SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Cisco® today announced an agreement to acquire Securent, Inc., a leading provider of policy management software for enterprises. Securent's scalable, distributed policy platform allows enterprises to administer, enforce, and audit access to data, communications, and applications in heterogeneous IT application environments. Securent is privately held and based in Mountain View, Calif.

Securent's software will enable Cisco customers to protect and secure valuable application data regardless of vendor, platform, or operating system while still allowing ubiquitous access to the content workers and their collaborative communities need to be productive. By delivering policy from the network, Cisco will simplify entitlement decisions for all communications, collaboration and other third party applications.

"As enterprises shift to service-oriented architectures and adopt technologies such as Unified Communications and Web 2.0 based collaboration, there is a rising need for control over access to distributed enterprise resources," said Don Proctor, senior vice president, Cisco's Collaboration Software Group. "Securent's software offers enterprises a single point of control to define and manage entitlements across applications and data. This capability is well aligned with Cisco's Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA), enabling policy decisions to be delivered as a network service across multiple applications, platforms, and delivery models."

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)

Securent