California-based cybersecurity firm Proofpoint has made its third foray into Israel’s market, this morning agreeing to buy insider threat management provider ObserveIT for $225 million in cash as it ramps up its data loss prevention (DLP) offering.
The deal follows Proofpoint’s acquisition of cloud application access specialist FireLayers for $55 million in 2016 and Software-Defined Perimeter firm Meta Networks for $120 million in May 2019. Proofpoint expects the acquisition to close in Q4.
It plans to switch ObserveIT’s “perpetual licensing” model to a subscription-based model promptly after the transaction closes”, it said in a note published Monday, pushing out an integrated DLP platform that will deliver “real-time detection of the anomalous interactions across people, data, devices, and applications.”
ObserveIT CEO: “Not Simply a Technology Rollup”
ObserveIT’s CEO Mike McKee noted: “We first met the Proofpoint team as we were looking at strategic options to organically grow our business… We could have chosen other strategic partnerships [but] Proofpoint believes in ObserveIT’s Insider Threat vision [and] they pitched genuine technology synergy.
“This is not simply a technology rollup where we will leverage the reach of a larger sales organization to grow faster (which we will). There is a real opportunity to cross-pollinate data and analytic capabilities to create a true 1+1 = 3 scenario.”
With the acquisition, “Proofpoint will extend its data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities with endpoint joining email, CASB, and data-at-rest to form an enhanced enterprise DLP offering” the company said in a release this morning.
Proofpoint CEO Gary Steele said: “Defending data requires the ability to detect risky insider threat behavior and risky user activity, and swiftly mitigate risk across cloud apps, email, and endpoints. We are the only security company that provides organizations with deep visibility into their most attacked people—and with ObserveIT, we will bring to market the first truly innovative enterprise DLP offering in years. We are thrilled to welcome ObserveIT’s employees and customers to Proofpoint.”
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As the company notes: “With more and more users accessing data from endpoints off the corporate network in both sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud apps, organizations need to ensure they have the most effective people-centric security controls in place to understand how, when, and where users interact with critical data and intellectual property”. Such an approach is key to avoiding attacks that feature compromised credentials, compromised endpoints, or are perpetrated by malicious insiders.”
