Cisco Strengthens its Security Portfolio with SourceFire Acquisition

On-premises products are designed for internal data retention. The Sourcefire sourced products address network to endpoint capabilities, including malware detection and blocking, analysis and retrospective remediation of advanced threats. The combination of Sourcefire and ThreatGRID will allow Cisco customers to aggregate and correlate data to identify cyber threats, Cisco says. Cisco expects the acquisition to close in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2014. ThreatGRID adds malware sandboxing capabilities for public and private clouds to the Sourcefire FireAMP (advanced malware protection) product line, says Derek Idemoto, vice president of corporate development at Cisco.

"Sourcefire's been aware of ThreatGRID for years," Idemoto said at this week's Cisco Live conference. "We asked them, 'What is the next thing we should be doing?'" Acquiring ThreatGRID's 25 engineers is apparently what the Sourcefire team recommended.

Will this acquisition allow Cisco to regain its leadership role in network security? Send your critique to us a Cloud and Cyber Security. Lawrence Wilson

The Public Cloud and Multi-Tenancy Model Present Security Challenges

Security is surely one of the great challenges to the widespread adoption of public cloud software models. Multi-tenancy is without doubts one such challenges. Nonetheless, vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Symantec are implementing plans to ensure the security of client data and business processes hosted in public cloud environments.

What impact will the multi-tenant security challenge pose to public cloud adoption. Send your thoughts to us at Cloud and Cyber Security. Lawrence Wilson