Networks, in a world of cloud services and containerised apps, are evolving fast. OSS project Cilium has become a big part of how such workloads are connected and secured – tapping eBPF to insert bytecode into the Linux kernel to help rethink not just networking but security and visibility across increasingly heterogeneous infrastructure environments.
It was, perhaps, inevitable that Cisco would swoop on Isovalent, the company behind Cilium; agreeing what has been reported as a $650 million deal to acquire the startup and its talent just before Christmas – and getting direct access to what is arguably the future of both networks and cloud-native security: Highly programmable eBPF-based capabilities.
