Cisco has today confirmed its intention to acquire cloud security provider CloudLock, at a price tag of $293 million.

The move is designed to further enhance Cisco's security portfolio and build on Cisco's Security Everywhere strategy.

CloudLock specialises in cloud access security broker technology that provides enterprises with visibility and analytics around user behaviour and sensitive data in cloud services, including SaaS, IaaS and PaaS. It works with Office365, Google Drive, and Salesforce.

The CloudLock team will join Cisco's Networking and Security Business Group under senior vice president and general manager David Goeckeler.

Commenting on the news, Goeckeler says ‘buy' has been a key part of Cisco's innovation strategy, alongside significant internal product development to drive towards a fully integrated security portfolio.

“Today's announcement builds on three quarters of consecutive revenue growth in Cisco's security business,” Goeckeler says.

“We have expanded our security footprint with milestone acquisitions including Lancore, OpenDNS, and Sourcefire.

“Together, CloudLock and Cisco together will offer the industry's broadest cloud security protection for users, applications, and data,” he adds.

Rob Salvagno, vice president of Cisco Corporate Development, says an a crowded market of cloud access security broker vendors, CloudLock has built a powerful go-to-market engine that has managed to grow to attract over 700 customers, including Fortune 500 companies, in less than five years.

“As companies are migrating to the cloud, they need a technology partner that can accelerate that transition and deliver critical security capabilities for all their users, apps and data in a seamless way,” says Salvagno.

“CloudLock brings a unique cloud-native, platform and API-based approach to cloud security which allows them to build powerful security solutions that are easy to deploy and simple to manage,” he explains.

The purchase is expected to close in the first quarter of fiscal 2017.