Palo Alto Networks, has acquired Morta Security, a Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity company operating in stealth mode since 2012. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Morta Security principals were former NSA and Air Force employees. The move is part of a broader acquisitional trend in the cybersecurity industry as companies rush to offer better defensive capabilities and manage growing domestic and international spying and attacks.
Palo Alto Networks already provided enterprise security, and this acquisition will add to that portfolio. Palo Alto Networks provides enterprises the ability to safely enable applications and rapidly detect and prevent threats, especially those that use an increasingly sophisticated array of tactics to compromise networks and gain access to valuable intellectual property.
The company said it was interested in Morta given the founders background in infrastructure protection and government grade security. Palo Alto Networks is currently at work on a more automated approach to cybersecurity. For it’s part Morta focused on advanced persistent threats, threats that typically scale to some of the significant breeches that we saw at the end of the year.
“The Morta team brings additional valuable threat intelligence experience and capabilities to Palo Alto Networks” said Mark McLaughlin, President and CEO of Palo Alto Networks. “The company’s technology developments align well with our highly integrated, automated and scalable platform approach and their contributions will translate into additive threat detection and prevention benefits for our customers.”
At the end of last year, FireEye, a competitor of Palo Alto acquired Mandiant a cybersecurity research and solutions provider with a track record of providing successful analysis of breeches and threats. That transaction totaled around $1 billion, and set against the backdrop of Target’s holiday hack, more acquisitions are likely throughout 2014.