By Tali Tsipori, Globes, Tel Aviv, Israel
Cisco Systems Inc. is to acquire cloud security company CloudLock Inc. Cisco will pay $293 million in cash and assumed equity awards, plus additional retention-based incentives for CloudLock employees who join Cisco. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of fiscal year 2017.
Based in Waltham, Massachusetts and with a development center in Tel Aviv, CloudLock was founded in 2011 by CEO Gil Zimmermann, CTO Ron Zalkind and VP business development Tsahy Shapsa. The company has raised $39 million to date and has 150 employees, 30 of them in Israel. The company is incorporated in Israel but fully owned by its US parent company so it is unclear how much the founders still own. The major venture capital investors are Bessemer Venture Partners, Ascent and Cedar.
CloudLock specializes in cloud access security broker (CASB) technology that provides enterprises with visibility and analytics around user behavior and sensitive data in cloud services, including SaaS, IaaS and PaaS. Cisco said that the acquisition will further enhance its security portfolio and build on Cisco's Security Everywhere strategy, designed to provide protection from the cloud to the network to the endpoint.
"As companies are migrating to the cloud, they need a technology partner that can accelerate that transition and deliver critical security capabilities for all their users, apps and data in a seamless way," said Rob Salvagno, Cisco VP Corporate Development. "CloudLock brings a unique cloud-native, platform and API-based approach to cloud security which allows them to build powerful security solutions that are easy to deploy and simple to manage."
CloudLock's team will join Cisco's Networking and Security Business Group under SVP and General Manager David Goeckeler. Under the terms of the agreement.
This will be Cisco's 13th acquisition of an Israeli company.
©2016 the Globes (Tel Aviv, Israel) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
