Cisco Systems Inc. said today it will acquire cybersecurity startup Armorblox Inc. to help protect email, cloud and office applications and enterprise communication systems.

The networking giant will take advantage of Armorblox’s natural language processing, predictive and generative artificial intelligence capabilities to help its customers better understand the security risks they face. In a blog post announcing the acquisition, Cisco Security Chief Product Officer Raj Chopra said Armorblox stands out for pioneering the use of large language models and natural language understanding to manage cyber risks.

Armorblox uses these technologies and multiple advanced machine learning models to analyze thousands of signals, including user identity and behavior, and the content and context of communications, to protect against threats that target human workers. Its main focus is on stopping business email compromise and targeted phishing attacks, as well as protecting sensitive data.

“The first application of Armorblox’s advanced techniques was securing the most significant way enterprise users get routinely attacked — yes, I’m talking about email,” Chopra wrote. “Through this acquisition, though, we see many exciting broad security use cases and possibilities to unlock.”

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Cisco said it expects the deal to close by the end of its fiscal fourth quarter in July.

Founded in 2017, Armorblox has more than 100 employees. It has raised $46.5 million in funding, with its most recent round led by SentinelOne Ventures in September 2022. “We dove deep with the Armorblox team into their technology and were impressed,” SentinelOne Innovation Lead Ido Kotler said in September. “Armorblox has strong capabilities in machine learning and natural language understanding which, when applied to email security, result in high detection rates and low false positives.”

Armorblox’s executive team is notable for its pedigree, with Chief Executive DJ Sampath having previously led engineering at StackRox Inc. and Chief Product Officer Anand Raghavan once leading product management at ThoughtSpot Inc.

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE there is big potential in using generative AI to improve security. “Generative AI and machine learning can make enterprises safer,” he said. “There’s a lot of merit in using this technology to look more closely at messages and communications that may harbor malicious threats.”

Cisco said that upon closing the acquisition, Armorblox will join its security business group and it will then set about bringing generative AI experiences to its entire security portfolio. According to Chopra, Armorblox’s technology can help to aid in everything from enhanced attack prediction to rapid threat detection and efficient policy enforcement.

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