Fortinet Plans to Acquire Lacework

Fortinet announced Monday its plans to acquire cloud security firm Lacework to enhance its secure access service edge (SASE) offerings with cloud-native security services.

Lacework integrates cloud-native application protection platform services to safeguard what's happening inside the cloud infrastructure. The data-powered cloud security platform collects and analyzes data from across cloud environments so that customers can manage and secure their cloud workflows. The platform identifies and shares details about abnormal or unexpected activities that could indicate a security problem. Lacework offers artificial intelligence and machine-learning technology, data collection capabilities, a data lake, and code security tools, wrote John Maddison, chief marketing officer at Fortinet, in a blog post announcing the acquisition.

Fortinet plans to integrate capabilities from Lacework's cloud-native application protection platform into its SASE portfolio. According to Maddison, combining Lacework with Fortinet's firewall and Web application and API protection (WAAP) capabilities will allow customers to protect what's happening inside the cloud application, as well as what's happening between the application and outside the network.

Back in 2021, Lacework was valued at $8.3 billion. Earlier this year, there were reports that Wiz was in talks with Lacework for a small fraction of the company's valuation. The terms of Fortinet's deal, expected to be completed in the second half of the year, were not disclosed.