Cisco Acquiring Lightspin

Cisco is set to acquire Lightspin Technologies, a startup that helps enterprises find and understand vulnerabilities in their cloud infrastructure. Financial terms are not disclosed.

Tel Aviv-based Lightspin sells a cloud security platform that can automatically scan cloud environments for insecure configuration settings, vulnerable code, and other risks. The platform lists the issues it finds in a centralized dashboard and prioritizes them based on severity.

The startup’s platform not only detects vulnerabilities but also explains them. Next to each security issue it finds, the platform displays the associated attack path. Lightspin doesn’t require downloading an agent, which makes it simpler to deploy.

Alongside its vulnerability detection features, Lightspin provides tools for detecting malware. It spots malicious programs using AWS Amazon GuardDuty threat detection service and Falco, an open-source tool for spotting breach indicators.

Cisco plans to integrate Lightspin into its ET&I, or emerging technologies and incubation, business unit. The group is responsible for exploring new product ideas in segments such as the cybersecurity market.

The technology could potentially complement Panoptica, one of the software tools Cisco’s ET&I unit has developed as part of its work. The latter tool can detect vulnerabilities in companies’ cloud environments and prioritize them by severity. It’s also capable of spotting potentially malicious activity.

Lightspin is the second cybersecurity startup Cisco has bought since February. It earlier acquired Valtix