Tenable Considering Acquisition By Private Equity Or ‘Strategic’ Buyer: Report

The cybersecurity vendor is reportedly mulling a potential deal that would take the company private.

Publicly traded Tenable is reportedly mulling a potential deal that would take the cybersecurity vendor private.

According to a Bloomberg report Tuesday, Tenable is considering a sale either to a private equity firm or to a “strategic” buyer.

[Related: Tenable To Acquire Cloud Data Security Startup Eureka]

The process is still in its “early stages,” Bloomberg reported. Tenable’s stock price was up nearly 9 percent, to $46.92 a share, as of 2:30 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

CRN has reached out to Tenable for comment.

Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg reported that Tenable has brought aboard advisers to assist with the process.

Recent years have seen numerous publicly traded cybersecurity vendors taken private through deals with private equity investors, including KnowBe4, Proofpoint, SailPoint and Ping Identity. Earlier this year, Thoma Bravo said it had reached a deal to acquire Darktrace for $5.32 billion.

The reported deliberations by Tenable come after the company has continued to expand its exposure management platform, Tenable One, both through organic product additions and startup acquisitions.

In June, Tenable said it had reached a deal to acquire Eureka Security, a startup focused on providing data security posture management (DSPM) for the cloud.

The DSPM capabilities have joined the Tenable platform that already offers cloud security posture management (CSPM), cloud workload protection and CIEM (cloud infrastructure entitlement management). Tenable has assembled some of these capabilities through previous M&A, including the $265 million acquisition of Ermetic last fall.