Information archiving firm Smarsh has acquired cybersecurity and compliance firm Entreda. The acquisition adds Entreda’s 300 clients from the enterprise wealth management market to Smarsh’s 6,000 financial services clients, while bringing new cybersecurity expertise to the secure collection, storage and management of enterprise data.
Financial details of the acquisition have not been disclosed. Santa Clara, Calif-based Entreda (founded in 2010) will continue to operate under its own name as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Portland, Oregon-based Smarsh (founded in 2001).
The two firms offer complementary services. Entreda brings new cybersecurity risk and compliance capabilities to Smarsh’s capture, archiving and monitoring of information across the breadth of corporate communication channels (such as email, voice, social media, collaboration tools and more).
The timing is judicious. The long-term slow advance of remote working has been propelled into the standard method of work by the sudden pandemic lockdown — a state that many analysts believe will be irreversible. “In the past few months, more and more companies have asked for our help in addressing the regulatory, compliance and cybersecurity risks associated with the move to long-term remote-work models and the expanded use of mobile and collaborative communications technology, such as Microsoft Teams, Slack and Zoom,” said Brian Cramer, CEO at Smarsh.
Enterprises are being forced into a new normal rather than being allowed to evolve towards it. The threat landscape has suddenly expanded dramatically, and data protection, privacy and finance compliance has become more complex. With the information managed by Smarsh increasingly being collected from outside the corporate network, the need for additional cybersecurity and compliance solutions is self-evident. “With the acquisition [of Entreda],” Cramer added, “Smarsh can now offer our customers cutting-edge device, network and user level cybersecurity risk and compliance management capabilities.”
Stephen Marsh, founder and chairman at Smarsh, told SecurityWeek, “Through our conversations with customers and regulators, it has become clear that firms need a cybersecurity compliance partner like Entreda. Entreda’s Unify platform is a comprehensive, easy-to-use cybersecurity command center, monitoring multiple mission-critical threat vectors behind a single pane of glass. Similar to the Smarsh Connected Archive offerings, the product was purpose-built to help broker-dealers and registered investment advisories efficiently meet their regulatory requirements. Now customers can get compliance solutions for cybersecurity and electronic communications in one place.”
Both firms will continue to operate as they are, but with the ability to enhance integrated product offerings from the other’s portfolio. It’s business as usual, commented, Sid Yenamandra, CEO and co-founder of Entreda, but customers can “look forward to the many exciting product enhancements and new solutions that we can roll out, more expeditiously than ever, in partnership with Smarsh.”
Related: Remote Work is Not New, but it is the New Normal
Related: Investment Firm Combines Smarsh and Actiance to Solve FinServ Compliance Issues
Related: Financial Firms Struggle on Compliance for non-Email Communications
Related: eDiscovery – An Enterprise Issue That Can’t be Ignored
Kevin Townsend is a Senior Contributor at SecurityWeek. He has been writing about high tech issues since before the birth of Microsoft. For the last 15 years he has specialized in information security; and has had many thousands of articles published in dozens of different magazines – from The Times and the Financial Times to current and long-gone computer magazines.
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