Cisco to spend $830 million for e-mail security firm

Cisco Systems said Thursday it will pay $830 million in cash and stock for e-mail security company IronPort Systems.

IronPort, a privately held company based in San Bruno, Calif., is a leader in security technology that scans e-mail messages for spam and viruses. Its products are sold to large companies, including Cisco, which says it has used the IronPort product for three years. IronPort competes against security heavyweights such as McAfee and Secure Computing.

One of the IronPort's most important innovations is software that rates Web links in e-mail to better filter out junk messages, including those with links to malicious sites.

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