US-based Palo Alto Networks (PAN) have acquired IT firm RedLock for USD 175million to boost their cybersecurity prowess in multicloud environments like AWS, Google and Microsoft. As per the terms of the acquisition deal, RedLock will be adding its threat detecting, monitoring, prioritizing and eradicating capabilities to PAN’s host-based and API-based offerings.
According to PAN, enterprises deploy multicloud environments to manage workloads, build applications and protect sensitive business data. However, PAN claim that these environments are always not secure since multi-cloud environments are prone to risks as well as cyber attacks.
By acquiring RedLock, PAN believe that they will be adding threat prioritization, detection and classification mechanism in multi-cloud environments. They say that by adding these capabilities, PAN will be able to leverage RedLock’s analytics and AI-driven (Artificial Intelligence) approaches to protect large volumes of information hosted in the cloud.
Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO at Palo Alto Networks, commented:
The addition of their technologies allows us to offer the most comprehensive security for multi-cloud environments, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure, and significantly strengthens our cloud strategy going forward.
RedLock say that this acquisition will help PAN consolidate their cybersecurity product portfolio and take a database-centric approach when it comes to providing contextual information on risks. They also say that this contextual information on public cloud environments can reduce incident response time from weeks to seconds.
Varun Badhwar, co-founder at RedLock, said:
We are excited to join Palo Alto Networks to bring together the strength of our cloud analytics and their industry-leading compliance technologies to help security teams protect their organizations.
In closing, PAN said that the deal, which is set to close by 30th November, is subject to mandatory approvals with the co-founders of RedLock joining their team.
Industry analysts claim that this deal, as well as PAN’s acquisition of Secdo, will fortify their cybersecurity offerings for the global market. It will be interesting to witness what moves PAN have in the pipeline after this deal.