Cisco To Buy Intrusion-Prevention Software Vendor

Under the terms of the deal, unveiled Friday, Cisco common stock worth about $154 million will be exchanged for all outstanding shares and options of Okena.

Cisco, based here, said it expects the deal to close in the company's third quarter. Plans call for Okena's 52 employees to join Cisco's VPN and security business unit.

The acquisition of Okena would boost Cisco's portfolio of network-integrated security appliances, according to Richard Palmer, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Virtual Private Network and Security Business Unit. "The acquisition of Okena reinforces Cisco's commitment to leadership in the network security market and is part of a significant initiative to more tightly integrate network and endpoint security," Palmer said in a statement.

Executives at Okena, which was founded in 1999, have touted the vendor's technology as proactive intrusion security, unlike the reactive orientation of traditional intrusion-detection systems. Instead of relying on signatures to detect attacks, Okena's software intercepts operating system, file system, configuration and network requests and compares them with a company's security policy to determine which calls are permitted and which aren't.