Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cloud Security

VMware to Acquire Network Security Company Lastline

VMware on Thursday announced that it’s acquiring network security company Lastline for its research team and threat detection technology.

Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in VMware’s second quarter (Q2 FY2021 ends on July 31), were not disclosed.

VMware on Thursday announced that it’s acquiring network security company Lastline for its research team and threat detection technology.

Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in VMware’s second quarter (Q2 FY2021 ends on July 31), were not disclosed.

Lastline has developed an AI-powered network detection and response platform designed to neutralize threats before they can cause disruption. It claims its products help protect 20 million users across thousands of organizations, including 5 of the top 10 financial institutions.

Lastline is also known for its research team, which the company says includes four of the world’s most published security researchers. The firm also noted that its team includes 15 PhDs.

While VMware has praised Lastline employees, TechCrunch has learned that the virtualization giant actually plans on laying off roughly 50 people from Lastline following the acquisition — this represents 40% of the company’s staff. Neither Lastline nor VMware confirmed the reports.

VMware said Lastline employees will join the team that builds its NSX network and security virtualization platform.

“VMware NSX has deep visibility into network traffic, touching every packet. The NSX architecture will allow Lastline to perform network analytics at massive scale, across tens of thousands of cores, without the burden of tapping network traffic. Furthermore, NSX has an intrinsic understanding of application topology and speaks Layer 7. So it knows the difference between a web server and a database and understands what an application is doing,” explained Tom Gillis, SVP and GM of VMware’s networking and security unit.

“We will combine this context with the deep understanding of the host provided by Carbon Black. Lastline malware analysis will become a critical feed for our Carbon Black EDR and NGAV platform, which currently helps secure more than 10 million endpoints and workloads around the globe. And the combination of NSX plus Carbon Black will also allow the Lastline algorithms to analyze a particular interaction with greater workload context,” Gillis added.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

VMware announced last month that it acquired Kubernetes security company Octarine.

Related: Zscaler Acquires Microsegmentation Firm Edgewise Networks

Related: Palo Alto Networks to Acquire CloudGenix for $420 Million

Related: OPSWAT Acquires Network Access Control Provider Impulse

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Cybersecurity Funding

SecurityWeek investigates how political/economic conditions will affect venture capital funding for cybersecurity firms during 2023.

Identity & Access

Zero trust is not a replacement for identity and access management (IAM), but is the extension of IAM principles from people to everyone and...

CISO Strategy

SecurityWeek spoke with more than 300 cybersecurity experts to see what is bubbling beneath the surface, and examine how those evolving threats will present...

CISO Conversations

Joanna Burkey, CISO at HP, and Kevin Cross, CISO at Dell, discuss how the role of a CISO is different for a multinational corporation...

CISO Conversations

SecurityWeek talks to Billy Spears, CISO at Teradata (a multi-cloud analytics provider), and Lea Kissner, CISO at cloud security firm Lacework.

CISO Conversations

In this issue of CISO Conversations we talk to two CISOs about solving the CISO/CIO conflict by combining the roles under one person.