Cisco acquires Kenna Security, makers of a vulnerability management platform

Cisco on Friday announced it plans to acquire Santa Clara, Calif.-based Kenna Security, makers of a risk-based vulnerability management platform. 

Kenna is the first significant acquisition for Cisco's security business since its $2.35 billion purchase of Duo Security in 2018. Financial terms of the Kenna acquisition were not disclosed. 

Kenna Security uses machine learning and data science to track and predict real-world exploitations, with the aim of helping security teams manage the threat landscape as it evolves. Cisco said Kenna has over 14 million assets protected and over 12.7 billion managed vulnerabilities.

With Kenna's technology, Cisco plans to combine threat and risk-based vulnerability management as part of the SecureX platform. Cisco said the integration will help customers prioritize vulnerabilities, speed and automate decision making and accelerate response time to cyber incidents. 

"With Kenna Security as part of SecureX, we will bridge our leading threat management capabilities with its risk-based vulnerability management to dramatically enhance our platform approach for customers," said Gee Rittenhouse, the head of Cisco's security business group. "Additionally, the combination of Kenna Security and SecureX will allow customers to address critical challenges by generating prioritized lists of vulnerabilities; streamlining collaboration between security and IT teams; and automating remediation to improve their overall security posture."

Introduced in March 2020, SecureX is the centerpiece of Cisco's security portfolio. The cloud-native security platform aims to give businesses better visibility across their security infrastructure via analytics and workflow automation. According to Cisco, SecureX unifies visibility into a company's existing security products, including those from Cisco as well as third-party providers. 

Cisco's security group is becoming a key growth driver for the company. In Q2, Cisco's security revenue was up 10% to $822 million.