Identity and access management company Okta acquires security company Spera.
According to Okta, the Spera acquisition is expected to close during the fiscal first quarter, beginning in early February, and will build on Okta’s existing identity threat detection and response (ITDR) capabilities and provide customers with the system management and technology to improve the identification of personal information, detect and remediate risks.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but Calcalist report Okta is paying Spera approximately $100 million to $130 million, depending on milestones.
“As a leading identity partner, we remain committed to providing our customers with the tools and knowledge they need in an increasingly challenging environment, and we look forward to seeing how Spera Security enhances our ITDR efforts to help our customers. We’re excited to deliver safer outcomes.” Post published this morning on Okta blog To read.
Spera, which my colleague Frederic has covered previously, was co-founded several years ago by entrepreneurs Dole Fredel and Ariel Kadicevic. Based in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv, the platform provides tools to identify silos across Software-as-a-Service and infrastructure apps, discover vulnerabilities across user populations, and address regulatory, attack vector, and industry challenges. Helps prioritize security issues based on best practices.
As Frederick said in the interview, services like Spera also serve a purpose beyond security, helping businesses reduce licensing costs by helping them find dormant accounts that can be turned off.
Spera, which has about 25 employees, had raised $10 million before acquiring Okta. Investors included YL Ventures and angel investors from tech giants like Google, Palo Alto Networks, Akamai, and Zendesk.
Okta believes Spera will enable customers to better assess the identity infrastructure and security posture of their apps and services, helping to attract new customers to the Okta platform.company quote Gartner research suggests that by 2026, 90% of organizations will have some kind of embedded ITDR strategy, compared to the current rate of 5% to 20%.
“With Spera Security, we provide our customers with richer insights and technology to better manage their identity security posture and quickly identify, detect, and remediate risks,” the blog post continues. “They can take advantage of specific suggestions from Spera Security, such as identifying SSO. [single sign-on] or M.F.A. [multifactor authentication] Improve your security posture and remediate potential threat vectors before they become critical by excluding privileged and service accounts. ”
Okta’s acquisition of Spera comes after Okta acquired the a16z-backed password manager Uno and after a rosy fiscal quarter for Okta. 6 billion dollar company beat Wall Street’s expectations for the fourth quarter suggest that publicly traded companies are on the right track, at least in the eyes of shareholders.
Source: techcrunch.com
