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Cloud Infrastructure Protection Acquisition: Sophos Buys Avid Secure

Sophos, the British endpoint and network security solutions provider, has acquired artificial intelligence-based cloud infrastructure protection company Avid Secure. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The Avid Secure acquisition enables Sophos to deliver end-to-end protection in public cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, according to a prepared statement.

Sophos has a particularly strong following within the MSP sector, where thousands of companies leverage a standardized Sophos dashboard to manage a range of security services. It's a safe bet Avid Secure's technology will eventually surface in that dashboard, MSSP Alert believes.

A Closer Look at Avid Secure

Avid Secure provides an agentless platform that features security analytics, compliance and development and security and operations (DevSecOps) capabilities. Furthermore, Avid Secure offers a variety of cloud infrastructure security solutions, including:

  • AI-Based Security Analytics and Monitoring: Provides continuous monitoring of cloud workload inventories, configurations and network traffic, along with security insights to help organizations speed up incident response.
  • Governance, Risk and Compliance Automation: Delivers continuous assessments and collaboration tools that can be integrated into an organization's internal processes and controls.
  • Rugged and Smart DevSecOps: Helps DevSecOps teams define security hygiene policies and apply security measures across  their cloud environments.

Avid Secure also applies AI models to detect unauthorized and malicious behaviors and processes millions of metrics in real-time, Sophos noted. To date, Avid Secure has helped organizations foster collaboration between their security and DevSecOps teams, bolster their cloud security operations and reduce their compliance costs by up to 30 percent.

What Does the Avid Secure Acquisition Mean for Sophos?

Although Sophos is a large, well-known security company, the business has experienced some turbulence on Wall Street in recent quarters. Simply put, investors want even faster growth from the security company -- and that reality has pressured Sophos shares multiple times.

Some of Sophos' 1HFY19 earnings results included:

  • Total billings of $353 million, up 3 percent year over year.
  • Total revenue of $350 million, which represented an 18 percent year-over-year increase.
  • Net profit of $26 million, compared to a net loss of $35.5 million one year earlier.

The company has over 43,000 channel partners and 317,000 customers worldwide.

Additional insights from Joe Panettieri.

Meta Description: Sophos, a British endpoint & network security solutions company, acquires artificial intelligence-based cloud infrastructure protection provider Avid Secure.

Dan Kobialka

Dan Kobialka is senior contributing editor, MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E. He covers IT security, IT service provider business strategies and partner programs. Dan holds a M.A. in Print and Multimedia Journalism from Emerson College and a B.A. in English from Bridgewater State University. In his free time, Dan enjoys jogging, traveling, playing sports, touring breweries and watching football.