Cisco made big news in late 2023 when it announced it was acquiring Splunk for $28B, making it, by far, the largest acquisition in the company’s history. This move created massive speculation from Cisco watchers as to why the company was making such a bold move. The most obvious thought was that it could help the security business, which Cisco is currently revamping with its security cloud.
Amazon Web Services Inc. recently announced that Anthropic PBC, an artificial intelligence safety and research company, will make its Claude 3 family of models available on Amazon Bedrock. Claude 3 Sonnet and Claude 3 Haiku are already available on Bedrock, and today Claude 3 Opus is generally available to AWS customers.
Cisco’s new Cybersecurity Readiness Index is out, providing a useful gauge for understanding the cyber landscape. It all comes down to confidence—or, instead, overconfidence. One of the most repeated phrases in the Star Wars universe comes from Episode IV when Luke Skywalker blows up a TIE fighter. Luke excitedly yells out, “Got him! I got him!” With his years of wisdom, Han Solo tries calming him down by saying, “Great, kid! Don’t get cocky!”
With Zscaler Inc.‘s announced acquisition today of startup Airgap Networks Inc., a network access and segmentation tech provider, the cybersecurity provider is looking to address gaps in operational technology. No financial terms for the purchase were provided, but Airgap has raised a little over $13 million since it was founded in 2019, so the deal is likely under $100 million. Recently, I spoke with Naresh Kumar (pictured), vice president and general manager of product management at Zscaler, to review the acquisition details. He put the deal in perspective.
Recently, Cisco held a Tech Talk focused on Cisco’s Silicon One and how the company believes you can converge a network without compromise. This means simplifying operations, maintaining security, and optimizing performance. Typically, companies have to choose between one of the three and compromise between the other two. The discussion also shed light on how Cisco is dealing with the rise of AI.