Alphabet Inc-owned (GOOGL.O) Google said on Tuesday its cloud division had acquired Israeli cybersecurity startup Siemplify
Google said its cloud division has acquired Israeli cybersecurity startup Siemplify as the US tech giant expands its security offerings amid growing cyber attacks.
The deal comes after Google pledged US President Joe Biden last August to invest $10 billion in cybersecurity over the next five years amid significant growth in cyber attacks and data breaches.
Siemplify, led by co-founder and CEO Amos Stern, provides security management, automation and response solutions. It raised $58 million from investors including G20 Ventures and 83North.
Through its partnership with Google Cloud, Siemplify caught buyer’s interest as it was in the process of raising a new round of private equity.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, Google’s cloud revenue has nearly doubled to around $5 billion as businesses moved to work from home. The need to protect and protect against threats has grown in tandem, and large corporations have strengthened cybersecurity products as well.
The need to protect and guard against security threats has grown at the same time, with large companies also stepping up their cybersecurity products.
Google said Siemplify’s platform will be integrated with its cloud and serve as the foundation for the capacities it will invest in.
The buyout, Google’s first Israeli cybersecurity firm deal, will help the tech giant take advantage of the Middle Eastern nation’s deep pool of cybersecurity talent.
Guggenheim Securities advised Siemplify on the transaction.
What they are saying?
In a statement published by the tech giant, Sunil Potti, the vice president and general manager stated that Siemplify will become a part of the Google cloud security team to help companies better manage threat response.
“We both share the belief that security analysts need to be able to solve more incidents with greater complexity while requiring less effort and less specialised knowledge,” he said in a blog post announcing the acquisition
Similarly, Amos Stern, co-CEO of Siemplify said Google cloud is a partner that shares a similar mission, vision and culture. He said, “We are excited to join Google cloud and build on the success we have had in the market in terms of helping companies address a growing security threat.
“Together with chronicle’s rich security analytics and threat intelligence, we can truly help security operations centre to defend against today’s threat.”
Following the acquisition, Siemplify employs 200 people in Israel, the United States and London, who will join Google as the tech giant will use Siemplify to form the base of its cybersecurity operations in Israel, which will be part of the the company’s cloud activity. During this time, the co-founders of Siemplify will continue in the business.
Siemplify and Chronicle
Once the deal closes after regulatory approval, Google plans to integrate Siemplify’s capabilities into Chronicle so that companies can streamline and automate their security operations.
By unifying Siemplify’s SOAR capabilities with Chronicle’s innovative approach to security analytics, the search giant aims to further realise Google Cloud’s vision of a modern threat management stack that empowers customers to go beyond information management and security events (SIEM) and extended detection and response (XDR) tools.
This will allow for better detection and response at the speed and scale required by modern environment. The Siemplify platform provides a workbench that enables security teams to manage risk better while also reducing the cost of addressing threats.
The company’s technology allows Security Operation Centre analysts to manage their operations from end-to-end, respond to cyber threats with speed and precision and get smarter with every analyst interaction.
Google previously bought Israeli companies Elastifile, a cloud storage firm, and data migration company Alooma, in 2019.
In October, Google Cloud invested $50 million in Israeli cybersecurity company Cybereason.
Siemplify was founded in 2015 by entrepreneurs Amos Stern, CEO, Alon Cohen, CTO, and Garry Fatakhov, COO, with offices in Tel Aviv and headquarters in New York. According to Calcalist’s CTech, Stern was previously “on the IDF Intelligence Corps, where he headed a cyber unit before working for Elbit Systems, where he met its co-founders.”
Governments and businesses are at a “watershed moment,” in addressing cybersecurity as cyber attacks are increasingly endangering valuable data and critical infrastructure.”
