Cisco likely to acquire Astrix: Report

Cisco is reportedly in discussion to acquire Astrix Security in a deal estimated between $250 million and $350 million.

If the discussion succeeds, the deal would be all about Cisco acquiring Astrix’s visibility into non‑human identities and agent behaviour across enterprise environments, an area Cisco itself is now publicly emphasising.

Modern enterprises are far beyond only human users. Bots, API keys, OAuth tokens, service accounts, and AI agents routinely access systems, handle data, and execute workflows autonomously. In fact, these non-human identities already outnumber human users, and the gap is widening as agentic AI adoption accelerates.     

Unlike human identities, non-human identities often lack governance. They are dynamically created, poorly tracked, accumulate excessive privileges, and operate continuously at machine speed. When compromised, their behaviour can closely resemble legitimate system activity, making detection difficult.    

Since 2021, Astrix is working on this problem and in 2023 the company emerged as a finalist at the RSA Innovation Sandbox. Astrix has focused squarely on securing this growing attack surface. Its platform discovers and inventories NHIs across cloud, SaaS, and on-premise environments, highlights access risks, and enforces controls.

The differentiation factor of Astrix is its data foundation. Its behavioural engine is trained on years of real-world API traffic, enabling deep visibility into machine identity activity. This capability was demonstrated in 2022 when the company uncovered “GhostToken,” a zero-day flaw in Google Cloud Platform that allowed malicious OAuth apps to remain hidden and persistent. The vulnerability was patched in April 2023.

Such depth is difficult to replicate quickly, making acquisition a faster route for companies like Cisco to gain these capabilities.

As of now, the discussions remain unconfirmed. Astrix was last valued at around $200 million, so a deal in the reported range would likely reflect strategic importance rather than immediate revenue, consistent with Cisco’s acquisition approach.