Tag Archive for: BILLION

Cisco to Acquire Cybersecurity Company Splunk for $28 Billion

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On Thursday Cisco agreed to buy Splunk in a $28 billion deal intended to address AI-enabled security and observability issues.

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Image: iStockphoto\/jejim

Cisco announced yesterday its intention to acquire Splunk, a renowned name in data observability and security, in a deal valued at approximately $28 billion. Cisco intends to pay $157 in cash for each share of Splunk.

This acquisition, which is Cisco’s biggest deal ever, is aimed at furthering the company’s move to develop the next generation of AI-enabled security and observability solutions that aren’t capable of only threat detection and response but also threat prediction and prevention.

Also, Splunk’s technology helps businesses monitor and analyze their systems for cybersecurity risks and other threats. Cisco has focused mainly on manufacturing computer networking equipment, which is a line of business that has recently come under an increasing rate of supply chain attacks. With this acquisition, Cisco hopes to cut down its decades-long reliance on networking equipment manufacturing and solidify its cybersecurity and AI commitments to meet client demand and fuel growth.

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When will the Cisco/Splunk deal close?

This deal is set to close by the end of the third quarter of 2024. Although a unanimous agreement has been reached by the boards of directors at both Cisco and Splunk, the deal is still subject to regulatory approval and the consent of Splunk shareholders. Assuming the deal is finalized, Splunk CEO and President Gary Steele will join Cisco’s executive leadership.

Cisco initially expressed interest in acquiring Splunk last year, as reported in February 2022 by The Wall Street Journal. This caused Splunk’s stock price to increase.

Why this acquisition is a good move for Cisco and Splunk

New revenue streams and security innovations

Cisco asserts that the merger will accelerate its revenue growth without impacting its previously announced share buyback program or dividend program. In addition, this acquisition is fueled by the changing landscape in which Cisco operates.

The rising influence of the public cloud has significantly impacted Cisco’s traditional…

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‘Billion Dollar Heist’ sneak peek: ‘We’ve had ransomware attacks’

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Watch an exclusive clip about the the growing threat of cybercrime

Video Transcript

– We’ve had Stuxnet, blowing up the Natanz centrifuge plant. We’ve had ransomware attacks, which hit the Eastern seaboard. There was no gas to the Eastern seaboard for a whole week in the United States. We had Russia against the Ukraine shutting out the power in the middle of winter.

We’re talking about people losing their lives. We’ve also had cyber attacks that potentially affected the US elections. We had the health care system in the UK brought down. Dialysis machines no longer working.

– This is an extremely fragile situation. Much more fragile than the period of detente because so many more countries have these weapons. Malware is much more difficult to control than nuclear weapons.

– People always warn me of the cyber Pearl Harbor, the cyber 9/11, but it’s almost worse than that. Every day, there are thousands of cyber attacks. And we’re just getting more and more and more inured to them. It’s like a plague.

– I think we’ll see much more hostile cyber activity, much more cyber bank robberies, much more cyber espionage. We’ll see much more cyber war. In many ways, I think we’ve seen nothing yet.

– Does attacks increase in their sophistication and their range, then the impact can be ever greater. There is a cyber attack on critical national infrastructure coming to a place near you within the next 5 to 10 years.

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Crypto hack alarms ramp up as authorities crack down after $3.7 billion stolen

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The rapid growth of cryptocurrency theft over the past few years has become a major concern for U.S. authorities, who are ramping up efforts to crack down on hackers and illicit crypto schemes.

Just last year, crypto hackers managed to steal about $3.7 billion in digital assets, with North Korean state-sponsored cyber actors taking the lead as the main culprit in many of those heists, according to TRM Labs, a blockchain intelligence company.

Although this year has seen a decline in crypto hacks compared to 2022, about $400 million of virtual currency was stolen in the first quarter of 2023, TRM Labs reported. 

Over the last few years, North Korean state-sponsored cyber actors have aggressively targeted the crypto sector, often taking advantage of an industry that is not well understood by many and not well regulated.

North Korean flags are carried during a celebration of the nation’s 73rd founding anniversary in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Sept. 9, 2021. (Associated Press).

U.S. officials and the United Nations have reported that stolen crypto funds have become an important source of revenue for North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile program. 

“The problem has gotten very big and very serious with North Korea cybercriminals accounting for about $1 billion in stolen crypto last year,” said Ari Redbord, global head of policy and government affairs at TRM Labs.

“With North Korea, it is not about personal financial gain. Stolen crypto is used to fund weapons proliferation and other destabilizing activity,” Redbord said, adding that it has become a “serious national security threat.”

A top cyber official in the Biden administration also raised similar concerns regarding North Korea’s role in crypto hacks. 

Anne Neuberger, the administration’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, said last year she was “concerned about North Korea’s cyber capabilities,” adding that the country uses “up to a third of [stolen crypto] funds to fund their missile program.”

Neuberger added that North Korea’s expansion of its missile testing has been a top priority for the administration, which has taken several…

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How Christina Cacioppo Built Startup Vanta Into A $1.6 Billion Unicorn To Automate Complicated Security Compliance Issues

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The Stanford graduate built a fast-growing software company to automate what had previously been a manual process. She’s now one of America’s richest self-made women.

About five years ago, Vanta CEO and cofounder Christina Cacioppo received a message from one of the customers of her nascent security and compliance automation company that something was wrong. The automated email the customer received each morning detailing what had happened in their Vanta account in the past 24 hours had the wrong company name in it. Cacioppo responded: “There’s a bug, we’re so sorry. We’ll fix it.”

What the customer didn’t realize was that the “automated” email was actually one that Cacioppo had sent early that morning. Cacioppo, who had founded Vanta just months earlier, set her alarm each day for 5:45 a.m. and crafted the emails by hand. She did this to make sure customers liked the emails before spending time writing code that would automate them. Once she knew what customers wanted, she and Vanta’s founding team sat down and wrote the code—and didn’t need to change it for a year and a half.

It’s just one example of the Ohio native’s scrappy approach—which also included everything from buying coffee in bulk from Costco to running Vanta without formal executive or staff meetings for its first two years. That hustle has helped her company land an estimated 5,000 customers including Quora, Autodesk and payments software firm Modern Treasury, with 600 new customers signing up each quarter, according to Vanta. Cacioppo has also helped score $203 million in funding to date from such venture capital firms as Craft Ventures and Sequoia, including $110 million raised in June 2022 that values the company at $1.6 billion. That’s enough to earn Cacioppo, 36, a spot on Forbes’ list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women with a $385 million fortune based on her stake in Vanta.

“Prior to Vanta, the way security and compliance was done was entirely with spreadsheets and screenshots of information that were collected in folders and shown to [certified…

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