News

Microsoft Acquires SaaS Security Firm RiskIQ

In a move aimed at strengthening its cyberthreat protection capabilities, Microsoft this week announced it it is acquiring San Francisco-based RiskIQ.

The terms and closing details of the deal also weren't mentioned, although a Bloomberg article called it a "$500 million in cash" transaction, citing an anonymous source.

RiskIQ, founded in 2009, provides software-as-a-service security solutions for organizations. It has "built a strong customer base and community of security professionals who we will continue to support, nurture, and grow," Microsoft's announcement indicated. "RiskIQ's technology and team will be a powerful addition to our security portfolio to best serve our mutual customers."

RiskIQ's security community "has grown to more than 100,000 security professionals," according to Lou Manousos, RiskIQ's CEO, in an announcement acknowledging the acquisition. In addition, RiskIQ has partnerships with "hundreds of the Global 2,000" companies.

Manousos suggested that RiskIQ's solutions would be integrated into Microsoft's offerings.

"We'll work closely with our customers as we integrate RiskIQ's complementary data and solutions with Microsoft's Security portfolio to enable best-in-class solution attack surface visibility, threat detection, and response," he said.

RiskIQ has more than 160 employees, and counts more than 80,000 security analysts and more than 300 enterprises among its customers, per a company overview document (PDF download). Its approach to security is to track threat information outside organizations. To that end, it scans more than 730 billion Web pages per year and collects more than 300 million domain records, according to its company landing site description.

RiskIQ offers products to assess an organization's overall attack surface, including the risks of being subject to malicious JavaScript injection attacks and information skimming. It offers forensic tools for discovering attacks and threats, plus there are automated monitoring and remediation solutions.

How the acquisition would affect organizations currently using RiskIQ products wasn't mentioned. However, it seems that RiskIQ products are getting integrated into Microsoft's solutions at some point.

Last month, Microsoft announced the acquisition of ReFirm Labs, a provider of Internet of Things (IoT) and edge device security solutions. The ReFirm Labs buy was said to bolster IoT security capabilities that Microsoft had acquired when it bought CyberX the year before. While the RiskIQ purchase is yet another security company addition for Microsoft, it's centered more on cloud and Internet security.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

Featured

  • Microsoft Appoints Althoff as New CEO for Commercial Business

    Microsoft CEO and chairman Satya Nadella on Wednesday announced the promotion of Judson Althoff to CEO of the company's commercial business, presenting the move as a response to the dramatic industrywide shifts caused by AI.

  • Broadcom Revamps VMware Partner Program Again

    Broadcom recently announced a significant update regarding its VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program, coinciding with the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, a key component in Broadcom’s private cloud strategy.

  • Closeup of the new Copilot keyboard key

    Microsoft Updates Copilot To Add Context-Sensitive Agents to Teams, SharePoint

    Microsoft has rolled out a new public preview for collaborative "always on" agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing enhanced, context-aware tools into Teams channels, meetings, SharePoint sites, Planner workstreams and Viva Engage communities.

  • Windows 365 Cloud Apps Now Available for Public Preview

    Microsoft announced this week that Windows 365 Cloud Apps are now available for public preview. This aims to allow IT administrators to stream individual Windows applications from the cloud, removing the need to assign Cloud PCs to every user.