Forcepoint announced it has agreed to acquire Bitglass, a cloud security startup. The move is intended to speed up the platform security vendor’s ability to provide advanced data security and threat protection technologies for organizations to deploy and use.
Forcepoint announced the intention to acquire the startup on Monday, saying that the acquisition delivers the industry’s only truly integrated cloud-native Secure Access Service Edge platform. Forcepoint said it plans to integrate Bitglass with its Secure Access Service Edge platform after the deal is finalized.
The acquisition’s value
The financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close later this year, were not disclosed during the announcement. Manny Rivelo, the CEO of Forcepoint, said that the acquisition will give his company new ways to help customers secure data in work environments that are becoming increasingly hybrid.
Rivelo also said that complexity is the enemy of security, adding that IT teams are faced with the reality that securing a hybrid work environment is even more complex than the move to work from home during the pandemic.
The acquisition of Bitglass, Forcepoint said, will accelerate the ability for the company to address the widespread need among customers to enable safe hybrid workforces and use information more easily anywhere.
Forcepoint’s spending spree
This acquisition is Forcepoint’s third this year after it agreed to buy Deep Secure in June and Cyberinc in May. The spending spree comes after Forcepoint was sold by Raytheon for $1.1 billion to private equity firm Francisco Partners and named Rivelo the CEO in January.
Besides Netskope, Bitglass is one of the few remaining Cloud Access Security Brokers vendors to not get acquired. In recent times, Netskope and Bitglass have been in legal disputes regarding patent infringement and theft of confidential information.
Bitglass raised a total of $150 million from four funding rounds before the acquisition.
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