Palo Alto Networks Acquisition of Expanse to Beef Up Cortex Suite

The latest Palo Alto Networks acquisition is Expanse, an automated attack surface management provider. The purchase is for $800 million in cash and equity awards.

Palo Alto Networks will add Expanse to its product suite. The deal, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, should wrap before the end of the year.

The acquisition will add $67 million in annual recurring revenue to Palo Alto Networks.

New Lead Generator

Nikesh Arora is chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks. He said Expanse will be a lead generator for his company.

Expanse’s internet collection and attribution platform constantly monitors the global internet. It maps exposed and untracked assets that comprise customers’ attack surfaces. It also evaluates and prioritizes risk, and provides mitigation.

Expanse’s data provides CISOs with a view of the enterprise from the outside, representing the view an attacker sees as they probe for points of weakness.

Palo Alto Networks’ Nikesh Arora

“It’s like bringing in a security expert from the outside who says, ‘That window’s open and that door’s open — Why’s that door open? it doesn’t have the right things it needs to be in place for that door to be open,'” Arora said. “So you can find the errors from the other side when you’re scanning the outside. You can also say, ‘Oh, I see that; that’s a known malware and that’s a known security vulnerability. Why is that exposed to the internet?’ So it’s busy looking from the outside in to see what [you] see when you believe you’ve done all your work from the inside out.”

CISOs and CIOs Will Be Interested

Once combined, the Expanse platform will beef up the Cortex product suite. It will provide organizations with a complete, integrated view of the enterprise.

“It’s typically something that a CISO or CIO at that senior level is interested in,” Arora said. “Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.”

Palo Alto Networks‘ customer base includes 1,600 of the Forbes Global 2,000, as well as many governments around the world. Expanse is applicable to those 1,600 customers and those governments, Arora said.

Expanse’s customers include Fortune 500 organizations in the financial, health care, entertainment and technology industries, as well as government organizations.

Expanse co-founders Tim Junio and Matt Kraning will join Palo Alto Networks.

“Expanse’s mission is to discover and mitigate risks for our customers that no one else can find,” Junio said. “The world’s largest and most complex organizations trust Expanse to continuously discover, inventory, monitor and report against their dynamically changing attack surface. Matt and I look forward to joining forces with Palo Alto Networks to help secure the internet for enterprises and governments around the world.”