Cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes’ acquisition this month of Sweden-based AzireVPN will give MSSPs and other server provider partners a new offering for privacy-conscious organizations that want to bulk up their security capabilities.
The addition of AzireVPN will bring even more security and privacy capabilities to Malwarebytes’ existing VPN technology.
“Malwarebytes has long been an advocate for user privacy (think Malwarebytes Privacy VPN and our free web extension Malwarebytes Browser Guard), Mark Beare, general manager of the vendor’s consumer-facing business, wrote in a blog post after the deal was announced November 7. “Now, we’re leaning even more on our mission to reimagine consumer cybersecurity to protect devices and data, no matter where users are located, how they work and play, or the size of their wallet.”
With 12-years-old AzireVPN’s infrastructure in the fold, Malwarebytes will be able to develop advanced VPN technologies that offer more flexibility and improved security, Beare wrote. That means MSPs using Malwarebytes’ ThreatDown partner portfolio will be able to offer VPN services enriched with AzireVPN’s hyper-secure features.
To drive security and privacy, the Stockholm-based company owns its own servers, which come without hard drives and with a hardened operating system featuring a technology called Blind Operator 2.0 that blocks local and remote access. AzireVPN also doesn’t use third-party services – which are all open source or custom-built – doesn’t require users to give personal information when signing up for the service, and doesn’t record or store logs related to users’ activity through the VPN, from traffic to timestamps to IP addresses, to protect user privacy.
No Changes for Now
Beare wrote that Malwarebytes will continue AzireVPN’s practice of running and controlling those servers and noted that Blind Operator “creates a barrier against unauthorized modifications and traffic interception, making it virtually impossible for anyone to modify or tap the traffic on its servers and share any information about a user.”
There won’t be any immediate changes to the VPN services Malwarebytes offers and that “AzireVPN customers will also continue to enjoy the same privacy-focused VPN service – no logs, no data collection, no bandwidth limitations. There will continue to be no requirement to share any information to sign up for the service,” he wrote.
AzireVPN’s executives wrote that being bought by Malwarebytes made sense because the vendor is a “strong advocate for cyber protection and user privacy” and that with the larger company’s resources, “we can increase our presence and continue developing cutting-edge solutions to protect the fundamental human right of safe, private, and secure internet access for all.”
Building In a Time of Consolidation
Jack Gold, president and principal analyst with J. Gold and Associates, told MSSP Alert that the deal for AzireVPN “is a story of a firm – Malwarebytes – being opportunistic in expanding its market offerings as the overall security market consolidates. There are way too many companies trying to thrive in a market, especially at the end user or SMB area, that is increasingly consolidating around services from players like Microsoft.”
Gold said he expects Malwarebytes and similar companies to continue to build out its services and those that their MSSP partners can offer organizations through acquisition as the market continues to consolidate.
“Smaller players are probably never going to be able to expand to be big enough to compete effectively, so being acquired by a bigger firm helps them to not become irrelevant,” the analyst said. “Malwarebytes is big enough to absorb some of these smaller players and acquire some unique IP that can strengthen its position.”
Acquisitions and Partnerships
Malwarebytes in recent years has built out its capabilities through acquisitions and partnerships. In April, the Santa Clara, California company unveiled a new integration with ConnectWIse that gives customers of the software company access to Malwarebytes’ ThreatDown solutions for MSPs, including ThreatDown EDR and ThreatDown MDR.
A month earlier, it added AI functionality to its Security Advisor tool, which is in every ThreatDown bundle.
A year ago, Malwarebytes bought Cyrus, an online privacy company that boosted the larger company’s mobile protection capabilities.
