Palo Alto Networks buys Israeli cybersecurity firm Secdo
Israeli financial website estimates sale at $100 million
Shoshanna Solomon was The Times of Israel's Startups and Business reporter
Palo Alto Networks Inc., a maker of cyber security firewalls, said Tuesday it has entered an agreement to buy Israel-based cyber security firm Secdo.
Details of the transaction were not released, though the Israeli financial website Calcalist estimated the deal at around $100 million, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Secdo develops software meant to help security teams cut the incident response time to minutes, through automation, and respond to attacks without affecting business continuity.
Large companies get thousands, or tens of thousands, of security alerts every day, most of which are false positives. Investigating these alerts involves collecting evidence after the fact, which is slow and leaves security teams overextended. Secdo addresses this gap in incident response by continuously and automatically collecting data from all endpoints in the system, e.g., if someone has connected to a specific IP through Microsoft Word on their laptop. Secdo’s system investigates alerts automatically using the collected data, and provides users with a full analysis.
The Ra’anana, Israel-based company was founded in 2015 by Gil Barak and Shai Morag, both of whom served in the Israeli Army’s elite 8200 intelligence unit. The firm has raised to date some $11 million, according to the database of Start-Up Nation Central.
“Secdo’s team of elite engineers will complement the deep security expertise and innovation inside the Palo Alto Networks research and development organization,” the US firm said in a statement. Once integrated with Palo Alto’s systems, the applications will have “greater precision for detecting and stopping cyberattacks.”
“We believe security operations teams need the most advanced and consistent approach to endpoint security,” Mark McLaughlin, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks said in the statement. Adding Secdo’s capabilities to its platform, will accelerate the Palo Alto’s “ability to detect and prevent successful cyberattacks across cloud, endpoint, and the network.”
“The combined capabilities of Secdo and Palo Alto Networks will provide customers the capabilities they need to swiftly and accurately detect and respond to cyberattacks,” said Secdo’s Morag in the statement.
The acquisition is expected to close during Palo Alto Networks’ fiscal third quarter, subject to conditions.
