Security vendor Sophos has acquired Rook Security, a managed detection and response (MDR) services specialist armed with a team of cyberthreat hunters and incident response experts who monitor, hunt for, analyze, and respond to security incidents for businesses of all sizes.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Based in Indianapolis, Ind.,†Rook is a privately-owned company founded in 2008.†Sophos plans to combine its†threat detection, investigation, and response capabilities with the platform it acquired along with MDR platform vendor DarkBytes†earlier this year to create re-sellable MDR services.†The vendor will deliver those services via its network of approximately 47,000 channel partners worldwide.
“Cybercriminals are relentlessly trying to exploit organizations with techniques ranging from tried-and-true phishing emails to the more recent trend of ‘hacker pen-testing’ to find weaknesses in their surface area. As a result, businesses need 24/7 monitoring and management of what is happening on their network, yet many of them do not have the expertise, can’t keep up or don’t have the security teams in-house to optimally configure and manage security around-the-clock,” said Joe Levy, chief technology officer at Sophos, in a press statement. “With MDR, Sophos’ channel partners will be able to provide businesses of all sizes with expert services that continuously detect, hunt for, and respond to security incidents.”
Sophos intends to align its synchronized security technology and product portfolio with Rook Security’s 24/7 services for MDR customers. Rook Security experts will be able to review these customer security postures to ensure optimal policy configurations for Sophos products across estates.
“Rook Security provides managed detection and response services to detect and eliminate cyber threats. Through threat hunting and data analytics, Rook Security’s experts rapidly detect and mitigate active attacks,” said J.J. Thompson, founder and chief executive officer of Rook Security, in prepared remarks. “We are excited to bring our experts and service delivery innovation to Sophos, a global leader in next-generation cybersecurity. Together, we can implement faster, more effective threat detection and response capabilities to better protect businesses.”
Rook Security is the latest in a series of acquisitions this year by Sophos. In addition to DarkBytes, the company bought Avid Secure,†a San Francisco-based maker of analytics, compliance, and governance software for public cloud services, in January.
Managed security will be the largest segment of the global security market this year, accounting for $21 billion of $103.1 in projected worldwide spending, according to IDC.
