Forcepoint To Acquire Cloud Security Startup Bitglass

This marks Forcepoint’s third acquisition deal this year after it announced an agreement to buy Deep Secure in June and bought Cyberinc in May. Besides Netskope, Bitglass had been one of the few remaining Cloud Access Security Broker vendors to not get acquired. Manny Rivelo, CEO of Forcepoint, says the acquisition will give Forcepoint new ways to help customers secure data in increasingly hybrid work environments.

Forcepoint said it has reached a deal to acquire cloud security startup Bitglass, a move that will “accelerate” the platform security vendor’s efforts to “make advanced data security and threat protection technologies easier for organizations to deploy and use.”

The Austin, Texas-based company announced its intent to acquire Bitglass Monday and said that the startup “delivers the industry’s only truly integrated cloud-native Security Service Edge platform,” which Forcepoint said will be integrated with its Secure Access Service Edge platform after the deal closes.

[Related: Forcepoint Layoffs Cut Deep Into Channel Organization: Sources]

The deal is expected to close later this year. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Manny Rivelo, CEO of Forcepoint, said the acquisition will give Forcepoint new ways to help customers secure data in increasingly hybrid work environments, where employees may be working at an office, from home or while traveling.

“Complexity is the enemy of security. IT teams today are faced with the reality that securing a hybrid work environment is even more complex than the move to work-from-home was last year,” he said in a statement. “With the acquisition of Bitglass, Forcepoint will be accelerating our ability to address customers’ widespread need for enabling hybrid workforces to safely access and use information everywhere—in the web, cloud and data center—more easily than ever before.”

Founded in 2013, Bitglass’ Security Service Edge platform represents a “convergence of technologies for securing access to and usage of sensitive data and intellectual property in web and cloud traffic as well as private data center applications,” according to Forcepoint. The platform includes Cloud Access Security Broker, Secure Web Gateway, Zero Trust Network Access and Cloud Security Posture Management products, and it also comes with Data Loss Prevention capabilities.

“When the average CISO is managing 50-plus security products of loosely connected technologies, it’s clear the industry is challenged and needs to change,” Rivelo said. “By uniting Bitglass and Forcepoint, we will be able to deliver the industry’s first integrated security platform that transforms and consolidates data security, network, web, and cloud security, threat protection, advanced monitoring, and zero trust control to make access to and usage of information more effective, more reliable and less complex.”

This marks Forcepoint’s third acquisition deal this year after it announced an agreement to buy Deep Secure in June and bought Cyberinc in May. The buying spree is happening after Forcepoint was sold by Raytheon for $1.1 billion to private equity firm Francisco Partners and named Rivelo, a former F5 Networks executive, as CEO in January.

Besides Netskope, Bitglass had been one of the few remaining Cloud Access Security Broker vendors to not get acquired. Over the past year, Bitglass and Netskope have been suing each other allegations of patent infringement and theft of confidential information.

Bitglass had raised a total of $150 million in four funding rounds from investors, and the most recent financing came in 2019 with a $70 million Series D round.