Microsoft Buys Another Israeli Security Firm Secure Islands

Updated on

Microsoft announced today that it has agreed to purchase its third Israeli security firm in the last year with the acquisition of Secure Islands.

Blog post makes it official

Israel has become an incubator for tech firm startups in the last two decades, and security companies are commonplace in the tiny nation. Microsoft did not announce a price for its most recent purchase which has led to varied speculation with some saying around $77 million and others suggesting $150 million was paid in the acquisition.

Microsoft along with a number of others including DropBox, IBM, Amazon to name just a few are heavily invested in the cloud and following a spate of computer breaches in the last couple of years, securing the cloud is a must for each of these companies.

“These realities make it more critical than ever to have solutions that prevent data loss and track information regardless of where it resides,” wrote Takeshi Numoto, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for cloud and enterprise marketing, in a blog post earlier on Monday.

Secure Islands will provide protection and security to Microsoft’s cloud products like Azure and Office 365.

What is clear with the purchase is that Microsoft acquired Secure Islands to immediately begin work on products to protect Microsoft Exchange as well as Microsoft SharePoint where the firm already has a good deal of experience here along with additional products to protect all manner of files across Microsoft’s enterprise. Secure islands is expected to be absorbed by Microsoft’s  Azure Rights Management Service.

Microsoft’s other security acquisitions and Secure Islands

Less than a week shy of a year ago, Microsoft announced is acquisition of Aorato, a maker of cloud security solutions co-founded by former members of the Israeli defense forces. Aorato uses machine learning to detect suspicious patterns by would be attackers of cloud systems and hybrid on-premise and cloud environments.

“With Aorato we will accelerate our ability to give customers powerful identity and access solutions that span on-premises and the cloud, which is central to our overall hybrid cloud strategy, ” wrote Numoto when the Aorato deal was confirmed. While no price was given at the time of the purchase, most experts believe that is was somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million.

Just this September, Microsoft purchased the firm Adallom, another Israeli cloud security interest, for somewhere around $250 million.

Secure Islands founding came in 2006 and the company had raised $11.1 million before today’s purchase.

 

Leave a Comment