Cisco to buy Cybertrust's Intellishield Alert Manager

Cisco Systems said Wednesday it has signed an agreement to buy Cybertrust's Intellishield Alert Manager information service, including intellectual property and customer contracts.

Under terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay US$14 million in cash to buy assets, intellectual property, customer contracts and other components of the Intellishield Alert Manager information service, Cisco said in a statement.

Buying these assets will help Cisco boost its own security information efforts, the company said. Once the acquisition has been completed, these assets will be rolled into Cisco's MySDN security information Web site, it said.

The Intellishield Alert Manager service is designed to warn IT managers of security threats. These warnings, which are distributed by e-mail, pagers and SMS (Short Message Service), are sent based on the technologies being used by a specific customer. They are graded based on the severity of the threat and provide information on remedies, if available.

In addition, the service offer a searchable database of known security threats that customers can access over the Web.

Cisco's acquisition of the service is expected to be completed by January 28, 2006, it said.