In a year marked by heightened cybersecurity concerns and vendor consolidations, the industry saw a number of high-profile mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

At the top of the list is Cisco's landmark $28 billion acquisition of Splunk. Back in February 2022, rumors were circulating that Cisco would acquire Splunk for around $20 billion, which the networking and cybersecurity giant denied. Fast forward to September 2023, and Cisco finally announced its intention to acquire cybersecurity and observability vendor Splunk for about $28 billion, making it the largest acquisition in Cisco's history.

In addition, other major players in the cybersecurity industry, such as Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike, also made their moves this year.

Here's a look back at our coverage of the top cybersecurity acquisitions of 2023:

Cisco announced its intention to acquire Splunk for about $28 billion, without revealing details on how it plans to assimilate the cybersecurity and observability vendor’s assets. While Cisco isn’t talking, Gartner VP Analyst Gregg Siegfried expects Cisco to leverage Splunk’s observability advancements to improve its AppDynamics and Full-Stack Observability platform. Read more.

Private equity firm Thoma Bravo recently announced the completion of its approximately $2.3 billion ForgeRock deal. The firm took the security vendor private and combined it into its portfolio company Ping Identity.

This cycle of transitioning from public to private and back again is a recurring trend in the cybersecurity industry, Richard Seewald, founder and managing partner of Evolution Equity Partners, told SDxCentral. Read more.

Palo Alto Networks announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Talon Cyber Security, an enterprise browser technology provider, for about $435 million. This deal is the security giant’s latest move to augment its secure access service edge (SASE) solution by securing both managed and unmanaged devices. Read more.

CrowdStrike is acquiring Bionic, an application security posture management (ASPM) startup. This deal creates an opportunity to integrate CrowdStrike’s cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) with Bionic’s ASPM technologies to enhance its cloud and application security portfolio. Read more.

Palo Alto Networks announced its intention to acquire Dig Security, an Israeli cloud security start-up specializing in data security posture management (DSPM), for about $232 million. The emerging domain addresses deep data-related risks in the cloud. Read more.