CrowdStrike acquires cloud security provider Adaptive Shield

Today CrowdStrike Holdings Inc Announce It plans to acquire Adaptive Shield Ltd., a startup that helps companies protect the data they keep in cloud applications.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. CTech I mentioned The deal is valued at $300 million, more than six times the amount Adaptive Shield raised from investors. The company counts Blackstone and Insight Partners among its backers.

CrowdStrike is one of the world's largest cybersecurity services providers with a base of over 30,000 organizations. Its software helps protect cloud environments, employee devices, and other assets from cyberattacks. CrowdStrike clients spent $963.9 million on its products in the fourth quarter, up 32% from the same period a year earlier.

Tel Aviv-based Adaptive Shield, in turn, provides a cybersecurity platform to protect SaaS applications. The software scans these applications for vulnerabilities, misconfigured accounts, and malicious activity. Adaptive Shield also generates suggestions on how administrators can fix issues it finds.

Workers often sign in to cloud applications using their Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 accounts. During the registration process, the application can access files associated with the worker's account, which sometimes leads to cybersecurity risks. Adaptive Shield says its platform automates the task of detecting such risks to save administrators time.

The platform can also find a range of other cybersecurity issues. Detects when a company doesn't enable malware detection features for an app or uses weak passwords. Adaptive Shield detects more subtle issues, too, like employee accounts that have access to more data than is strictly necessary.

The platform's built-in intrusion detection engine monitors hackers' attempts to access the company's cloud applications. After detecting malicious activity, Adaptive Shield creates a summary of the hacking tactics used by the hackers. It identifies hacking tactics based on information in MITER ATT&CK, a database of hacking techniques that cybersecurity professionals use as a reference during threat investigations.

To help customers fix the most pressing issues first, Adaptive Shield ranks the cybersecurity risks it finds by their severity. Creates remedial suggestions to guide administrators through the breach response process.

In addition to cloud applications, Adaptive Shield's threat detection engine analyzes the devices through which a company employee accesses those applications. The software detects when a worker tries to log into the service from an unsecured computer or phone. It can check if the device is managed by the IT team, as well as determine if the device is running software with known vulnerabilities.

“As adoption of SaaS and AI increases, each new application brings more complexity and the risk of misconfigurations across human and non-human accounts that create opportunities for sophisticated attacks,” said George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike.

Adaptive Shield relies on CrowdStrike's leading cybersecurity platform Falcon to power some device security features. In particular, the software is used to identify which employee is using the endpoint and find vulnerable systems. This existing integration should make it easier for CrowdStrike to integrate Adaptive Shield into its product suite.

The companies expect to close the acquisition by February.

Image: Crowdstrike