At a glance.
- Cisco will acquire Isovalent.
- SentinelOne to acquire PingSafe.
- SonicWall acquires Banyan Security.
- Aqua Security raises $60 million.
- European Central Bank to conduct cyber stress tests.
- Mueller Water Products cybersecurity incident is credit negative.
Mergers and acquisitions.
Cisco will acquire open-source cloud-native networking and security firm Isovalent. The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of fiscal year 2024. Cisco stated in a press release, "Isovalent holds leadership positions in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and eBPF Foundation, in addition to upstream software contributions, and this acquisition strengthens Cisco's role in supporting the open source ecosystem. Together as leaders in networking and security, Cisco and Isovalent will build solutions powered by eBPF technology that aim to solve the challenge of protecting workloads no matter where they reside. Cisco is committed to Cilium and Tetragon as open source projects and intends to create an independent advisory board to help steer Cisco's contributions to these important efforts in a way that is aligned with the needs of the open source community."
SentinelOne has agreed to acquire Bengalaru-based cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) provider PingSafe. SentinelOne stated, "With the acquisition of PingSafe, SentinelOne will offer differentiated capabilities such as advanced secrets scanning of runtime and build-time environments and an attack surface management rules engine that runs breach and attack simulation scenarios against Internet-exposed cloud assets to identify how an adversary could compromise those assets. These capabilities will be in addition to core CNAPP capabilities like cloud security posture management, Kubernetes security posture management, agentless vulnerability scanning, and shift-left Infrastructure as code scanning."
SonicWall has acquired security service edge provider Banyan Security. The company stated, "Banyan's technology further extends SonicWall's portfolio to the cloud and provides partners and their customers with more flexibility, which is key to the continued development of SonicWall's cybersecurity platform. The acquisition aligns with SonicWall's 'best of suite' strategy — which includes network, endpoint, wireless, cloud email, and threat intelligence — under a single, multi-tenant portal. The platform also simplifies workflows and offers unified threat visibility, enabling service providers and end users to focus on what truly matters."
Palo Alto Networks has completed its acquisition of Israeli secure browser technology provider Talon Cyber Security, SecurityWeek reports.
Investments and exits.
Boston-based cloud-native security company Aqua Security has secured $60 million in a Series E extension led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from existing investors Insight Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and StepStone Group. The funding brings the company's valuation to over $1 billion.
Executive moves.
DeNexus has hired George Mawdsley as Head of Risk Solutions.
Cybrella has hired Ranell Gonzales as Vice President of Global Sales and Alliances.
Coalfire has appointed Camie Shelmire as Chief People Officer.
The Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) has added Michael Lashlee, Kiersten Todt, and Greg Kapfer to its board of directors.
European Central Bank to conduct cyber stress tests.
The European Central Bank will begin conducting cyber stress tests on 109 banks in Europe this month, Bank Info Security reports. Anneli Tuominen, a member of the banking regulator's supervisory board, said in a November interview, "The test will simulate a severe cyberattack that disrupts business operations. So it gets straight to the crux of the issue from the banks’ point of view. We want to know how banks respond to and recover from a cyberattack and how they resume normal business. Our main objective is to identify the banks’ weak spots."
Mueller Water Products cybersecurity incident is credit negative.
Moody’s has published a report examining the impact of a cyber incident sustained by Mueller Water Products in October 2023. The report states, "The incidents are credit negative for the company and highlight key risks related to business operations' that are heavily reliant on technology and the operational disruption caused when systems are compromised. Mueller says the unauthorized activity has been contained and all of its facilities have substantially returned to normalized operations but the company has yet to quantify the financial impact of the events. We expect increased costs to be allocated to remediation and preventative actions offset from potential insurance proceeds. The total cost and amount of time to remediate is unknown but at this time it is offset by the company's ample liquidity and remediation efforts thus far evidenced by its return to operations. As of September 30, 2023, Mueller had $160 million of balance sheet cash and $162 million of revolver availability."