Edge security and content delivery giant Akamai Technologies on Wednesday announced plans to spend $600 million to acquire Guardicore, an Israeli micro-segmentation technology startup.
Akamai said the deal would add new capabilities to help customers thwart ransomware attacks by blocking the spread of malware within an already-compromised enterprise.
Guardicore, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, is a late-stage startup that raised a total of $106 million over multiple funding rounds since launching in 2013.
The company sells technology that stops malicious lateral movement by creating silos between servers, operating systems, applications and cloud instances.
The micro-segmentation technology is considered a meaningful part of the so-called Zero Trust security approach and Akamai expects to feature the new capabilities alongside its WAF (web application firewall) and Secure Web Gateway product lines.
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“Guardicore’s micro-segmentation solution is designed to limit user access to only those applications that are authorized to communicate with each other. By denying communication as the default, the threat surface and risk exposure are drastically reduced, thereby limiting the spread of malware and protecting the flow of enterprise data across the network,” Akamai said in a statement.
“This protection extends beyond the data center to the cloud, including bare metal, virtual machines and containers,” the company added.
The planned Guardicore acquisition follows Akamai’s 2020 purchase of Asavie for its mobility, IOT and security technologies and a prior deal to buy identity management firm Janrain.
Related: Akamai Acquires Asavie for Its Mobility, IoT Services