Active Defense & Deception , Fraud Management & Cybercrime , Governance & Risk Management

M&A Update: Apax Partners to Acquire Herjavec Group

SentinelOne and Tenable Also Make Notable Acquisitions
M&A Update: Apax Partners to Acquire Herjavec Group

Security firms Herjavec Group, SentinelOne and Tenable were all involved in merger and acquisition activity this past week, continuing a consolidation wave within the cybersecurity industry.

See Also: The Future of Automation in Cybersecurity

Herjavec Group reported Thursday that it had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by the private equity firm Apax Partners for an undisclosed amount of money.

Meanwhile, SentinelOne and Tenable are making acquisitions. SentinelOne is acquiring the cloud analytics company Scalyr for $155 million in equity and cash. And Tenable plans to buy the active director security firm Alsid SAS for $98 million in cash.

Apax and Herjavec Group

The managed security services provider Herjavec Group and its celebrity owner, CEO Robert Herjavec, who appears on the TV show "Shark Tank," will join security consulting firm Coalfire as part of Apax's stable of cybersecurity firms. Apax intends to augment Herjavec Group's team with additional threat and identity resources and further advance the company's proprietary identity and security orchestration, automation and response - aka SOAR - platforms, Apax says.

Neither Apax nor Herjavec Group, which was founded in 2003, reported the financial details of the agreement, but the two firms did say that Herjavec will retain his position and remain a significant stakeholder in the company. The deal awaits regulatory approval.

SentinelOne and Scalyr

SentinelOne notes in a Wednesday statement that it will integrate Scalyr's extended detection and response technology - XDR - into its current platform to create a system that will ingest, correlate, search and act on data from any source.

"Scalyr's big data technology is perfect for the use cases of XDR, ingesting terabytes of data across multiple systems and correlating it at machine speed so security professionals have actionable intelligence to autonomously detect, respond and mitigate threats," says Tomer Weingarten, co-founder and CEO of SentinelOne.

Mountain View, California-based SentinelOne was in acquisition mode after securing $267 million in funding last year, according to news reports.

Tenable and Alsid SAS

Tenable announced its deal for Alsid, which is based in France, on Tuesday. It says the deal will enable the newly combined companies to better protect against Active Directory attacks, which are growing more common.

JPMorgan analysts called the acquisition an interesting growth opportunity for Tenable. "We believe customers will appreciate the ability to find weaknesses in user accounts inside the directory ranging from dormant users with privileged credentials to unusual changes in user privileges within directories," JPMorgan says.

Alsid was founded in 2016 by Emmanuel Gras and Luc Delsalle, former incident responders from the French National Cybersecurity Agency, who will now join Tenable in senior leadership roles. They will focus on continuing to develop innovative solutions to Active Directory risk and security assessment and expanding into new markets globally, Tenable says.

Earlier M&A Activity

At least five cybersecurity M&A deals took place in January, including the private equity firm Francisco Partners finalizing a deal to acquire Forcepoint, F5 announcing plans to purchase Volterra, Equifax revealing the pending purchase of the artificial intelligence firm Kount, Accenture picking up the managed security and cyber defense services company Real Protect, and Huntress acquiring endpoint detection and response technology from Level Effect (see: New Year Kicks Off With Vendor Consolidation).


About the Author

Doug Olenick

Doug Olenick

Former News Editor, ISMG

Olenick has covered the cybersecurity and computer technology sectors for more than 25 years. Prior to his stint as ISMG as news editor, Olenick was online editor for SC Media, where he covered every aspect of the cybersecurity industry and managed the brand's online presence. Earlier, he worked at TWICE - This Week in Consumer Electronics - for 15 years. He also has contributed to Forbes.com, TheStreet and Mainstreet.




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