Palo Alto Networks Pays $173M for Cloud Security Startup RedLock

Palo Alto Networks reached an agreement to acquire cloud security startup RedLock for $173 million in cash. RedLock co-founders Varun Badhwar and Gaurav Kumar will join Palo Alto Networks. RedLock provides visibility and automated threat detection and response across an organization’s public cloud environment. The acquisition will boost Palo Alto Networks’ security analytics capabilities across multiple clouds including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. It also provides technology to automate remediation by integrating with existing incident response workflows. “What does that look like in the real world?” wrote Palo Alto Networks’ Chris Morosco in a blog. “Say, for example, that a developer accidentally leaks cloud access keys on a well-known forum such as GitHub, and that as a result of this, a hacker attempts to log in to the cloud environment using those keys. RedLock’s fast analytics detect that the key is being used in an unusual location to perform an unusual activity — and immediately alerts the SOC team, with a full history of all activities associated with that key.”