Cloud Container Firm NanoSec Joins House McAfee
Cybersecurity firm McAfee is buying four-year-old startup NanoSec, pioneer of the increasingly popular ‘container’ approach to cloud security.
NanoSec have developed a multi-cloud application security platform that uses ‘containerisation’ to help organisations protect data centre and cloud traffic. This segments each cloud application with a ‘wrapper’ that only allows necessary actions and connections, and blocks everything else to prevent threats from moving through the network.
The 20 NanoSec employees in California will now join McAfee’s Santa Clara office, and the container technology will be used to improve the technical capabilities of McAfee’s cloud access security broker products; MVISION Cloud and MVISION Server Protection.
“NanoSec’s technology is a natural extension for McAfee MVISION Cloud, enhancing our current cloud access security broker and cloud workload protection platform products, and adding to our ‘shift-left’ capabilities to deliver on the DevSecOps best practice to improve governance and security,” said Rajiv Gupta, senior vice-president and general manager of McAfee’s cloud security business unit.
As one of several recent deals, the acquisition indicates a growing interest in container-based security cloud architecture, which is becoming more critical as enterprises store and process ever greater volumes of data from next generation technologies including Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, and AI.
Traditional security solutions like firewalls are no longer effective at securing these high volumes of data against sophisticated cyberattacks, making it more critical for enterprises to explore alternatives.
A study from Gartner suggests that by 2022, 75 percent of companies globally will rely on containers for security, and Grand View analysts forecast the market to register a CAGR of 26.5 percent from 2019 to 2025.
Several big deals have already been made in this nascent market, including IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat in July, and in the same month, Palo Alto Networks’ purchase of container security leader Twistlock for $410 million. As the market continues to expand, new vendors are likely to emerge, and we could expect an increasingly busy acquisitions scene.
