The firm Airgap Networks Inc., which provides a software platform intended to increase enterprise network security, was bought by Zscaler Inc. today.
Financial details of the transaction were not made public. Prior to this, investors contributed more than $18 million to Santa Clara, California-based Airgap. Many Fortune 500 businesses are among its clientele.
Lists on the Nasdaq Cybersecurity software is mostly supplied by Zscaler. By ensuring that company data is shared with only authorized users, identifying vulnerabilities in cloud workloads, and carrying out associated duties, its applications assist organizations. There was a 25% increase in revenue from the same period last year to $525 million, thanks to the company’s product portfolio.
Zscaler has purchased a startup named Airgap Networks, which offers a platform called microsegmentation with the same name. To lower the danger of breaches, the software can limit data transfer between a business’s devices and apps.
Hackers frequently access company networks by employing a technique called lateral movement. Initially, they infiltrate a weak system, like a server that was inadvertently left open to the public internet. The infected device is subsequently used as a launching pad by the hackers to get access to additional resources inside the same network.
The platform from Airgap Networks prevents systems from sharing data with one another unless doing so is absolutely necessary. It is possible to block an application used by the marketing team from connecting to the databases of the finance department. By preventing pointless links between technological resources, hackers can more easily transfer malware from one system to another.
Previously, it took a lot of time and work to achieve this kind of network isolation. The reason for this is that administrators had to manually designate which systems a certain workload could and could not access. Users can save time by using Airgap Networks’ platform, which automates a significant portion of the manual labor associated with establishing microsegmentation rules.
Numerous additional functionalities are also offered by the platform. Using natural language prompts, Airgap Networks unveiled ThreatGPT, a chatbot that helps managers discover information about possible breaches. Additionally, the technology allows network data to be visualized as graphs.
Vice president and general manager of product management at Zscaler Naresh Kumar explained in a blog post that “Airgap can provide visibility and policy enforcement at every connected endpoint without adding any software to those sensitive endpoints,”“This approach eliminates the risk of east-west lateral movement on local networks as well as the complexity of traditional segmentation approaches like east-west firewalls, without hardware upgrades or operational disruption.”
Zscaler intends to incorporate its Zero Trust SD-WAN platform with the company’s technological offerings. The wide-area network, or WAN, that connects a business’s data centers and other geographically dispersed assets can be secured with the help of the latter service.