January 17, 2018

Watchguard acquires Percipient Networks to tighten security platform for SMBs

The acquisition seeks to strengthen WatchGuard’s security platform for small and medium businesses by leveraging Percipient’s DNS layer security.

Tech giants

Security solutions provider WatchGuard Technologies have acquired cybersecurity intelligence company Percipient Networks to protect SMB clients from cyber threats. With this acquisition, WatchGuard will be able to integrate Percipient’s DNS layer security product Strongarm, an analytics and intelligence tool, into their platform and fortify their security offerings to the SMB segment.

WatchGuard say that with the amount of phishing and malware attacks increasing, it has become imperative for businesses to protect themselves from attacks. They further added that with Percipient’s DNS security solution integrated with WatchGuard’s security platform, their SMB clients will gain more clarity in terms of data and actionable insights to prevent these attacks.

Excited about the acquisition, Prakash Panjwani, CEO of WatchGuard commented:

It is WatchGuard’s mission to continually evolve our unified security platform to provide the best combination of security services in a simple package, making enterprise-grade security accessible to all. The addition of security at the DNS layer is just another example of execution of our mission. We are excited to add the Strongarm solution to our platform and to welcome the teams behind developing and launching it to WatchGuard’s ecosystem of rapidly growing partners, customers, and employees.

According to Percipient networks, WatchGuard’s platform is a perfect fit when it comes to showcasing data related to the state and type of cyber-attacks to IT managers and service providers of SMBs. They further added that with this acquisition, educating WatchGuard’s partners and customers about the threats beforehand will allow them to come up with effective tactics to counter the same.

Explaining this in detail, Todd O’Boyle, co-founder and CTO at Percipient Networks said:

By protecting users and using blocked attacks as an opportunity to educate we significantly reduce the odds of that employee making the same mistake a second time. We are delighted to continue development of the product and our threat research team under WatchGuard’s leadership.