ForeScout Beefs Up OT Visibility with SecurityMatters Acquisition

IoT security provider ForeScout Technologies has acquired SecurityMatters, a provider of operational technology (OT) network protection, for about $113 million in cash.

SecurityMatters provides organizations with device visibility, continuous network monitoring, and threat and anomaly detection specific to operational technology and industrial environments using passive collection techniques that don’t impact operations.

ForeScout said the acquisition will bolster its “global leadership position in agentless device visibility and control across the extended enterprise with expanded capabilities and advanced features to secure OT and industrial environments.” This is ForeScout’s first acquisition since becoming a public company last fall.

ForeScout’s Pedro Abreu

Pedro Abreu, ForeScout’s chief strategy officer, tells Channel Partners his company and its partners now can offer customers new OT-specific product features and capabilities, “bringing visibility to the full spectrum of OT environments across virtually every vertical and industry.”

“This need is driven by OT systems ranging from industrial control systems to building automation to large sensor networks increasingly being connected to IT networks to improve business processes, provide intelligence and analytics, and reduce costs,” he said. “ForeScout and our channel partners will now be able to offer an enhanced ability to discover, classify and assess the vulnerability and behavior of these devices completely passively, to ensure no risk or downtime of these sensitive devices.”

Recent cyberattacks, such as WannaCry, NotPetya and Triton, demonstrated how vulnerable OT networks can result in significant business disruption and financial loss, according to ForeScout. A recent report by Forrester estimates 79 percent of organizations with an industrial control system network have suffered breaches in the past two years,

“There is a growing need for a unified security platform that protects organizations against the threats that target OT environments in today’s increasingly converged world,” Abreu said. “With the acquisition of SecurityMatters, we are enabling the industry’s first and only end-to-end agentless device visibility and control platform that can scale to support millions of devices across the most complex environments. A combined solution not only will offer deeper and more complete visibility, it will lower the total cost of ownership by offering combined sensing capability.”

Every company with OT needs to rethink its cybersecurity strategy, said Damiano Bolzoni, SecurityMatters’ founder and CEO.

“After partnering with ForeScout for the last year, it became clear that we shared the same vision,” he said. “Now as a single company, we will be able to accelerate our momentum and create the industry’s first capability to truly segment IT and OT environments.”