Highlights

  • The acquisition will take Google towards a modern threat management stack environment.
  • The current deal will help the tech giant tap the Middle Eastern nation’s deep cybersecurity talent pool.

In a bid to bolster its response to ever-growing cyber-attacks, Google announced the acquisition of an Israeli cybersecurity startup, Siemplify. Both companies have not disclosed the the financials of the deal but it has been reported that Google has paid a sum of USD 500 million to acquire Siemplify.

The deal has come close on the heels of Google’s pledge to U.S. President Joe Biden last year to invest $10 billion in cybersecurity over the next five years to counter a significant rise in cyber-attacks and data breaches.

Google Cloud Security Vice President Sunil Potti said that Siemplify is a recognized leader in the security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) field. Siemplify’s platform will be integrated into Google Cloud’s security team, especially the Chronicle operation, “to help companies manage their threat response.”

Siemplify provides end-to-end security services to enterprises, typically referred to as security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) services. It helps security operation centre (SOC) analysts undertake multiple tasks like end-to-end operations management, respond to cyber threats with speed and precision, and get smarter with every analyst interaction.

Led by co-founder and chief executive Amos Stern, Siemplify has raised USD 58 million from investors, including G20 Ventures and 83North. Currently, the firm has about 200 employees based in the UK, the US, and Israel.

Ever since the onset of the pandemic, Google has nearly doubled its revenue from the cloud business to around USD 5 billion as work from home became the norm. There has been an arising need to protect and hedge against security threats and big corporates, too, have beefed up on cybersecurity products.

In October, Google Cloud and Cybereason, an Israeli security firm, announced that they have partnered to provide extended detection and response (XDR) tool organizations looking to protect endpoints, networks, cloud, and workspaces.

The current acquisition will help the tech giant tap the Middle Eastern nation’s deep cybersecurity talent pool.

Expert view

“In a time when cyberattacks are rapidly growing in both frequency and sophistication, there’s never been a better time to bring these two companies together. We both share the belief that security analysts need to be able to solve more incidents with greater complexity while requiring less effort and less specialized knowledge. With Siemplify, we will change the rules on how organizations hunt, detect and respond to threats,” Potti said.

“Providing a proven SOAR capability unified with Chronicle’s innovative approach to security analytics is an important step forward in our vision. Building an intuitive, efficient security operations workflow around planet-scale security telemetry will further realize Google Cloud’s vision of a modern threat management stack that empowers customers to go beyond typical security event and information management (SIEM) and extended detection and response (XDR) tooling, enabling better detection and response at the speed and scale of modern environments.”

According to Potti, the acquisition was part of Google’s strategy to improve the efficiency of SOC analysts.

Siemplify CEO Amos Stern added that Chronicle’s “security analytics and threat intelligence” will help several security operations centers.

“We’re excited to join Google Cloud and build on the success we’ve had in the market helping companies address growing security threats,” Stern said.