SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 7, 2013 – Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced it has completed the acquisition of Sourcefire (NASDAQ: FIRE), a leader in intelligent cybersecurity solutions. With the close of this acquisition, Cisco will provide one of the industry’s most comprehensive advanced threat protection portfolios, as well as a broad set of enforcement and remediation options that are integrated, pervasive, continuous and open.

The increased scrutiny on security is being driven by the evolving trends of mobility, cloud computing, and advanced targeted attacks. More than the attacks themselves, a major consideration is the change in what defines a network, which goes beyond traditional firewalls and includes data centers, endpoints, virtual and mobile to make up the extended network. A threat-centric security model lets defenders address the full attack continuum, across all attack vectors, and respond at any time, all the time.

 “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,” said Christopher Young, senior vice president, Cisco Security Group. “Cisco’s portfolio of integrated solutions support this focus by delivering unmatched visibility and continuous advanced threat protection, allowing customers to act smarter and more quickly -- before, during, and after an attack.”

Cisco and Sourcefire customers will benefit from Cisco’s commitment to drive forward both the ASA and FirePOWER™ platforms. Cisco is also committed to open source innovation and will continue to support Snort®, ClamAV® and other open source projects.

With the completion of the transaction, Sourcefire employees join the Cisco Security Group led by Young. Additionally, Martin Roesch, founder and chief technology officer of Sourcefire, becomes vice president and chief architect for Cisco’s Security Group reporting directly to Young.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco is paying $76 per share in cash in exchange for each share of Sourcefire and assuming outstanding equity awards for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $2.7 billion, including retention-based incentives. Cisco expects the acquisition to be slightly dilutive to non-GAAP earnings in fiscal year 2014 due to normal purchase accounting adjustments and integration costs.  All shares of Sourcefire are expected to be delisted from the NASDAQ stock market by the close of business today.

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Tags / Keywords:

Cisco, Sourcefire, security, cybersecurity, opensource

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Forward-Looking Statements

This written communication may be deemed to contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding Cisco providing one of the industry’s most comprehensive advanced threat protection portfolios as well as a broad set of enforcement and remediation options, the expected benefits to Cisco and its customers, the expected financial performance of Cisco (including earnings projections) following completion of the acquisition, and plans regarding Sourcefire personnel. Statements regarding future events are based on Cisco’s current expectations and are necessarily subject to associated risks related to, among other things, the potential impact on the business of Sourcefire as a result of the acquisition, general economic conditions, the retention of employees of Sourcefire and the ability of Cisco to successfully integrate Sourcefire’s market opportunities, technology, personnel and operations and to achieve expected benefits.  Therefore, actual results may differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statements.  For information regarding other related risks, see the “Risk Factors” section of Cisco’s most recent report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on September 10, 2013. Cisco undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements for any reason.