Cisco announced yesterday that they have agreed to buy Protego for $65 million. This is an interesting acquisition, not only because conspiracy theorists will notice that the last two companies that Cisco bought both start with a "P" and end with an "O" (Perfigo being the other) and therefore Permeo or Passgo are next.

Protego has made a few waves as a new company in the Security Event Management space, offering a slightly lower end appliance. In addition, its product has features that discover the network during an implementation phase and armed with this information make recommendations about how to stop, say, the spread of a worm ("issue this ACL command to this router"). Its next step is to implement a "big red button" that actually stops the activity itself, when previously it just recommended it.

A good acquisition, I believe, given that the product already works well with Cisco gear and the management team comes from Cisco.