Cisco intends to buy the web security outfit ScanSafe in a deal worth approximately $183 million, the networking gear maker said today.

ScanSafe sells a web-based security service that analyzes a company's end-user web requests in real-time to determine if content is malicious, inappropriate, or acceptable based on defined security policies. The London- and San Francisco-based company sees about two to three billion web requests per day.

The acquisition of ScanSafe is part of Cisco's latest "borderless network" product push of combining network and cloud-based services.

Cisco's purchase of ScanSafe also comes as more malicious security attacks are directed at websites themselves rather than end-users. The company said the web security market is expected to grow to $2.3bn by 2012.

Cisco will pay about $183m in cash and retention-based incentives, and i expects to close the deal in the second quarter of its fiscal year 2010. The ScanSafe team will be rolled into Cisco's Security Technology Business Unit. ®

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