Cisco has entered a definitive agreement to buy Sourcefire, a Columbia, MD-based provider of cybersecurity solutions. The company is best known for Snort, a widely used intrusion detection system created by founding CTO Martin Roesch.

Under the terms of the deal, Cisco will pay $76 per share of Sourcefire for a total of $2.7 billion. The all-cash transaction is expected to be completed later this year, at which point the firm will be integrated into Cisco’s Security Group.

“Cisco’s acquisition of Sourcefire will help accelerate the realization of our vision for a new model of security across the extended network,” said Roesch, who founded Sourcefire in 2001 to commercialize Snort. “We’re excited about the opportunities ahead to expand our footprint via Cisco’s global reach, as well as Cisco’s commitment to support our pace of innovation in both commercial markets and the open source community.”

According to Cisco corporate development boss Hilton Romanski, Sourcefire will serve as a pillar for the “most comprehensive approach to security in the market.” This strategy will span networking, cloud computing and the rapidly growing Internet of Things, which Cisco has been eyeing for quite some time.

Realizing that software-defined networks will constitute the backbone of the Internet of Things, Cisco put its weight behind an SDN startup called Insieme. The team is working on a data center abstraction layer that encompasses the networking layer, storage, compute, and even security.

Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior announced the project at her company’s recently concluded Live conference in Orlando. She describes Insieme’s solution as an “object-oriented” platform that works much like an operating system: it automates resource allocation and gives users access to system management functions via open APIs.