Having stayed off the acquisition table for close to ten months, Palo Alto Networks has now announced its second deal within less than two weeks, both together costing the cybersecurity giant around a billion dollars. The company reportedly paid $600 million to acquire Tel Aviv-based enterprise browser tech provider Talon Cyber Security.
The latest acquisition follows the company’s buyout of Dig Security Solutions, a startup that assists enterprises to track and secure their internal data. Though the financial terms of both the deals were kept under wraps, reports suggested that Palo Alto Networks paid $400 for Dig and shelled out $600 for Talon Cyber Security.
Sixteen acquisitions in five years, and counting
Since Nikesh Arora took over as CEO of Palo Alto Networks in June 2018, the company has completed 14 acquisitions totaling more than $3 billion. However, things fell silent on this front over the past ten months, more specifically after they acquired Cider Security, a company involved in application security and software supply chain security, in November last year.
The spate of acquisitions were aimed to assemble a comprehensive cybersecurity platform that covers most of the modern day cybersecurity capabilities. At the moment, the Palo Alto Networks platform covers protection for cloud and applications via a secure access service edge (SASE) as well as zero trust security, AI-powered threat detection etc.
Arora had revealed that the company’s approach was resonating with both partners and customers since the industry’s focus too was shifting towards building longer-term cybersecurity architectures that provide better outcomes. Besides optimizing its inorganic growth through good selections, Palo Alto Networks also integrated the technology into a cohesive platform.
Talon Cyber adds security to unmanaged devices
The latest acquisition of Talon Cyber Security has become one of its largest and is seen to augment the cybersecurity giant’s SASE solution offerings for both managed and unmanaged devices. Talon had raised $143 million over three funding rounds after being founded in 2021. Now, the co-founders Ofer Ben-Noon and Ohad Bobrov will join Palo Alto Networks’s Prisma SASE team.
Announcing the deal, Palo Alto Networks said most security teams today are focused on securing managed devices, while a large number of unmanaged ones connect to enterprise applications and access sensitive information. This provides a field opportunity for attackers who take advantage of possible security lapses.
“The average enterprise uses hundreds of SaaS and web applications, meaning that most work is now done primarily via the browser. Talon enables organizations to secure all work activity via an enterprise browser, without touching the personal usage of the device or impacting user privacy,” Palo Alto Networks CPO Lee Klarich said in a statement.
“Integrating Talon with Prisma SASE will enable Palo Alto Networks to securely connect all users and devices to all applications, including private applications, and apply consistent security no matter who the user is and what device they use for work.”
Dig Security flags off unsecure data
The company’s earlier acquisition of Israel-based Dig also made headlines as they had developed a platform that automatically mapped out the data assets in a company’s cloud environment and on-premises file share applications. The platform classifies the records it finds by sensitivity. It can, for example, flag a spreadsheet as high-priority if it contains customers’ credit card details.
Post this activity, Dig also highlights records stored insecurely and can therefore spot files kept in an unencrypted format or have been shared with users outside an organization. The Dig platform catches more subtle issues as well, such as situations where a company doesn’t log user interactions with an important dataset.
