F5 has introduced an settlement to accumulate Boston-based Threat Stack for $68M. The buy of Threat Stack is F5’s fourth acquisition up to now two years as the corporate is trying to remodel from a hardware-centric community vendor to software program and cloud firm that gives community and safety options.
In 2019, the corporate made its first main transfer when it bought NGINX for $670M. This gave F5 an open supply platform with excessive attraction to builders. In 2020, F5 dropped a billion to accumulate Shape Security, a supplier of AI-based bot detection. This, mixed with Silverline, solidified F5’s place as a safety vendor, in comparison with a community vendor that additionally sells safety.
Earlier this 12 months, the corporate bought Volterra, a vendor that gives edge and API stage community and safety companies, enabling F5 to compete within the rising distributed cloud market.
Threat Stack provides to F5’s app safety portfolio
While not carrying almost the value tag as a number of the different acquisitions, Threat Stack is a wonderful acquisition, because it strengthens F5’s place in utility safety. The majority of F5’s safety merchandise are network-centric. And that’s definitely necessary, however modernized functions are constructed on the idea of a distributed cloud the place app elements scattered throughout clouds and edges talk with each other throughout the community.
A great way to consider the issue is to think about how a street system might be protected by checking automobiles on the on-ramps however can’t defend towards a drone dropping bombs. Similarly, community safety can defend the transport, however increasingly, menace actors are attacking functions and APIs.
In the close to time period, Threat Stack’s capabilities add to the observability F5’s platform has in containers and cloud native companies. Customers can use the product to watch after which act rapidly to remediate points and guarantee compliance no matter the place the app or app elements are deployed. The rise of containers and micro companies creates considerably extra agility for organizations, however the distributed and dynamic nature of cloud native environments requires one thing aside from WAFs and firewalls.
Automated insights and remediation coming to F5 prospects
Looking forward, Threat Stack’s threat identification and real-time menace detection, mixed with F5’s present app insights and controls will allow the seller to higher automate insights, menace detection and mitigation capabilities. A great way to consider that is F5 can ship XDR on the utility layer, the place most XDR options function on the community stage. The automated remediation is essential as plenty of distributors can discover a breach however are weak within the areas of response.
F5 speaks functions and networking
While F5 is greatest often called a community vendor, it’s all the time had energy in functions, which is why its managed to maintain a lot larger community distributors, akin to Cisco and Juniper, at bay. I’ve typically referred to F5 because the “Rosetta Stone” of IT as it could speak the language of apps and networking and translate between the 2. It’s used this experience to optimize utility efficiency however now can use it for safety functions.
Acquisition a monetary coup for F5
The $68M price ticket for Threat Stack seems to be a steal because it has amassed about $70M in funding in six rounds. The start-up touts its energy within the areas of hybrid cloud, containers and edge computing and it may appear an odd time to promote, significantly at this low valuation, given the world is on the verge of the whole lot going cloud native.
I imagine Threat Stack has good expertise but it surely’s getting tougher for level merchandise to achieve safety. Security…
