Acquisitions

SAN JOSE, Calif. – June 30,  2021 – Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO)

Today Cisco is excited to announce the completion of the acquisition of Kenna Security, Inc., a cybersecurity leader that offers a risk-based vulnerability management platform that prioritizes vulnerability risks.  Kenna’s risk-based vulnerability management technology enables organizations to work cross-functionally to rapidly identify, prioritize and remediate cyber risks.

The world is dynamic as it has ever been, and organizations are struggling to stay secure. As we shift to a work from anywhere model, employees are connecting to networks with company-owned and personal devices and are increasingly reliant on cloud technologies to stay productive. With this increased accessibility it has also expanded the attack surface.

By bringing Kenna's open market-leading machine-learning risk-based vulnerability management platform together with Cisco's open SecureX platform, we will create the industry's largest endpoint security footprint. We believe Cisco will transform the way security and IT teams collaborate to reduce the attack surface and the time it takes to detect and respond.

Kenna brings highly skilled risk-based vulnerability management talent to the Cisco Security Platform and Response Team.

Q: Can you explain Kenna's offering?
A: The number and breadth of vulnerabilities that the typical organization is faced with is staggering and most can only address a small percentage of them. Our research shows that in the absence of automation and staff, half of all legitimate alerts are not remediated (Cisco's 2020 CISO Benchmark Study) Kenna enables organizations both large and small to tackle vulnerabilities that are the highest risk to their specific environment by prioritizing the criticality of over 7 billion vulnerabilities. This is accomplished by Kenna's risk-based vulnerability management platform that effectively prioritizes vulnerabilities with maximum context for organizations using machine learning and data science.

Q: Why did Cisco choose Kenna?
A: Kenna has proven its ability to effectively prioritize vulnerabilities for the most demanding customers in some of the most highly regulated industries worldwide. When integrated into the Cisco SecureX platform, Cisco can deliver a combined threat and risk-based vulnerability management solution that provides visibility, detection, vulnerability assessment, policy management, enforcement, and remediation.  Ultimately, customers will save time and resources while reducing their organization's attack surface.

Q: Why is now the right time to acquire Kenna?
A: Since the general availability (June 2020) of Cisco SecureX, Cisco's cloud-native, built-in security platform that connects customers' existing infrastructure, more than 7,000 customers have rapidly adopted it to reduce dwell time and human-powered tasks involved with detecting, investigating, and remediating threats. By adding Kenna's risk-based vulnerability capabilities to SecureX, customers will be able to address critical challenges by quickly generating prioritized lists of vulnerabilities; further streamline collaboration between security and IT Ops; and automating remediation to improve their overall security posture.

Q: What product gaps is Cisco trying to address with this acquisition?
A: Kenna complements the SecureX platform's threat management capabilities by adding risk-based vulnerability management to enable practitioners to respond to vulnerabilities according to real-world measures of risk. This combined capability is unprecedented in the industry today, and it will further transform how security and IT teams collaborate to more effectively manage the overall risk for an organization.

Kenna Customers and Partners:

If you are an existing customer or partner of Kenna and have questions about your product or service, please continue to contact your existing Kenna representative.

Cisco Customers and Partners:

If you are an existing customer or partner of Cisco and have questions about your product or services, please continue to contact your existing Cisco representative.

Current Kenna customers and partners should continue to contact Kenna for support on their products, and to renew their service support contracts. Any changes to the processes will be communicated with ample time.

Cisco customers should continue to use the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) for technical support on Cisco products. For more information about opening a technical support case and for regional TAC telephone numbers, refer to Cisco Worldwide Support Contacts.