Check Point announced they will be acquiring Lacoon Mobile Security. You can find Check Point’s formal announcement HERE. In summary, the dollar amount wasn’t announced but estimated to be a 80-100 million dollar acquisition and the second Isreal based company acquired by Check Point. Lacoon offers a solution that protection mobile users from zero-day attacks, remote takeovers of apps, data theft and attempts to harm user data. So in summary, its a smartphone play.
Zacks did a pretty good write up on the event. That post can be found HERE and below.
In a move to enhance its mobile security capabilities, Internet and network security provider, Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (CHKP – Analyst Report) recently acquired an Israel-based mobile security provider, Lacoon Mobile Security. Though the financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed by both parties, an Israeli newspaper estimated that the deal was worth nearly $80 million.
Headquartered in Tel-Aviv, Israel and founded in 2011, Lacoon offers enterprise-level security solutions for Apple Inc.’s (AAPL – Analyst Report) iOS and Google Inc.’s (GOOGL –Analyst Report) Android-based mobile devices. Apart from this, the company provides real-time mobile security and intelligence to any organization’s existing security and mobility infrastructures.
With this, the company mainly focuses on organizations which have bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies. Lacoon’s technology detects device, application and in-network threats that BYOD exposes to the enterprises.
According to chief executive officer and chairman of Check Point, Gil Shwed, “Mobility has become the norm in business operations now more than ever before, because it enables employee productivity with anytime, anywhere access. However, companies are not necessarily protecting the data on mobile devices properly.”
Therefore, the need for complete mobile security solutions has become most important. Though Check Point had launched its mobile security solution called Capsule last year, it did not get market attention due to the lack of a comprehensive security solution for mobile devices.
Check Point has revealed that it will integrate Lacoon’s products and employees into its operations thereby adding Advanced Mobile Application Threat Emulation, behavioral risk analysis and real-time anomaly detection capabilities to Capsule.
Lacoon is the second acquisition made by Check Point in 2015. In February, the company acquired a cybersecurity startup, Hyperwise, also based in Israel. Hyperwise has developed a CPU-level threat detection technology that can eliminate cyber threats at the pre-infection point.
We remain encouraged by Check Point’s sustained focus on expanding its product portfolio through acquisitions and offering industry-leading solutions which have helped it to drive growth. Also, we expect that the increasing IT security expenditure will benefit Check point’s results, going forward. Per research firm Gartner, worldwide spending on IT security in 2014 was about $70 billion and is expected to reach $76.9 billion in 2015.
Moreover, breaches at Anthem Inc. (ANTM – Analyst Report) and Sony Corporation in late 2014 have increased awareness about the need for cybersecurity products.
