IBM returns to M&A market with cloud acquisition
IBM has finalised a deal to acquire Spanugo, a Santa Clara-based cloud cybersecurity start-up, in what marks the technology giant’s first acquisition since its $34 billion buyout of Red Hat in October 2018.
The integration will essentially form “a security control center”
The firm, founded in April 2017, has just one seed round under its belt from July 2018. But despite its small size, IBM’s cloud SVP Howard Boville says the acquisition is a “major step in advancing IBM’s differentiated capabilities in security and compliance”.
Spanugo’s software will be integrated into what IBM calls the “first financial services public cloud”, which was designed late last year to help the financial services industry address regulatory compliance within the cloud environment.
The start-up offers tools which can detect on-premise and cloud areas where security controls need to be deployed, as well as set security policies and use application programme interfaces (APIs) to perform “event-triggered validations”.
Once integrated, the acquirer says Spanugo’s software will “provide preventative and compensatory controls for financial services regulatory workloads, multi-architecture support and proactive and automated security”.
The integration will essentially form “a security control center”, which will then shape the compliance profiles, controls and monitoring managed by IBM’s clients.
“Spanugo’s strong domain knowledge and experience in security posture management is a natural complement to IBM’s public cloud offerings,” says Spanugo’s co-founder and chief product officer, Doc Vaidhyanathan.
“We’re able to deeply serve businesses across industries that require verifiable, audit-ready, real-time cybersecurity posturing.”
