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Cisco is Acquiring PortShift to Enhance Container Apps Security

Oct. 6, 2020, 10:25 p.m.

TL;DR

Cisco Systems recently announced its plans to buy Israel-based Portshift, a Kubernetes security player. PortShift focusses on safeguarding Container Apps security and DevOps teams by deploying measures for detection and mitigation of Kubernetes misconfigurations. These misconfigurations are the leading cause of security issues in Container Apps.

Key Facts

1
PortShift was founded by Zahar Kaufman and Ran Ilany in 2018. Tel Aviv-based PortShift specializes in providing security to Container Apps running on Kubernetes from the coding stage to runtime.
2
The acquisition of PortShift will most likely conclude by the first quarter of the fiscal year 2021, subject to regulatory and customary approval. The financial terms of the merger are yet to be announced. The PortShift team will join the Emerging Technologies & Incubation group of Cisco.
3
By taking over PortShift, Cisco aims to provide enhanced security to its customers across various cloud-based apps on multiple devices.
4
With the PortShift acquisition, Cisco further expands its footprint in the security solutions market. In the last few years, Cisco has taken over Duo Security, CloudLock, SourceFire, OpenDNS, ThreatGrid, and Neohapsis to enhance its security offerings.
5
Cisco customers can expect increased operational flexibility, enhanced multi-level security, and better administrative control with the PortShift buyout.

Details

According to the Mordor Intelligence Report, the Container Apps market is set to witness 29% CAGR between 2020 and 2025. This will, in turn, boost the security solutions market for safeguarding Container Apps. As per a Veritis report, the security management market worldwide may experience growth of 30.9% between 2019 and 2024, reaching $2,178 million by 2024.

With the new acquisition, Cisco looks all set to capture a larger share of the security solutions market and boost revenues in the quarters ahead.

CISCO SYSTEMS, REVENUE FOR GROUPS OF SIMILAR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES July 25, 2020 (source: newsreoom.cisco.com)

The security revenues of Cisco increased by 10% to $814 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. It can be attributed to the growing demands of threat management solutions with the rapid increase in Internet traffic.

Portshift aligns to Cisco’s approach of providing secure connectivity between users, devices and apps, wherever they reside; visibility and actionable insights from the end-user to the application; a simplified consumption model that includes cloud-first Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) capabilities; commitment to an open-source and open standards philosophy; and breaking down the siloes between developers, security teams, infrastructure teams, operations and SRE teams.
Liz Centoni
Senior Vice President, Emerging Technologies and Incubation, Cisco