Technology giant IBM has announced plans to acquire early-stage attack surface management startup Randori in a deal that signals a major expansion of Big Blue’s cybersecurity ambitions.
Randori, a Boston area startup with a well-established reputation in the lucrative ASM (attack surface management) category, sells technology to help defenders conduct simulated hacking attacks on a continuous basis.
Now, IBM said it plans to fit that technology into its own products and add Randori’s automation and skills to its IBM X-Force offensive cybersecurity team.
The Randori acquisition comes on the heels of IBM’s purchase of ReaQta, an early-stage European startup in the autonomous threat detection and response business.
[ READ: Randori Arms Red Teams With New Automated Attack Platform ]
Financial terms of the Randori transaction were not disclosed. Randori raised approximately $30 million in venture capital funding since launching four years ago, including a recent $20 million Series A round led by Harmony Partners.
IBM is positioning the latest acquisition as an advancement of its Hybrid Cloud strategy and a beefing up of its portfolio of AI-powered cybersecurity products and services.
“Our clients today are faced with managing a complex technology landscape of accelerating cyberattacks targeted at applications running across a variety of hybrid cloud environments – from public clouds, private clouds and on-premises,” said Mary O’Brien, General Manager, IBM Security. “In this environment, it is essential for organizations to arm themselves with the attacker’s perspective in order to help find their most critical blind spots and focus their efforts on areas that will minimize business disruption and damages to revenue and reputation.”
Randori, founded in 2018 by Brian Hazzard (CEO) and David (‘Moose’) Wolpoff (CTO), ships software that help security teams discover gaps, assess risks, and improve their security posture over time by delivering “an authentic attack experience at scale.”
[ READ: IBM Security to Acquire ReaQta for xDR Push ]
Once the acquisition closes, expected in the next few months, IBM plans to embed Randori’s attack surface management software with the extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities of IBM Security QRadar.
The plan is to feed offensive security insights from Randori into QRadar XDR to give security teams tooling for real-time attack surface visibility, intelligent alert triage, threat hunting, and incident response. This can help eliminate the need for customers to manually monitor new critical applications and respond quickly when new issues or emerging threats arise on their perimeter, IBM said in a note explaining the deal.
IBM said it will also use Randori’s technology and people to to compliment its own X-Force Red offensive security services
Related: IBM Security to Acquire ReaQta for xDR Push
Related: Randori Arms Red Teams With New Automated Attack Platform
Related: IBM: Average Cost of Data Breach Exceeds $4.2 Million
Related: XDR is a Destination, Not a Solution
Ryan Naraine is Editor-at-Large at SecurityWeek and host of the popular Security Conversations podcast series. He is a security community engagement expert who has built programs at major global brands, including Intel Corp., Bishop Fox and GReAT. Ryan is a founding-director of the Security Tinkerers non-profit, an advisor to early-stage entrepreneurs, and a regular speaker at security conferences around the world.
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