2021 is shaping up to be an active year for mergers and acquisitions in the cybersecurity industry. March alone saw more than 40 firms being acquired. The level of activity is driven by growth in sectors such as identity management, zero trust, managed security services, DevSecOps and cloud security.
In many cases, the acquiring company sought to strengthen its position in its market—Okta’s purchase of Auth0, for example. In others, the acquisition was an entry into a new market; Lookout is now a player in the secure access service edge (SASE) market with the acquisition of CipherCloud. Some used the newly acquired company to expand product capabilities, like Palo Alto Networks boosting its Prisma Cloud platform with cloud security technology from Bridgecrew.
Below are the deals that CSO has selected as the most significant of the year.
VMware completes acquisition of API security firm Mesh7
March 31: VMware has finalized its purchase of Mesh7, which will allow VMware to bring “visibility, discovery and better security to APIs,” according to a blog post. The move gives VMware Mesh7’s contextual API behavior security solution, which is expected to help VMware deliver on a promise to provide “modern application services” using open-source options. Terms of the acquisition were not released.
