Carbon Black, a player in what is commonly referred to as the “next-generation endpoint security” market, announced on Tuesday that is has acquired antivirus firm of Confer.
The move is an effort to enhance Carbon Black’s endpoint security platform and improve its prevention, detection and incident response capabilities.
According to Carbon Black, Confer’s software solution will be renamed “Cb Defense” and combine behavioral-based prevention techniques with integrated detection and response capabilities to stop cyber-attacks.
“Its cloud-based, deep-analytics approach blocks both malware and increasingly common malware-less attacks that exploit memory and scripting languages such as PowerShell,” the company explained. “Once malware is blocked, Cb Defense gives organizations visibility into how the attack happened. This visibility enables businesses to proactively fix security problems.”
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but The Wall Street Journal has reported that the deal is valued at $100 million.
Confer had previously raised approximately $25 million in funding.
Related: Inside The Competitive Testing Battlefield of Endpoint Security
“The emerging next-generation endpoint-security market is about more than prevention. Security vendors who offer a comprehensive security platform comprised of prevention, detection and response capabilities will lead the transition from prior generation solutions,” said Doug Cahill, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.
“With the acquisition of Confer, organizations of every size can now address their endpoint-security requirements through a single platform,” said Patrick Morley, chief executive officer of Carbon Black. “This extension of the Carbon Black platform is a significant step forward in our vision to create a world safe from cyber attacks.”
As a company, Carbon Black has roughly 600 employees and is a result of Bit9 merging with Carbon Black in February 2014.
Confer Co-founders Paul Morville and Jeff Kraemer will be joining the Carbon Black product and engineering teams, respectively, the company said.
Related: Inside The Competitive Testing Battlefield of Endpoint Security

For more than 10 years, Mike Lennon has been closely monitoring the threat landscape and analyzing trends in the National Security and enterprise cybersecurity space. In his role at SecurityWeek, he oversees the editorial direction of the publication and is the Director of several leading security industry conferences around the world.
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