Ramat Gan based LightCyber has been developing automated behavioral analytics capabilities, using sophisticated machine learning.
US enterprise security company Palo Alto Networks (Nasdaq: PANW) has acquired Israeli cyber security company LightCyber for $130 million - $105 million cash and sources inform "Globes," an additional $25 million in shares.
LightCyber has been developing automated behavioral analytics capabilities, using sophisticated machine learning to quickly, efficiently and accurately identify attacks based on identifying behavioral anomalies inside the network.
LightCyber's investors include Access Industries, through its Israeli technology investments entity, Claltech, and network security luminary Shlomo Kramer, who joined the LightCyber board of directors last year, Battery Ventures, Glilot Capital Partners and Amplify Partners. With offices in Ramat Gan and the US, LightCyber was founded in 2012 by CPO Giora Engel and CTO Michael Mumcuglu. The company provides Behavioral Attack Detection solutions and its products have been deployed by top-tier customers around the world in industries including the financial, legal, telecom, government, media and technology sectors.
LightCyber has raised $32 million including $20 million last June, meaning that investors are seeing returns of at least quadruple their investment. Early investor Glilot Capital will see $27 million for its $4 million investment, while Shlomo Kramer with a 12% stake will see $16 million.
The company has annual revenue of $10 million.
This is Palo Alto Networks second Israeli acquisition after buying information security company Cyvera in 2014 for $200 million.
Palo Alto Networks says it will continue to offer the LightCyber products and support existing customer implementations while it engineers the technology into the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform by the end of the calendar year. Bringing behavioral analytics to the platform will enhance its automated threat prevention capabilities and the ability for customer organizations to prevent cyber breaches throughout the entire attack life cycle.
LightCyber CEO Gonen Fink said, "Palo Alto Networks has been driving a paradigm shift in the security industry with its natively engineered and highly automated Next-Generation Security Platform designed to change the equation in how organizations prevent cyber breaches. We are pleased to join the Palo Alto Networks team, combining our technology innovations and accelerating adoption of behavioral analytics to help organizations bolster their defenses against the advanced and sophisticated adversaries they are facing today."
Palo Alto Networks chairman and CEO Mark McLaughlin said, "The LightCyber team's vision to bring automation and machine learning to bear in addressing the very difficult task of identifying otherwise undetected and often very sophisticated attacks inside the network is well-aligned with our platform approach. This technology will complement the existing automated threat prevention capabilities of our platform to help organizations not only improve but also scale their security protections to prevent cyber breaches."
In 2014, the company announced that it had received a $12.5 million investment from Chinese fund GoCapital. The company's products are distributed in a number of countries, including Italy, Brazil, and China, and are approved for marketing in 35 countries.