Last week, Cisco jumped head first into the identity and access management (IAM) market with its acquisition of Duo Security for over $2.3 billion. Now, I’ve been chatting with Cisco about identity management for many years. Cisco always understood the importance of identity management in the security stack but remained reluctant to jump into this area.
Why the change of heart? Because cloud and mobile computing have all but erased the network perimeter. These days, mobile users access SaaS and cloud-based applications and never touch internal networks at all. As one CISO told me years ago, “Because of cloud and mobile computing, I’m losing control of my IT infrastructure. To address this change, I’m really forced into gaining more control in two areas: Identity and data security. Like it or not, these two areas are the ‘new’ security perimeters.”
