Palo Alto Buys Into Cloud Security Analytics With $173M RedLock Acquisition
Palo Alto Networks gains security analytics capabilities with its $173 million acquisition this week of RedLock, a cloud threat defense company. Combined with its March acquisition of Evident.io, Palo Alto adds strength in securing and ensuring compliance in public cloud infrastructure, company executives said Thursday.
The acquisitions, combined with Palo Alto Networks Inc. 's existing capabilities, help enterprises navigate the "shared security" model of the public cloud, where the cloud provider is responsible for security in some areas, and the enterprise is responsible in other areas, Palo Alto CMO René Bonvanie tells Light Reading. RedLock and Evident.IO use APIs to ensure compliance and security for storage, virtualization and data infrastructure on the public cloud, such as Amazon S3, Kubernetes and database. (See Palo Alto Networks to Acquire RedLock for $173M and Palo Alto Boosts Security & Compliance Automation With $300M Evident.io Buy.)
Palo Alto faces stiff competition in cloud and enterprise security. Cisco is making security a strategic priority, as other other networking giants, including Juniper. Palo Alto competes with dedicated security companies like Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP) And newer companies, such as Lacework, are focused particularly on cloud security. (See Cisco Takes Security Beyond the Enterprise Network With $2.35B Duo Buy , Cisco & Juniper Heat Up Cloud Security Feud, Juniper Enhances Unified Cybersecurity Platform for Simplified Threat Response , Check Point & Palo Alto Beef Up Multicloud Security .)
A Palo Alto advantage is consistent implementations on multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services Inc. , Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud . Palo Alto also provides automation and cost effectiveness, Bonvanie says.
RedLock is three years old, with about 75 employees, primarily headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif., with research and development in Bangalore. It has raised a total of $12 million through a Series A funding round. Varun Badhwar, the company co-founder and CEO, has a background at Salesforce and security startup CipherCloud. Gaurav Kumar, RedLock co-founder and CTO, worked at startups CipherCloud and co-founded CloudUP Networks, as well as working at Pivotal Security.
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— Mitch Wagner 
Executive Editor, Light Reading
