Palo Alto Networks said on Tuesday that it plans to buy endpoint detection and response (EDR) startup Secdo and fit the Israel-based firm’s data collection and visualization technology neatly with its own Traps network security platform.
Details of the transaction were not publicly released but the Israeli business daily Globes pegged the deal at about $100 million, mostly in cash with some equity involved. The buyout, which is expected to close before the end of this month, comes less than a month after Palo Alto Networks bought Pleasanton, CA-based Evident.io for $300 million in cash.
The acquisition will strengthen Palo Alto Networks’ ability to rapidly detect and stop all manner of cyber attacks, said Mark McLaughlin, the company’s chairman and CEO. "With Secdo's EDR capabilities as part of our platform, we will accelerate our ability to detect and prevent successful cyber attacks across the cloud, endpoint and network," he said.
Secdo’s thread-level approach to data collection and visualization exceeds traditional EDR methods, which, according to Palo Alto Networks, only collect general event data. That ultimately hampers security operations teams because they have to reconstruct each step of an attack and separate malicious from normal activities. However, once Secdo’s technology is integrated with Traps and the Palo Alto Networks platform, the resulting data will feed into the logging service and give applications running in the vendor app framework greater precision to visualize, detect and stop cyber attacks, according to the company.
“We founded Secdo to dramatically increase visibility for security operations teams to reduce the time it takes to detect and respond to an alert,” said Shai Morag, Secdo co-founder and CEO. The combined capabilities of Secdo and Palo Alto Networks will provide customers the capabilities they need to swiftly and accurately detect and respond to cyber attacks."
Secdo, which is based in Ra’anana, Israel, was founded in 2015 by Morag and CTO Gil Barak, both graduates of Israel’s IDF 8200 intelligence unit, trained to collect signal intelligence and decrypt code. Amir Kotler serves as president and COO. The company, which employs roughly 70 people, has raised some $10 million to date, according to Crunchbase. One of its angel investors is Check Point Software founder Marius Nacht.
Late last month, Palo Alto Networks released a new version of its Traps endpoint protection platform with a cloud-delivered management service, Linux support and a redesigned infrastructure.
