Palo Alto Networks To Buy Evident.io For $300M To Fortify Cloud Services Infrastructure Capabilities

Palo Alto Networks has agreed to purchase Evident.io for $300 million to make it easier for enterprise cloud users to keep their deployments are compliant and secure.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based platform security vendor said Pleasanton, Calif.-based Evident.io will extend its API-based security capabilities by analyzing services and account setting configurations against strict security and compliance controls. The deal is expected to close by April 30, with Evident.io's co-founders joining Palo Alto Networks.

"We believe enterprises will become even more cloud-centric in the future and require prevention methods that have been designed for the cloud," Mark McLaughlin, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, said in a statement. "With Evident as part of our platform, Palo Alto Networks will be the only vendor that can deliver a holistic cloud offering."

[Related: New Customers Lead To A Big Sales Boost In Q2 For Palo Alto Networks]

Legacy security tools tend not to work well in the public cloud, forcing organizations to lean heavily on manual inspection and audits to validate security and compliance, according to Palo Alto Networks. However, this can be time-consuming, error-prone, and outpaced by the dynamic nature of the cloud.

Security, DevOps and compliance teams, therefore, need an automated and frictionless approach to securing public cloud workloads, according to Palo Alto Networks. And once Evident.io is integrated with the company's existing cloud security offering, customers will be able to use a single approach for continuous monitoring, storage security, and compliance validation and reporting.

As a result, Palo Alto Networks said security, DevOps and compliance teams will be able to: develop and deploy new cloud applications faster; speed up deployments by simplifying developer and security operations; and continuously validate cloud deployment for compliance.

"The combined capabilities of Evident.io and Palo Alto Networks will provide customers with the confidence they need to run better, faster, and more securely in the cloud," Tim Prendergast, Evident.io's co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. Prendergast and Co-Founder Justin Landy will both join Palo Alto Networks.

Shares of Palo Alto Networks remained unchanged at $188.45 in after-hours trading Tuesday. The deal comes just two days after privileged account security vendor CyberArk purchased Vaultive to boost proactive cloud security controls for privileged accounts and cloud administrators.

Evident.io was founded in 2013, and today employs 112 people, according to LinkedIn. The company has raised $49.1 million in five rounds of venture funding, with In-Q-Tel and GV (formerly Google Ventures), respectively, leading the two most recent rounds.

The Evident Security Platform (ESP) enables companies of all sizes to minimize their attack surface and improve their overall cloud security posture from a single dashboard. ESP continuously identifies and assesses security risks in AWS and Microsoft Azure deployments, provides security staff with expert remediation guidance, and enables painless security auditing and compliance reporting.

"The deal combines the best public cloud infrastructure security company, Evident.io, with the industry's leader in public cloud security, Palo Alto Networks," Prendergast said in a letter posted to the company's website. "Together, our technologies will form the world's most advanced cloud security offering."

Organizations are increasingly using multiple public cloud accounts and providers to take advantage of the different strengths from the individual cloud providers, wrote Chris Morosco, a Palo Alto Networks product marketing director for cloud security and other technologies, in a blog post on Tuesday afternoon. Lagging security tools will only add complexity and slow down application deployment, Morosco said.

Evident.io will make it possible for teams to deliver these capabilities across accounts and public cloud providers with a unified approach for their entire cloud deployment, Morosco said. Plus organizations will have access to customizable reports ensuring they are in compliance with CIS, HIPAA, SOC2, PCI, NIST, or ISO, according to Morosco.

The advanced API security, compliance reporting and public cloud validation capabilities of Evident.io will combine seamlessly with the advanced threat protection and cloud DLP capabilities of Palo Alto Networks, Morosco said. The company expects to begin integration immediately following the acquisition's close, according to Morosco.

"The Evident.io team has built a reputation for innovating for the cloud and solving tough challenges," Morosco wrote in the blog post. "With their know-how and technology, we will significantly expand our cloud security capabilities."