Cybersecurity businessPalo Alto Networks acquires Morta Security

Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW) announced it has acquired Morta Security, a Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity company operating in stealth mode since 2012. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Palo Alto Networks says that the acquisition of Morta Security further strengthens its position as a provider of next-generation enterprise security. Palo Alto Networks provide enterprises the ability safely to enable applications and detect and prevent threats, especially those which use an increasingly sophisticated array of tactics to compromise networks and gain access to valuable intellectual property.

Palo Alto Networks says Morta Security brings with it a team experienced at protecting national infrastructure as well as technologies that enhance the proven detection and prevention capabilities of the Palo Alto Networks WildFire platform, which is already used by more than 2,400 customers.

“The Morta team brings additional valuable threat intelligence experience and capabilities to Palo Alto Networks” said Mark McLaughlin, president and CEO of Palo Alto Networks. “The company’s technology developments align well with our highly integrated, automated and scalable platform approach and their contributions will translate into additive threat detection and prevention benefits for our customers.”

“Palo Alto Networks has a successful history of disrupting the network security landscape with its unique offerings” said Raj Shah, CEO of Morta Security. “The Morta team is excited to work with the clear leaders in this space and we look forward to joining the company and contributing to future highly innovative technology leadership.”

Advanced threats demand automated and scalable approach
Palo Alto Networks says that today’s sophisticated cyberattacks increasingly rely on a combination of tactics and threat vectors to penetrate an organization and often remain undetected for extended periods of time while inflicting long-term damage. Most organizations still rely on legacy point technologies that address only specific types of attacks, or phases of the attack. Because of the singular nature of these technologies, they are ill-equipped to detect and prevent today’s advanced cyberattacks. When these attacks are finally discovered, they typically require significant human incident response efforts. As the volume and sophistication of these attacks continues to grow, throwing more point products and human capital at the challenge is too costly and cumbersome for most organizations. 

The company says that to address these challenges, a new approach is required: One that begins with positive security controls to reduce the attack surface; inspects all traffic, ports, and protocols to block all known threats; rapidly detects unknown threats through analysis and correlation of abnormal behavior; then automatically employs new signatures and policies back to the front line to ensure previously unknown threats are known to all and blocked. This approach can reduce the number of threats that penetrate an organization and greatly reduce the need for costly human remediation.  

Palo Alto Networks says its solution is based on this kind of automated approach; it starts with the firewall as the core enforcement vehicle within the network and is complemented by advanced detection services to increase overall efficacy. Palo Alto Networks says that the Morta team’s cybersecurity expertise and technologies will fit seamlessly into this approach by adding capabilities that can expedite the detection of new attack variations.