Imperva Beefs Up Bot Management with Distil Networks Acquisition

Imperva, the cybersecurity provider acquired by Thoma Bravo in January, has signed an agreement to buy Distil Networks, a bot management provider.

Imperva said the acquisition reinforces its “leadership” in application security and furthers its mission to protect business-critical data and applications “no matter where or how they are deployed.” Financial details of the acquisition weren’t disclosed.

George McGregor, Imperva’s vice president of product marketing, tells Channel Partners his company plans to integrate Distil‘s technology into its existing bot management product to provide customers with complete protection for applications and APIs wherever they reside.

Imperva’s George McGregor

“The Distil Networks service will continue to be available, first delivered via the Distil infrastructure, and then via the extensive Imperva content delivery network as part of the Imperva application security offering,” he said.

Bots are an evolving attack vector that has become a threat to all organizations, no matter the size or location, said Tiffany Olson Kleeman, Distil’s CEO.

“We have been leading the charge to find solutions to better understand, detect and mitigate automated attacks since 2011,” she said. “Today’s announcement serves as a testament to the ingenuity and dedication of Distil Networks’ team over the past eight years to solve this problem for our customers. We are excited to enter into a new chapter with a company that shares our passion for protecting critical business applications and delivering best-in-class security solutions for all customers.”

Edward Roberts, Distil’s senior director of product marketing, said the addition of Distil helps separate Imperva from the competition, and brings together the “best in class” web-application firewall (WAF), DDoS and runtime application self-protection (RASP) with the “best in class” bot management solution.

Both companies have partner programs, and Michele LaPlante, Imperva’s global partner marketing and channel communications lead, said at some point the two partner programs will be combined — but the timeline has yet to be determined.

“As a customer of both companies, Amadeus sees significant potential in the integration of their know-how and portfolios,” said Olivier Thonnard, Amadeus’ senior security expert. “Combining these two best-of-breed solutions should make them stronger, and I’m confident this move will be beneficial for Amadeus and our customers.”