Please try and forgive the pun – it was the only way we could make that joke work…
Anyway, carrying on last week’s spending theme, this week we can report that Netskope, one of, if not the world leader in cloud security has acquired Sift Security, one of the pioneers of next-gen cloud infrastructure safety.
Announced earlier this month, Netskope’s acquisition of the four-year old business will, according to founder and CEO Sanjay Beri ‘take Netskope for IaaS (and as a result, the entire Netskope Security Cloud) to a new level. Specifically, Sift enhances our ability to uniquely gather and visualize the richest set of contextualized data about transactions.’
Who Are Sift Security?
Formed in 2014, Sift Security use machine learning to monitor, analyse and report against misconfigurations, weaknesses, threats and anomalies in public cloud IaaS platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.
By integrating Sift’s Cloud Hunter technology into Netskope Security Cloud, Netskope can address the shift of business-critical data out of the traditional enterprise perimeter and into SaaS and IaaS services. A shift, according to a press release on PR News Wire ‘exacerbated by a workforce that is increasingly mobile and whereby enterprises are attracted to the cost savings and agility associated with cloud services.’
It goes on to say that this marriage provides customers ‘with the most comprehensive and differentiated security cloud in the market, all delivered from a single cloud and in a single interface.’
Customers will continue to benefit from advanced data loss prevention, threat protection, adaptive access control, anomaly detection, configuration and posture management powered by patented technology trusted by 25% of Fortune 100 companies and many of the world’s leading financial, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceutical, retail, energy and technology businesses.
A Real Marriage?
Once all the housekeeping has been taken care of, this really does seem like a marriage and Sanjay Beri spoke of it as if it were.
‘Any time you acquire a company — which in general is rare — one of the first things you look at is the cultural fit between teams. Neil King — Sift’s CEO and now head of IaaS Product Management for Netskope — and I met and started talking early in the year and over time through many discussions (and having our engineering teams meet and spend time together) realized that together, our companies would be a great fit.’
In fact he’s already talking about starting a family…
‘The Netskope team and I have had a wonderful experience with the Sift team since early this year, and I couldn’t be happier with how well we have aligned already and that Sift has joined the Netskope family.’
Amongst many, one interesting element of the acquisition is not just about the technology, but about the talent. Sift’s technical team (which will be absorbed into the new set-up) are machine learning and behavioural analytics pioneers and they bring with them world-class expertise in machine learning and anomaly detection to Netskope’s existing team of data scientists.
It’s too early to say what the technological offspring will look like but as the market demands a fresh new approach to the challenges of online security, the integration of Sift’s Cloud Hunter with Netskope’s Security Cloud has the ability, according to Beri, to make Netskope the ‘next great independent, iconic security company.’
Well, quite…
For all things cloud, email info@koncisesolutions.com or call +44 (0) 20 7078 0789 and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Have a good week.
Koncise Solutions
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