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Sophos has unveiled plans to acquire a second security-focused start-up within the space of the month, through the buyout of DarkBytes.
Headquartered in California, US, DarkBytes provides a unified platform to deliver security operations centre services, with expertise across vulnerability management, threat detection and automation.
In offering an endpoint security platform, Sophos hopes to leverage the start-up’s “rich domain experience” in managed detection and response (MDR) and security orchestration automation response (SOAR).
“Sophos predicts that eventually all IT security products will evolve into adaptive, managed services as more organisations realise that they are unable to scale resources fast enough to respond to today’s threats,” said Joe Levy, CTO at Sophos.
“The strength and architecture of the DarkBytes platform will accelerate Sophos’ plans to introduce global managed security services that will eventually span endpoint, firewall, mobile devices, wireless APs, and more.
“We welcome the DarkBytes team to Sophos and are excited to introduce these services through our partners over the coming months.”
According to Levy, MDR is a managed cyber security service designed to “detect and respond” to intrusions, malware, and malicious activity.
Specifically, MDR augments security capabilities by providing a “continuous monitoring service” through a third-party, delivered through “automated response and human expertise”.
“The endpoint is the new perimeter of cyber security. It’s where the attacks happen and where the data lives,” added Dennis Griffin, founder and former CEO at DarkBytes.
“We built our unified platform to simplify high-end security operations using the combination of endpoint sensors and cloud-delivered analytics as the best way to achieve this.
“Our vision for using cloud-based, next-gen technology to make enterprise-grade cybersecurity simple to use made Sophos a natural home for the next stage of our development.”
The buyout follows the acquisition of Avid Secure in early January, in a move designed to boost public cloud offerings.
Founded in 2017, the San Francisco-based business specialises in next-generation cloud infrastructure, with artificial intelligence expertise across analytics, compliance and DevSecOps.
From a technology perspective, the start-up offers ‘end-to-end protection’ in public cloud services across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
