Cisco Pays $28 Billion for Splunk to Bolster AI Cybersecurity

Cisco is buying software firm Splunk for $28 billion.

The acquisition is designed to help clients bolster their security and observability efforts via artificial intelligence (AI), according to a Thursday (Sept. 21) press release.

“From threat detection and response to threat prediction and prevention, we will help make organizations of all sizes more secure and resilient,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said in the release.

Cisco and Spunk offer “complementary capabilities in AI, security and observability,” per the release, helping make companies more secure and digitally resilient. “Specifically, Splunk’s security capabilities complement Cisco’s existing portfolio, and together, will provide leading security analytics and coverage from devices to applications to clouds.”

The combined entity will offer observability for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, letting customers provide “smooth application experiences that power their digital businesses,” according to the release.

“Cisco and Splunk are well positioned to help customers responsibly harness the power of AI given their substantial scale, visibility into data, and foundation of trust,” the release said.

The acquisition comes as several businesses are already using AI to protect themselves.

For example, financial institutions that use AI and machine learning (ML) reported lower rates of fraudulent transactions and are less likely to experience an overall increase in fraud rates compared to those not using these technologies, PYMNTS Intelligence found.

“In terms of benefits, AI and ML technologies play a crucial role in helping FIs identify and assess the types of fraud they commonly encounter, not to mention the ability to gain a standardized and holistic picture of fraud,” the report said.

Payments giants such as Mastercard are helping banks with this effort. That company announced in July that it teamed with nine British banks to fight fraud with AI by employing large-scale payments data to identify real-time payment scams before money could be pulled from the victims’ accounts.

“Organized criminals move ‘scammed’ funds through a series of ‘mule’ accounts to disguise them,” the company said at the time. “To counter this, for the past five years, Mastercard has worked with U.K. banks to follow the flow of funds through these accounts, and then close them down.”

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