In its fourth security acquisition of the year, Palo Alto Networks has completed its $75m acquisition of IoT security startup Zingbox.
The company’s been on something of a spending spree in 2019 – earlier this year it announced its intention to acquire Demisto for approximately $560 million, and PureSec and Twistlock for around $47 million and $410 million respectively.
As with those acquisitions, Palo Alto Networks seems to be once again targeting highly specific expertise. Demisto’s offering is mostly characterised by its expertise in automation, while Twistlock focuses on container security and PureSec on serverless. In Zingbox’s case, it’s IoT security.
“We are excited to welcome Zingbox to Palo Alto Networks,” said Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks. “With Zingbox’s IoT capabilities, we will provide a first-of-its-kind subscription for our Next-Generation Firewall and Cortex platforms that gives customers the ability to gain control, visibility, and security of their connected devices at scale.”
Zingbox also makes much of its expertise in cloud and automation/AI, both of which seem to be topics in which Palo Alto Networks has a particular interest, and the expertise in these areas that Zingbox co-founders, Xu Zou, May Wang, and Jianlin Zeng will bring when they join the company as part of the acquisition is no doubt part of the value for Palo Alto Networks.
With CISOs doing their best to reduce their security stacks to a more manageable number of solutions, and many struggling to integrate ‘best-of-breed’ solutions into increasingly complex IT architecture, Palo Alto Networks’ strategy of building out its offering to be as comprehensive as possible makes sense.
Our own research project found that CISOs across EMEA consider Palo Alto Networks one of the best fits for their priorities. It also found that IoT security is one of the security areas in which they’re least confident in identifying effective providers, despite this being area expected to expand rapidly in the next few years. Palo Alto Networks’ ability to leverage its well-established reputation in security, and particularly in network security, are likely to be instrumental in helping it capitalise on this.
