Fortinet Gains on Cisco, Palo Alto Networks with enSilo Acquisition

Fortinet has acquired enSilo, a privately held advanced endpoint security company, to enhance Fortinet Security Fabric, and strengthen its endpoint and network security solutions.

The enSilo suite of endpoint security solutions not only includes automated detection and response, but the ability to be integrated into the larger Fortinet Security Fabric framework, further enhancing visibility while driving corporate security policies deeper into endpoint devices, according to Fortinet. The combination will be a “powerful offering” for enterprises and service providers of all sizes, it said.

Financial details of the acquisition weren’t disclosed.

Both Fortinet and enSilo have MSSP partners. MSSPs will be able to “extract the full value of this new addition” to the Fortinet Security Fabric to deliver a managed detection and response (MDR) service that can complement other services, especially those leveraging tools integrated together through the Fortinet Security Fabric, Fortinet said.

Eric Parizo, senior analyst with Ovum, said the acquisition is a “solid move” for Fortinet. Nearly every major enterprise cybersecurity vendor already has made a move of some kind to offer a combined endpoint protection platform (EPP) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution, but Fortinet had yet to do so. This quickly helps Fortinet gain ground on Palo Alto Networks specifically, but also Cisco, and Sophos in the midmarket, he said.

Ovum’s Eric Parizo

“Interestingly, it also thrusts Fortinet into a more competitive position with Symantec, a vendor which Fortinet has closely partnered with — the two vendors have invested in tightly integrating their endpoint and network security technologies, respectively,” he said. “With Symantec’s enterprise division set to be acquired by Broadcom, this move to acquire enSilo may be a signal that Fortinet no longer sees a Broadcom-owned Symantec as a reliable or desirable technology partner.”

Prior to this acquisition, enSilo already was a fully integrated member of the Fortinet Security Fabric-Ready Partner Program. Its EDR technology already was being used to complement FortiGate firewalls, FortiSandBox and the FortiClient Fabric Agent by providing an additional detection and enforcement layer to reduce the time to detect, investigate and remediate malicious attacks.

Fortinet’s Ken Xie

“As businesses become more networked and operations extend from the cloud to the edge and IoT, the digital attack surface has expanded exponentially and has become more complex to secure,” said Ken Xie, Fortinet’s founder, CEO and board chairman. “Manual threat hunting or point security solutions are ineffective when managing or securing these new environments; instead, security and the network need to be integrated and orchestrated to enable advanced threat containment at network speeds. In acquiring enSilo, we add automated, real-time detection, protection and response enhancements to our Fortinet Security Fabric to further protect endpoints and corresponding edge data.”

“Together, enSilo and Fortinet share the commitment to solve customers’ most difficult challenges and to protect the endpoint and their corresponding operations and data,” said Roy Katmor, enSilo’s CEO and founder. “Now, enSilo brings its patented approach for advanced EDR to Fortinet and its broad security portfolio.”

While enSilo is not known as a top-tier endpoint security vendor, more than two years ago it was one of the first vendors to tout combined EPP-EDR technology, Parizo said. That may save Fortinet some time on product development, though Ovum expects that Fortinet still will integrate the technology with its own FortiClient endpoint security technology, he said.

“Terms of the deal weren’t announced, but given Fortinet’s track record of purchasing vendors that have gone as far as they can on their own, including Bradford Networks (now FortiNAC) and AccelOps (now FortiSIEM), and getting them for a friendly price … Ovum expects that this deal should be considered similarly.” he said.