Dallas, Texas 10/15/2013 (Financialstrend) – Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is a market leader which provides hardware and software which powers networking and communication devices. On October 7, CISCO announced that it has successful completed the acquisition of Sourcefire (NASDAQ: FIRE). Fire is a market leader in providing niche intuitive end to end cyber security solutions.
Cisco has been attempting to bolster its security solutions portfolio in a bid to augment its network infrastructure solutions. This acquisition of FIRE will help Cisco emerge as a comprehensive provider of information security solutions and will complement its existing solutions around identity management and data encryption. The network major is attempting to reinvent itself and its offerings to address the needs of its customers who are looking for end to end enterprise wide solutions which will help connect and secure devices and storage infrastructure spread across the cloud and mobile devices.
The security portfolio that Cisco is stitching together will help it provide security infrastructure which will operate on a “threat-centric security model” across multiple data touch points. Christopher Young who is the senior vice president of Cisco Security portfolio has been quoted as saying “To truly protect against all possible attack vectors, our focus is to examine the nature of modern networked environments and devices and to defend them by deeply understanding and analyzing the mindset of the attackers.”
Cisco has agreed to pay $76 per share of FIRE. The entire deal is expected to be in the range of $2.7 billion. Cisco has a market cap of $124 billion with annual net income adding up to $9.98 billion. When trading began on October 14, the share price of the stock was hovering around the $23.28 per share mark. This represents a 1.17% increase over its previous day close price and a 43% increase over its 52 week low pricing.