Threat Stack: Cloud Security and Compliance Vendor to be acquired by F5 for $68 million

From a hardware-based problem solver, F5 is gradually transitioning to a software-based solution. Their recent proposal to acquire Threat Stack: cloud security and compliance vendor caught everyone's attention.

Utilising F5's application insights and controls with Threat Stack's detection techniques, the risk identification process can achieve goals as per customer needs. Once acquired, F5's visibility is going to increase drastically.

Threat Stack, Boston-based cloud security and workload compliance provider, is waiting for the $68 million deal to go through. F5 Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: FFIV) Seattle-based multi-cloud application security and delivery company. The current market value of the company is $12.17 billion. The acquisition is going to be the fourth one in the last two years.

A deeper dive into their vision

Recently Threat Stack introduced their support for AWS Fargate to manage container architectures. To provide a detailed view into running systems for accelerating advance compliance and threat hunting use-cases.

The availability of security monitoring for AWS Fargate expands view across the cloud security stack. The AWS Fargate containers runtime environment helps process data inside containers and network data flow and externals to Fargate tasks.

Fargate metadata detects interactive sessions, SSHD binaries, unexpected network connections and data exfiltration attempts which is a lovely composition.

They also have a Kubernetes solution, container base docker clusters, part of the deal managed by Threat Stack. Threat Stack events log both containers and orchestration layer as part of the security system.

Mark Weiner, VP of product marketing at F5, called the deal "a win-win" for both companies and their customers. F5 already provides comprehensive service to many levels of customers, and the great thing about the deal is that they can now look inside "a lot of great traditional web application security components."

At the end of the 2022 fiscal year, the company will add another $15 million in revenue. With the announcement, F5 lost a 1.17 per cent market share which translates from $2.39 to $202.19 per share. Founded in 2012, Threat Stack currently has 105 employees. They also managed to raise $72.3 million in six rounds of fundraising.

Executive vice president of security at F5, Haiyan Song, talked about applications as they are "the backbone of today's modern businesses, and protecting them is mission-critical for our customers." In 2017, F-Prime capital partners, venture capital group's parent company Fidelity Investments led $45 million in Series-C funding. It was one of the most considerable sums received by Threat Stack. And with the F5 acquisition, it will be the largest single funding received by the company and a new contract.

Optiv, Level, Atlantic Data Security, VLCM, and Tevora are reseller partners working with Threat Stack guided through digital transformation with features such as AWS partnership and support from Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Cybercriminals mainly target applications, and according to F5, it is a $100 billion loss each year. The company is trying to provide a helping hand to businesses and companies going through such mischief with every capable power.

Though F5 is not carrying nearly the price tag of other acquisitions, Threat Stack is excellent to strengthen application security. While F5's majority products are network-centric, Threat Stacks distributed cloud components will be a great addition.

Suppose a road system can be protected via checking every vehicle, but if a drone is dropping bombs from above, it will take another level of protection. The acquisition is trying to achieve just that, and we hope it certainly will give out great results. The hybrid cloud, containers, edge computing and other features made the deal much more lucrative.