Cisco’s most recent Valtix acquisition is more than just a move to enhance its multicloud next-generation firewall capabilities. Valtix's unique approach to providing a single policy for multiclouds and protecting each individual workload could potentially give Cisco a competitive advantage over its peers.

Founded in 2018, Valtix offers a cloud security platform that delivers capabilities including cloud-based firewall, web application firewall (WAF), intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS), egress filtering, and data loss prevention (DLP) for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Valtix’s “concept was let's take network security like what you would have on-premise and give you that same kind of control up in the cloud,” Nat Smith, VP security analyst in the Technology and Service Provider division of Gartner, told SDxCentral. “From the beginning, they've said we are going to be the firewall that works in the public cloud.”

However, the startup also claims it addresses another big problem with the cloud, Smith pointed out. “They said: the way that you would control and work with things in AWS is slightly different from how you would do things in Azure, which is slightly different from how you would do things in Google. So they wanted to make it just one policy that could go across these things.”

According to Cisco, Valtix aims to consolidate network security by enabling customers with common policy and enforcements of networking across all major public cloud environments, while protecting workloads no matter which cloud they are created or consumed in. And Cisco claims this strategy is aligned with its vision of offering one single place for visibility, telemetry, and policy enforcement through the Cisco Security Cloud platform.

Smith explained that there has been a market called network security policy management (NSPM) led by vendors such as AlgoSec and Tufin, who offer an overlay on top of various network firewall products from different vendors that have one policy to manage those firewalls. Valtix brought this concept to the cloud while offering both the control plane and the cloud security capabilities.

“Instead of trying to control other people's products, which is that overlay NSPM is trying to do … Valtix says: we are going to be the control, [and] we are the product that's making these things happen,” he said.

Smith also explained that Valtix's technology connects to the plumbing of the public clouds and its unique approach is to protect each and every individual workload. “They're saying … we're doing it from a network perspective and we're using the plumbing, the infrastructure that's there in the cloud.”

Cisco has been a strategic investor in Valtix since 2020 and expects to close the acquisition by the end of its third fiscal quarter of 2023. It plans to integrate Valtix into its Security Cloud portfolio to accelerate its path to “delivering a seamless experience in securing workloads across multicloud environments,” Cisco claims.

The networking and security giant offers similar capabilities in the data center and on-prem network through its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), Tetration, and SecureX products, and the acquisition of Valtix is a strategic move to get in on public cloud availability, Smith noted.

“Cisco recognizes there's so much movement of workloads from what had been on premise to even a private cloud where you have a little bit more control but into this public cloud. And this is a great platform, a strategic play to get in there,” he noted.

As competition in the cloud security space continues to heat up, this move could help Cisco gain an edge over competitors.

“Valtix is using public APIs to do their controls. They have their own components, but the magic came about from using public APIs that are available to anyone, so this is open for any other competitor or vendor in the space to try and do this,” Smith said.

But, “I think there's a pretty steep learning curve. And Valtix is years ahead on that side of things on what they've learned. And I guess it'll be Cisco soon when the acquisition closes, but there's not a high barrier on access and technical things there,” he added.

Smith pointed out security vendors such as Fortinet, VMware, Palo Alto Networks, and Check Point also offer vulnerability analysis, configurations, supply chain security, extended detection and response (XDR), cloud security posture management, and cloud workload protection, but they are taking a different approach.

“I don't see any of them doing exactly what Valtix has been doing. And so that gives Cisco potentially a first-mover advantage if they can capitalize on that,” he said.

Among the top cloud providers who recently have been doubling down on cloud security, “within the Azure environment, Microsoft could do everything that Valtix does and more if they wanted to. But doing that with parity across AWS, across Google, across other ones, Microsoft would have to invest a good amount to figure that part out,” Smith added.

Prior to the Valtix acquisition, Cisco bought Kenna Security, Portshift, Sentryo, Duo Security, Observable Networks, and CloudLock over the past few years to enhance its security portfolio.

Last year, there was a rumor that Cisco would make a $20 billion offer to take over Splunk, but the deal didn’t happen.

Smith expects Cisco to remain focused on optimizing its existing portfolio rather than acquiring a large security company, and he doesn’t see any major gaps in Cisco’s security offerings.

“I don't think that the size necessarily scares Cisco, and they definitely have the resources to make that happen if they felt like they needed to,” he said. “They're very focused on how do we pull all the pieces that we already have together and make that work really smoothly and tightly [and] simplify things as much as possible. I get the feeling that’s a little bit more of their focus right now.”

“I don't know that there are any other big gaping holes in the Cisco portfolio from a security perspective that would require them to go and acquire and buy something right away,” Smith said.