A report this week in Bloomberg says the looming deal is worth $500 million
Microsoft Corp. has agreed to acquire digital threat management firm RiskIQ for $500 million, according to sources quoted in a Bloomberg report. The deal could become official as soon as the next few days, according to people familiar with the matter.
However, so far neither company has yet publicly commented on the Bloomberg report.
Although only 2 years old, San Francisco based RiskIQ has already become a prominent player in internet security intelligence. The company provides “comprehensive discovery, intelligence, and mitigation of threats associated with an organization’s digital presence.”
The company’s EDP is a security auditing engine that automatically maps out an organization’s externally accessible infrastructure. The mapping includes everything from website content to nameservers, IP addresses and even assets outside the firewall. EDP scans and then provides a view of what it has found regarding the available attack surface as perceived by potential hackers.
The service sports a proprietary virtual-user technology, a threat analysis engine and a global proxy network. RiskIQ’s global internet intelligence graph has mapped billions of relationships between the internet components belonging to every organization, business and threat actor on earth to provide a current and historical view of the attack surface.
A newcomer with some heavy-hitter clients
Analysts say Microsoft is buying the company to expand its products and better protect customers at a time of rising cyberattacks. With more than 75% of attacks originating outside the firewall, RiskIQ’s solution allows enterprises to gain unified insight and control over web, social and mobile exposures. they claim.
And they seem to be delivering on their promise. Indeed, RiskIQ has already acquired some big name customers for its service. These include Facebook, BMW, American Express, Box, BNP Paribas and even the U.S. Postal Service.
The company has financial backing by Summit Partners, Battery Ventures, Georgian Partners, NationalGrid Partners, and MassMutual Ventures.