Palo Alto Networks Announces Intent to Acquire Evident.io

Palo Alto Networks will acquire Evident.io For A Total Purchase Price Of $300 Million To Be Paid In Cash; New Capabilities Will Extend Leadership In Cloud Security

Palo Alto Networks, the next-generation security company, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire U.S.-based Evident.io, a pioneer and leader in cloud services infrastructure protection. Under the terms of the agreement, Palo Alto Networks will acquire Evident.io for a total purchase price of $300 million to be paid in cash. The acquisition is expected to close during Palo Alto Networks fiscal third quarter, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions. Evident.io’s co-founders, Tim Prendergast and Justin Lundy, will join Palo Alto Networks.

IT teams are rapidly adopting public cloud to keep pace with business demands for new and enhanced services. The change can be overwhelming, and risk is a top concern. Adding to the challenge is that legacy security tools, designed for the traditional data center, do not work well in the public cloud. Organizations tend to lean heavily on manual inspection and audits to validate security and compliance, which is time-consuming, error-prone and outpaced by the dynamic nature of the cloud. To remedy this, security, DevOps and compliance teams need an automated and frictionless approach to securing public cloud workloads.

“We believe enterprises will become even more cloud-centric in the future and require prevention methods that have been designed for the cloud. With Evident as part of our platform, Palo Alto Networks will be the only vendor that can deliver a holistic cloud offering to address the critical security needs of today’s enterprise customers as they journey to the cloud,” Mark McLaughlin, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks,

Palo Alto Networks has established itself as the leader in cloud security through the unique combination of its VM-Series virtualized next-generation firewalls for inline cloud security, API-based security for public cloud services infrastructure, and Traps for host-based protections. Evident.io extends the Palo Alto Networks API-based security capabilities, and helps cloud practitioners ensure their deployments are secure and achieve a continuous state of compliance, by analyzing the configurations of all the services and account settings against strict security and compliance controls. Once integrated with the Palo Alto Networks cloud security offering, customers will be able to use a single approach to continuous monitoring, storage security, and compliance validation and reporting.

This will give security, DevOps and compliance teams unique capabilities to:   

• Confidently develop and deploy new applications in the cloud faster
• Simplify developer and security operations to speed deployments without sacrificing security
• Continuously validate compliance of cloud deployments

“Justin and I are delighted to join the Palo Alto Networks team. We founded Evident.io to secure our customers’ public cloud infrastructure and services without slowing down innovation. The combined capabilities of Evident.io and Palo Alto Networks will provide customers the confidence they need to run better, faster, and more securely in the cloud,” Tim Prendergast, co-founder and CEO of Evident.io

Evident.io is a pioneer and leader in security and compliance automation for public clouds. The Evident Security Platform (ESP) enables organizations of all sizes to proactively manage cloud security risk — minimizing attack surface and improving overall security posture, all from a single dashboard. ESP continuously monitors AWS and Microsoft Azure deployments, identifying and assessing security risks, providing security staff with expert remediation guidance, and enabling painless security auditing and compliance reporting. Evident.io is a privately held company based in Pleasanton, Calif. and backed by Bain Capital Ventures, True Ventures, Venrock, and Google Ventures.

Palo Alto Networks is the next-generation security company, leading a new era in cybersecurity by safely enabling applications and preventing cyber breaches for tens of thousands of organizations worldwide. Built with an innovative approach and highly differentiated cyberthreat prevention capabilities, our game-changing security platform delivers security far superior to legacy or point products, safely enables daily business operations, and protects an organization’s most valuable assets.