Cloud-based security solutions provider Proofpoint has acquired NetCitadel, a maker of security incident response solutions, for roughly $24.0 million in cash, the company announced Tuesday.
NetCitadel’s incident response platform helps customers confirm and prioritize potential security incidents by unifying, correlating and synthesizing security alerts from Proofpoint and other security vendors such as HP ArcSight, Palo Alto Networks and FireEye.
“The unification of disparate threat intelligence data combined with automated incident response enables security professionals to respond to threats faster, in a more scalable way, and with higher confidence and accuracy,” Proofpoint explained. “This allows an enterprise to prioritize their efforts more effectively to prevent data breaches and data loss across their entire organization. “
NetCitadel was founded in 2010 in Mountain View, California, by CEO Mike Horn (formerly of Level 3 and Virtela); CTO Theron Tock (formerly of Neoteris/Juniper and Healtheon/WebMD); and Chief Engineer Vadim Kurland (formerly of Google and Healtheon/WebMD).
The company is venture backed by NEA and made its public debut as a company in January 2013 when it launched its OneControl Security Orchestration Platform.
“Loss of customer records and other sensitive information can begin within minutes of a system compromise, yet it typically takes organizations hours or days to respond to and contain an attack,” said Gary Steele, chief executive officer of Proofpoint. “By leveraging NetCitadel’s cutting edge technology, organizations can close this critical gap and dramatically reduce the risk of significant data loss. This technology is a natural complement to our cloud-based offerings and allows us to deliver a comprehensive advanced threat solution to all organizations, regardless of their existing IT security infrastructure.”
“NetCitadel’s incident response platform has been fulfilling a critical need for our customer base by slashing incident response times and cost,” said Mike Horn, NetCitadel co-founder and former chief executive officer. Horn is now vice president of threat and response products at Proofpoint. “We’re excited to join forces with Proofpoint and bring this technology to the broader market.”
As part of the acquisition, NetCitadel’s team has integrated with Proofpoint’s team in its Sunnyvale headquarters. NetCitadel’s ThreatOptics product is being re-launched as Proofpoint Threat Response, a standalone product and is being integrated with Proofpoint’s Targeted Attack Protection, the company said.
