Cisco Announces Plan to Acquire Sentryo

Cisco recently announced that it plans to acquire Sentryo in order to optimize visibility, segmentation, and operations for Cisco customers.

• By Kaitlyn DeHaven
• Jun 07, 2019

Cisco recently announced its plans to acquire Sentryo, a company based in France who manages the cyber risk of M2M networks and industrial control systems, in order to optimize visibility, segmentation, and operations for Cisco customers.

Rob Salvagno, Cisco vice president of corporate development and Cisco investments said in a blog post that by buying Sentryo, Cisco could improve operational efficiencies and “offer control systems engineers deeper visibility into assets to optimize, detect anomalies and secure their networks.”

He said the intention to acquire Cisco comes primarily from the desire to allow Cisco customers the capability to easily deploy IoT projects.

“By combining Cisco’s intent-based network architecture with Sentryo’s capabilities, customers can capture IoT benefits, manage networks and devices at scale, enable collaboration across IT and OT departments, and better protect their assets and data.”

Liz Centoni, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s IoT business group said in a blog post that one of the most vital operations the acquisition of Sentryo will aid Cisco with is visibility. Their network-enabled passive deep packet inspection (DPI) capabilities to discover IoT and OT assets, as well as being able to establish the communication patterns between devices and systems is a large advantage to the company and their customers.

In addition, she wrote in a blog post that segmentation and integration would be a significant portion of the Sentryo acquisition, because as device identification and communication patterns are created, Cisco will integrate this with DNA Center and Identity Services Engine (ISE) to allow customers to easily define segmentation policy. This integration will allow OT teams to leverage IT security teams’ expertise to secure their environments without risk to the operational processes.

Moreover, she said OT will be able to ensure maximum uptimes, production yields, and improve safety while maintaining a robust cyber security posture with this acquisition because Sentryo also provides Operational visibility like PLC Start/Stop, operational events, as well as programming changes being made to PLCs, RTUs, and other industrial devices.

Thierry Rouquet and Laurent Hausermann, Sentryo’s co-founders, said in a statement that they are proud Sentryo’s technology will become the cornerstone of the group’s IoT security offering.

“This is an important sign of recognition for the entire Sentryo team that we will continue to grow to offer the best technology enabling global organizations to ensure continuity, resilience and safety of their industrial operations,” Rouquet and Huasermann said.

Sentryo will be Cisco’s second acquisition of 2019 follow their January buy of Singularity for its network analytics technology.