US tech giant Microsoft has confirmed the acquisition of Israeli Internet of Things (IoT) security company CyberX. The acquisition was announced in a blog by Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk, CVP, CTO, Cloud + AI Security, and Sam George, CVP, Cloud + AI Azure IoT. No financial details were disclosed but "Globes," which was the first to report news of the deal early last month, estimates that Microsoft is paying $165 million for the Israeli company.
CyberX, which was founded in 2013 by CEO Omer Schneider and CTO Nir Giller, both veterans of the Israeli Elite Cyber Security Unit, is headquartered in Boston and has its development center in Herzliya. The company has raised $48 million to date from investors including Qualcomm, Inven, Norwest Venture Partners, Glilot Capital Partners, Flint Capital, ff Venture Capital, and OurCrowd.
The company is engaged in Internet of Things (IoT) cybersecurity for command and control systems for industry. Protection is implemented by algorithms that analyze network transmissions and identify anomalies in machine to machine (M2M) communications for international customers in the energy, water, pharmaceutical, chemicals, gas and manufacturing plant sectors.
Schneider said, "Nir and I founded CyberX with the goal of delivering a scalable solution that would be easy to deploy and reduce risk for enterprises worldwide. We’re thankful to our loyal customers and partners as well as to our dedicated employees whose innovation and hard work made it possible for us to reach this important milestone, and also to our investors for their ongoing support."
Giller added, "By joining forces with Microsoft, we will rapidly scale our business and technology to securely enable digital transformation for many more organizations. Together, CyberX and Microsoft provide an unbeatable solution for gaining visibility and a holistic understanding of risk for all IoT and OT devices in your enterprise."
CyberX’s founders will join Microsoft and the platform will continue to be enhanced and supported by CyberX personnel. Microsoft is also committed to the channel and will continue working with CyberX’s strategic reseller and technology partners worldwide. The CyberX platform will continue to be available in a hybrid model supporting both cloud-connected and air-gapped networks.
In their blog Braverman-Blumenstyk and George said that CyberX would accelerate and secure Microsoft's customers’ IoT deployments. The two wrote, "CyberX will complement the existing Azure IoT security capabilities, and extends to existing devices including those used in industrial IoT, Operational Technology and infrastructure scenarios. With CyberX, customers can discover their existing IoT assets, and both manage and improve the security posture of those devices. With CyberX, customers can see a digital map of thousands of devices across a factory floor or within a building and gather information about their asset profile and vulnerabilities. Gaining this visibility is not only critical for understanding where security risks may exist and then mitigating those risks, but it is also a fundamental step to securely enable smart manufacturing, smart grid and other digitization use cases across production facilities and the supply chain."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 22, 2020
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