Palo Alto to Buy Expanse to Manage Attack Surface
Cybersecurity vendor’s $800M deal enables it to find, protect untracked IT assets on Internet
Palo Alto Networks is buying Expanse, an 8-year-old company whose Expander product is designed to find and monitor untracked IT assets that are exposed to the Internet and represent a cybersecurity threat.
The Lowdown: Palo Alto said Wednesday it will spend $800 million to buy Expanse, whose attack surface management offerings are becoming even more important amid the COVID-19 pandemic as enterprises accelerate their digital transformation plans, potentially leaving assets exposed.
The Details: Palo Alto, based in Santa Clara, California, plans to incorporate Expanse’s technology into its own Cortex endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution. The cybersecurity company refers to its offering as extended detection and response (XDR), an endpoint protection technology that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) for malware analysis and includes behavioral protection and closed-loop prevention, all designed to improve future capabilities by learning from past detections.
Expanse’s platform for Internet collection and attribution monitors the Internet to map exposed and untracked assets, which cyber-criminals can use to attack organizations. The San Francisco-based company’s technology also evaluates the risk and provides mitigation.
Expanse partners with a range of partners in its Accelerate Partner Program, from cloud and solution providers to MSPs and managed security service providers (MSSPs).
The combination of the Expanse platform with Cortex will give enterprises a more complete view of their IT environment by pulling together external, internal, and threat data.
The deal, a combination of cash and stock, is expected to close early next year.
The Impact: The coronavirus outbreak has sped up the rate at which organizations are digitizing their operations. According to a recent report in ResearchandMarkets, the global digital transformation market will grow from $469.8 billion this year to more than $1 trillion by 2025, due in part to the public health crisis, as well as the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the accelerating adoption of cloud services.
Background: Expanse is no stranger to Palo Alto. The company in April joined Palo Alto’s partner program and integrated its technology with Palo Alto’s Cortex security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) solution.
The Buzz: “We are thrilled to add the Expanse platform to our Cortex product suite,” Palo Alto Chairman and CEO Nikesh Arora said. “By integrating Expanse’s attack surface management capabilities into Cortex after closing, we will be able to offer the first solution that combines the outside view of an organization’s attack surface with an inside view to proactively address all security threats. We believe this will be a game-changer in security operations.”
“Expanse’s mission is to discover and mitigate risks for our customers that no one else can find. The world’s largest and most complex organizations trust Expanse to continuously discover, inventory, monitor, and report against their dynamically changing attack surface,” said Tim Junio, co-founder and CEO of Expanse.
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