace,” said Scott Weiss, former CEO of IronPort and now general manager of the IronPort Business Unit reporting to Palmer.